| 词组 | effete |
| 释义 | effete Effete is derived from the Latin effetus, meaning "no longer fruitful." It had some early use in English in its literal sense, chiefly describing domestic animals no longer capable of producing offspring, but its principal English uses have always been figurative. Until the 20th century, its usual figurative sense was "exhausted, worn out": • They find the old governments effete, worn out — Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790 (OED) But the uses in which the word is now familiar to most people are not suggestive of exhaustion so much as of overrefinement, weakness of character, snobbery, and effeminacy. Effete first showed signs of acquiring these shades of meaning in the 1920s: • "You're much too effete—that's your great short-comin'. You don't feel—you are no child of nature...." —S. S. Van Dine, The Bishop Murder Case, 1929 But it wasn't until the 1940s that the new effete clearly established itself in reputable writing: • ... there are a few critics (principally effete members of English Departments) who attack me in order to belabor the entire tradition of realism —James T. Farrell, New Republic, 28 Oct. 1940 • ... the fear of being snobbish or effete leads thinkers to make a virtue of the very limitations of the common man —Herbert J. Muller, Science and Criticism, 1943 • It is a part of American folklore as respects Englishmen to suppose that they are "effete" —J. Frank Dobie, A Texan in England, 1945 • ... now and then some effete customer would order a stinger or an anisette —John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, 1945 • ... nothing so effete as the art-for-art's-sake of Oxford's esthetic Walter Pater —Time, 20 Aug. 1945 • She cannot manage masculine men. Her males are either overtly effete ... or possessed by a feline power-mania —Edward Sackville West, Horizon, June 1946 These new uses of effete have made it a much more common word than it ever was in its "exhausted" sense, which is now almost never seen. The new effete has received occasional criticism from such commentators as Evans 1957, Bernstein 1965, and Bryson 1984, but resistance to it has not been widespread. Although it is true that the senses in which effete is now used have no strong connection with its original literal sense, it is also true that these senses have gained a firmly established place in the language of educated speakers and writers. Current dictionaries routinely recognize them as standard. |
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