| 词组 | dilemma |
| 释义 | dilemma Contrary to the beliefs expressed by members of what Kilpatrick 1984 calls the "Society for the Protection of Dilemma," the word has several meanings. The earliest use of dilemma in English was in the 16th century as a term in rhetoric for an argument presenting usually two alternatives to an opponent, both of which were conclusive against him. By the end of the 16th century, the word had spread from argument to situations involving action. The earliest citation for such use shown in the OED comes from the dramatist and poet Robert Greene: • Every motion was entangled with a dilemma:... the love of Francesco ... the feare of her Fathers displeasure —Never Too Late, 1590 In Greene's play the heroine is faced with a hard choice between alternatives—Francesco's love and her father's good will—that appear to be unattainable at the same time, perhaps mutually exclusive. Shakespeare extended the word to the state of mind of a person faced with such a choice: • Here, Master Doctor, in perplexity and doubtful dilemma —The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1601 By the middle of the 17th century, a third use had arisen: the application of the word to a situation in which a person is faced with alternatives each of which is likely or sure to be unsatisfactory. This use is closest to the original use in rhetoric. • ... this doleful Dilemma; either voluntarily, by resigning, to depose himself; or violently ... to be deposed by others —Thomas Fuller, The Church-History of Britain, 1655 (OED) The dilemma described by Fuller, we note in passing, is not without parallels in modern history. All three of these extended senses—Greene's, Shakespeare's, and Fuller's—have continued in use down to the present. Here, for instance, we find Greene's sense of a choice between alternatives that appear to be mutually exclusive, although perhaps they should not be: • ... presents the dilemma of whether one wants to be correct or endure —Heywood Hale Broun, in Harper 1985 • Those who hold both the beauty of the countryside and the prosperity of agriculture equally dear have dreaded the time when our present methods of "progressive" husbandry might lead the nation to a cruel dilemma—the choice between agriculture and a satisfying landscape —Robert Waller, New Scientist, 24 Apr. 1969 • For the Greeks, the Roman Empire was a necessity of life and at the same time an intolerable affront to their pride. This was, for them, a formidable psychological dilemma —Arnold J. Toynbee, Horizon, August 1947 Here we have Shakespeare's extension to the decider's state of mind: • ... lived in a constant dilemma between disapproval of Lucy's frivolity, and rapturous fascination —Vita Sackville-West, The Edwardians, 1930 In Man and Superman (1903) George Bernard Shaw managed to use both Greene's sense and Shakespeare's sense in a single brief passage of dialogue: • RAMSDEN. If I am to be your guardian, I positively forbid you to read that book, Annie. ANN. Of course not if you don't wish it. TANNER. If one guardian is to forbid you to read the other guardian's book, how are we to settle it? Suppose I order you to read it! What about your duty to me? ANN. I am sure you would never purposely force me into a painful dilemma, Jack. RAMSDEN. Yes, Yes, Annie: this is all very well, and, as I said, quite natural and becoming. But you must make a choice one way or the other. We are as much in a dilemma as you. Here are some examples of Fuller's use, with unsatisfactory or undesirable options: • In either Case, an equal Chance is run: For, keep, or turn him out, my Lord's undone A strong Dilemma in a desp'rate Case! To act with Infamy, or quit the Place—Jonathan Swift, "To Mr. Gay," 1735 • ... the unpleasant dilemma of being obliged either to kill the father or give up the daughter —Jedidiah Morse, The American Universal Geography, 1796 (OED) • ... here is the dilemma. If German industry is not allowed to develop, most of Europe will be without its customary supplies; if Germany is allowed to become a great industrial nation, she will be able to wage another war —Frank Abbott Magruder, National Governments and International Relations, 1950 • ... Goldschmidt was faced with a real dilemma: to grant the permit and further anger those upset by the first demonstration, or to refuse the permit and deny the constitutional right to demonstrate peaceably — Manson Kennedy, City, Summer 1972 Now if you stop to reflect, you will realize that the Greene sense and the Fuller sense are in essence the same; the difference between them is entirely a matter of how the author presents the dilemma. Fuller, for instance, might have presented his instance as a choice between resigning and staying alive or being deposed by force and perhaps not staying alive: the choice between life and possible death is not one between two equally undesirable options. Often what is most unsatisfactory, even positively painful, is the necessity of making the choice: • Either everything in man can be traced as a development from below, or something must come from above. There is no avoiding that dilemma: you must be either a naturalist or a supernaturalist —T. S. Eliot, "Second Thoughts on Humanism," in Selected Essays, 1932 • ... mothers tend to put themselves in a cruel dilemma. They know they want a life beyond their children, but they also want to be everything to their children —Bruno Bettelheim, Ladies' Home Jour., September 1971 • ... like most of the other professionals of the era, he could not escape the tragic dilemma of the Western liberal world, confronted by two brutal and regressive dictatorships neither one of which it could overcome without the help of the other —Walter Mills, Center Mag., March 1968 The word has come gradually to be used in contexts in which just what the choice is or just what the alternatives are is not made explicit, leaving the reader to infer part of what is intended: • ... the dilemma between art and life in our own times —Times Literary Supp., 28 Dec. 1951 • The dilemma which faces all moralists is that the repression of instincts is apt to breed a worse disease than their free expression —Herbert Read, The Philosophy of Modern Art, 1952 • But they were in a real dilemma. It seems to be a law of the imagination that bad characters are more fun to write and read about than good ones —W. H. Auden, New Yorker, 1 Apr. 1972 And if no alternatives are mentioned at all, the word becomes very close in meaning to problem, difficulty, predicament: • ... man's relation to nature and man's dilemma in society—E. B. White, Yale Rev., Autumn 1954 • Capt. Moore with about forty dragoons ... led the pursuit and became separated from the others Discovering their dilemma, more than 150 Mexicans turned upon them and did terrible execution —The Dictionary of American History, 1940 • ... with Kennedy's withdrawal, the Democrats' dilemma becomes glaringly apparent —Kilpatrick 1984 • The personal dilemma of the poet with his fortune to make —Henry O. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, 4th ed., 1925 • ... to take man's dilemma, the old familiar things in which there's nothing new... and... to make something which was a little different —Willian Faulkner, 1 May 1958, in Faulkner in the University, 1959 This use of dilemma without specific alternatives was noted by Krapp 1927: "now in general colloquial use as a synonym for predicament, uncomfortable position, a fix." It is by far the most common use in the second half of the 20th century. H. W. Fowler noted it, with disapproval, around the turn of the century. After a false start in The King's English of 1907, he laid down the law for the fraternity of usage prescribers in 1926: • The use of dilemma] as a mere finer word for difficulty when the question of alternatives does not definitely arise is a slipshod extension; it should be used only when there is a pair, or at least a definite number, of lines that might be taken in argument or action, & each is unsatisfactory. We can see that Fowler has two points here: first, he objects to the relatively new extension of dilemma to uses involving no question of alternatives—an objection which has proved to be futile—and second, he recommends confining the word within limits it had already outgrown in 1590. Fowler's followers have done little more than pursue their own reasoning into regions more and more remote from actual usage. Bernstein 1958, 1965 chooses to revise Fowler's unsatisfactory (the adjective used in Webster's Second and subsequent Merriam-Webster dictionaries) to distasteful; Copperud 1964 chooses the even stronger evil. Copperud goes on to explain to us that "a choice between the love of two beautiful women is not a true dilemma"; but unless the ladies in question are entirely indifferent, it is the same dilemma presented, for instance, by Shaw: to please one is to displease the other. Freeman 1983 may be on sounder theoretical ground when he states that "it is not a dilemma to have to choose between apple pie and chocolate custard"; however, in all our examples of the use of dilemma in edited prose, we have none of the word's being applied to so trivial a choice. Conclusion: dilemma, in the senses extended from the original application to argument, has never been as restricted in meaning as Fowler and his successors have wished it to become. Its further extension to instances in which no alternatives are expressed or implied has become the prevailing use in the 20th century, even though disapproved by Fowler and two leading usage panels. Your use of the word in the sense of problem or predicament should not be a concern—even E. B. White used it that way. |
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