| 词组 | déjà vu |
| 释义 | déjà vu Nostalgia was once a medical term (notes Harper 1985) that has been taken over by popular usage in an entirely different sense. Using a New York Times headline that had been castigated in Winners & Sinners in 1981, the Harper editors put the question of the similarly popularized use of déjà vu to their panel. A bit more than a third approved. Bremner 1980 seems to have noticed the popular use, too, although he does not mention it specifically; he explains its technical meaning instead. Déjà vu is a psychological term brought into English from French just after the turn of the century. It was used for an illusory feeling of having previously experienced something that was, in fact, happening for the first time. For about a half century, the term led an uneventful existence in psychological journals and texts, with only an occasional glossed appearance in popular works. Then it began to appear on its own, unglossed, in nontechnical writing. The point of divergence of popular use from technical use lies in the differing viewpoints of the technical writer and reader and the popular writer and reader. The psychologist and his reader are interested in the illusory experience. The popular author and his reader are interested in the fact that it all seems so familiar: • For a while this bloated, exasperating, corny, interminable tear-jerker is apt to give the reader a maddening sensation of déjà vu —John Brooks, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 16 Apr. 1950 The OED Supplement has a similar use from a British book review: • Although better than her last novel, Aimez-vous Brahms ... has a depressing air of déjà vu —The Times (London), 18 Feb. 1960 Both of these reviewers are pointing out that the authors have done again what has been done before, but they are not suggesting that they have actually read the same material before. Here the material is new, the books are being read for the first time, but the situations, the characters, the sentiments, have been similarly treated before—the feeling that it is all familiar is no illusion. We get a similar use in this report on the Tet offensive from Saigon: • ... the early morning sunlight seemed to etch every detail of the scene in my mind—the gray paving stones of the street, the pale terra cotta bricks on the basilica wall. The feeling of déjà vu was strong. I had seen all this a hundred times before in every movie about the fighting during World War II in the streets of Paris. But now, the soldiers crouching along the wall were real soldiers —John Donnelly, Newsweek, 12 Feb. 1968 Similar uses—stressing the familiar and especially the too familiar—abound: • ... there is small fear of posthumous libel but the stale, sickly aroma of déjà vu pervades these pages —Times Literary Supp., 13 Apr. 1967 • ... and to most liberals who had hoped for a fresh wind the appointment seems like a case of déjà vu —Edward B. Fiske, N.Y. Times, 10 Mar. 1968 • There was a general feeling of déjà vu in this beachfront community this week as the countdown for Apollo 12 was being conducted —Sandra Blakeslee, N.Y. Times, 14 Nov. 1969 • To the American, on the other hand, who views them with a growing sense of déjà vu, they are likely to seem part of a syndrome he knows only too well —Hillel Halkin, Commentary, May 1972 • Two can lunch on dreary déjà vu for $47 in our town's temples of serious French cooking —Gael Greene, New York, 3 Mar. 1975 • Yet as one reads "Castles Burning," it is almost with a feeling of déjà vu, so closely does it follow the patterns established by the private eye writers of the 1930's —Newgate Callendar, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 3 Feb. 1980 The popular use was established before it was discovered: it had been used in the New York Times for thirty years before the language guardians there took notice of it. And so far as we know, no commentator has yet noticed the offspring of the popular use—an adjective: • Once the human body is accepted, dressed or not, all the permissiveness in movies and plays will be deja vu —Jane Fonda, quoted in N. Y. Times, 5 Dec. 1969 • ... much of what was blasted as revolutionary in 1931 has long since become déjà vu —Lamberts 1972 • ... these ... looked to me less déjà-vu than usual — John Canaday, N.Y. Times, 2 Sept. 1973 • ... it's that nouvelle-vague décor, with bed-mattress on floor, records and player at hand, the Scotch and pernod being poured from the end table endlessly, the photos tacked to the walls—all too too déjà vu —Judith Crist, New York, 25 Mar. 1974 • While short skirts seem déjà vu, short pants have a lively, contemporary air —Bernadine Morris, N. Y. Times, 18 Nov. 1980 • There's something familiar about such straightforwardness, something faintly déjà vu —Bob Ottum, Sports Illustrated, 9 Nov. 1981 Both of these popular uses are established in standard sources written by professional writers. You can use them if you need them. Sharper-eyed readers may have noticed a few vagaries of accent, hyphenation, and italicization in the exampies. The most common form has both accents and no hyphen: déjà vu. The word is still italicized about half the time. |
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