| 词组 | donate |
| 释义 | donate Donate is one of those pesky back-formations that have frequently come under the gun of critics. Richard Grant White was probably first. He is mentioned in the fourth edition of Gould 1870 as having attacked the word in a magazine article. "Webster, of course, records the word," sneers Gould, who was a partisan of Worcester in the 19th-century American dictionary war. Donate had been first entered in Webster 1864, and Gould attacked—correctly, from the standpoint of modern etymology—the Latin origin postulated for it there. Richard Grant White included his attack in his 1870 book and donate became part of William Cullen Bryant's Index Expurgatorius, compiled when he was editor of the N.Y. Evening Post and published in 1877. Bardeen 1883 lists five works discussing it (and he missed Gould); Ayres 1881 cites Gould. By the turn of the century, and for quite a few years thereafter, it was roundly condemned on all sides, although dissenting voices were here and there heard. With Utter 1916 the popular epithet becomes "vulgar"; it is used by Whipple 1924, too, and in 1925 Merriam-Webster editors yielded to the contemporary view and added the label by plate-change to the dictionary. But Vizetelly, following his own dictionary, Funk & Wagnalls 1913, was measured in his comments, allowing donate certain legitimate uses (as Utter did too, though grudgingly). Lounsbury 1908 considered it needlessly abused, and Hall 1917 opined that if the millionaire philanthropists and their clients needed a new word, they might as well have it. Donate is an original Americanism, first attested in 1785. It has some British use, too, as H. L. Mencken noted in The American Language. Fowler 1926 does not condemn it, but calls it "chiefly U.S." and notes it as a back-formation; Gowers in Fowler 1965 observes that it has become a formal word for give in British English. In American use it seems to be the word of choice when the giving, usually to a cause or charity, is public or is intended to be publicized. It is no longer controversial. • Magazines donated space. Artists and writers donated their services. Peace was what people were groping for, and when Americans grope for something they turn naturally to display advertising —E. B. White, The Wild Flag, 1946 • ... the receipts of the gala premier performance of the film would be donated to the League —Tom Buckley, Harper's, August 1971 |
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