| 词组 | endemic, epidemic |
| 释义 | endemic, epidemic We have no evidence showing that these words have ever been confused, but the similarities of their spelling, pronunciation, and application are such that they look confusable, and books on usage have been explaining the distinction between them for many years. One more time can't hurt: medically speaking, endemic describes a disease that is constantly present to a greater or lesser extent in a particular place; epidemic describes a severe outbreak of a disease affecting many people within a community or region at one time. To the basic distinction we may also add that endemic can be followed by either in or to: • ... the gravely debilitating ... parasitic disease that is endemic in lower Egypt —William Styron, This Quiet Dust and Other Writings, 1982 • ... to study diseases endemic to the developing areas of the world —Johns Hopkins Mag., Summer 1967 Epidemic is more commonly used as a noun than as an adjective: • ... a typhus epidemic that killed more than 65,000 people in the British Isles in 1816 —Timothy Ferris, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 31 July 1983 Its most familiar adjectival use is in the phrase epidemic proportions: • ... AIDS was proclaimed as reaching epidemic proportions —Edwin Diamond, TV Guide, 28 Oct. 1983 Both words, of course, are also commonly used in nonmedical contexts: • The problems endemic to translating poetry — Genevieve Stuttaford, Publishers Weekly, 22 Oct. 1982 • Early in this century there was an epidemic of picture postcards—People, 14 Dec. 1981 Another point of some concern to usage commentators is the use of epidemic to describe outbreaks of disease affecting animals rather than people. Bernstein 1965 considers this a "loose usage," since epidemic is derived from the Greek epi-, "on, at," and demos, "people." He argues that the correct word for an outbreak among animals is epizootic. The distinction he promotes is in fact sometimes observed, particularly in scientific writing: • An epidemic of plague in human beings is usually preceded by a rat epizootic —Merck Manual, 8th ed., 1950 But the etymological connection between epidemic and "people" is now entirely lost in general usage, and the use of epidemic to describe nonhuman outbreaks of disease is established as standard: • ... epidemics of the disease during winter and spring months —H. E. Biester & L. H. Schwarte, ed., Diseases of Poultry, 2d ed., 1948 • As administrator he advanced game conservation ... and fought a severe epidemic of rinderpest — Current Biography, December 1965 Commentators who have defended such usage include Gowers in Fowler 1965 and Copperud 1980. |
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