「グラスや水差しを傾ける」を英語で何と言う？

先日、同僚の先生と食事をしていたときのことです。各テーブルにピッチャー（水差し）が置いてあるのですが、相手の先生が自分のグラスに水を注ごうとしましたが、容器を少し傾けても水が出てきません。そのとき、「もっと水差しを傾けないと！」と英語で言おうとして、フリーズしてしまいました。私がもどかしそうにジェスチャーを入れて説明しようとすると、相手の先生は、’OK. I hava to tip it up a bit more!’ と答えてくれました。彼女の英語に関心していると、「えっ！この表現今まで聴いたことがないの？」と言われました。この表現を聴くまでは、私の頭の中では、tip=「何かの先端」というイメージが強かったので、動詞として能動的に使うことはできませんでした。幼稚な英語表現の紹介で申し訳ありませんが、私にとっては食事を通しての大きな発見となりました。このブログの読者の皆さんにも、何らかの形で参考になればと思い執筆しました。

This happened the other day when I was having dinner with one of my colleagues at the local Indian restaurant. My colleague picked up a pitcher which was placed on the table. She held it and tried to pour some water into her glass, but to no avail. Seeing that, I wanted to say something like 「もっと水差しを傾けないと！」 in English. However, I was stuck here. I tried to recall whether I know the right expression here. I cursed myself not knowing the relevant phrase, and in the end I gave up and tried to communicate with her with a gesture. In no time, she registered and said to me, ‘OK. I have to tip it up a bit more!’ I was very impressed with the expression she used, and told her that I had never come across ‘tip’ used in this manner. She looked rather surprised by my comment and said, ‘What! You’ve never heard of the expression before?’ Until then, in my mind the word ‘tip’ meant ‘at the pointed end of something’, and I had never imagined myself using the word as a verb as one of my active vocabularies; but I was wrong here. This episode may not be that exciting to some of the readers of my blog, but to me it was quite an eye-opening dining experience. I just hope this anecdote is interesting enough and is of some help to some of the readers of my blog.