| 词组 | distrait |
| 释义 | distrait Longman 1984 objects to the use of distrait in the sense "anxious," a gloss which the writer of the usage note extracted from the definition "inattentive or mildly distraught because of anxiety or apprehension"; the abridgment seems rather to misrepresent the problem. Bryson 1984 distinguishes distrait from distraught. Fowler 1907, 1926, 1965 objects generally to use of the term as a pretentious Gallicism. Distrait is a fairly rare literary word. The fact that it is mentioned as a usage problem only in British books and dictionaries would suggest it is more commonly used in British English than in American English, but we do have American evidence. It has an unusual history. The OED shows that it was used in the 14th and 15th centuries in a sense approximating "distraught." It appears to have been reborrowed from French in a milder sense during the 18th century (no direct connection can be established from the 15th century to the 18th). The word absentminded has been used to define the reborrowed use since Webster 1864. This definition was probably brought over from French dictionaries by translation, and it is unfortunate, because in English absentminded suggests a habitual condition and distrait does not. Another peculiarity of the word is that it tends to be treated in English as if it were still a French word: it is frequently italicized, it has a feminine variant distraite like a French adjective, and it is pronounced as if French. It thus tends to advertise the self-consciousness with which it is used. The word, partly because of its low frequency, is difficult for lexicographers to define. It fits into a group of words including abstracted, absent, absentminded, distracted, distraught, and preoccupied, but its placement in the group is not perfectly clear. Sometimes it suggests agitation and is fairly close to, but apparently not as strong as, distraught: • She sat on thorns, and was so distrait she could hardly answer the simplest question —Charles Reade, Put Yourself in His Place, 1870 • The hall porter, seeing her a little distraite, went up to her and asked if he could assist madame in any way —M. Barnard Eldershaw, The Glasshouse, 1937 • ... she habitually seated herself on any paper or papers she had collected; at the post, to be forced off her papers by any duty made her as distraite as a mother bird —Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day, 1949 More often it seems to indicate such a preoccupation of mind as makes the subject unaware of his or her immediate surroundings; it suggests mental agitation but no specific cause. In the first of these examples, the subject is in love; in the second he has seen a ghostly friar; the third subject has just murdered her husband. • Scythrop grew every day more reserved, mysterious, and distrait; and gradually lengthened the duration of his diurnal seclusions in his tower —Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, 1818 And Juan took his place, he knew not where, Confused, in the confusion, and distrait, And sitting as if nail'd upon his chair: Though knives and forks clank'd round as in a fray, • He seem'd unconscious of all passing there—Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto xvi, 1824 • She was just a touch distraite throughout the evening, and her friends rallied her jocosely because she could not bear to spend even a few hours at the theater without her Ernest —Katherine Anne Porter, Ladies ' Home Jour., August 1971 • ... the signs of boredom under the perfection of the royal manner. Not that the King could be called distrait; no, but he had begun to fiddle with the silver bracelet round his wrist —Vita Sackville-West, The Edwardians, 1930 |
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