If Americans were to work longer, they could set a financial goal that is attainable rather than forbiddingly distant.

美国人若是都延长了工作年限，那么就能设立一个经济目标，它并非遥遥无期，而是可以实现的。

youdao

I stood on tiptoe, face upward and back straightened, to hand the cloth-wrapped bundle onto the counter. How strange the pawnbroker should have put up a counter so forbiddingly high.

包袱送到柜台上，我是仰着脸，伸着腰，用脚尖站起来送上去的，真不晓得当铺为什么摆起这么高的柜台！

youdao

Unfortunately, Ms. Nixon's acting is part of what's wrong with the production, for she plays Vivian Bearing, the austere, loveless scholar of 17th-century poetry around whose terrible plight "Wit" revolves, as though she were a precocious schoolgirl rather than a full-grown, forbiddingly chilly intellectual.

WSJ: Wit | The Motherf**cker With the Hat | Into the (Spot)light | Theater Reviews by Terry Teachout