| 词组 | author |
| 释义 | author You will have no trouble finding people who dislike author used as a verb: Copperud 1964, 1970, 1980, Follett 1966, Flesch 1964, Reader's Digest 1983, Nickles 1974, Kilpatrick 1984, Ebbitt & Ebbitt 1982, Harper 1975, 1985, Zinsser 1976, McMahan & Day 1980, Janis 1984, Watt 1967, the Oxford American Dictionary, Gowers 1948, Ivor Brown 1945. There are probably more for the dedicated researcher to unearth. Heritage 1969 stigmatized it, but Heritage 1982 dropped the note. This verb has a very strange history marked by many inexplicable gaps in the record. Such gaps, however, are not uncommon in the backgrounds of little-used words, and until after World War II the verb author was a little-used word. It first appears in Chapman's translation of Homer in 1596: • The last foul thing Thou ever author'dst (OED) Chapman's verb means "to be the author of," but his author is not a writer—a doer or perpetrator instead. The OED shows a few 17th-century examples like Chapman's, and then the evidence seems to dry up. The OED also records another 17th-century sense that did not survive to the 18th. Our next evidence comes from the 18th century. Henry Fielding in Joseph Andrews (1742) pulls it out of his hat as an intransitive—actually as a gerund: • There are certain mysteries or secrets in all trades, from the highest to the lowest, from that of prime-ministering to this of authoring, which are seldom discovered, unless to members of the same calling. Fielding's italics suggest that he knew he was using a nonce word. But it did not vanish entirely. About a century and a half later we find it without italics, used by a book reviewer: • What is a reviewer's duty to a book like this? Ignore it, and so implicitly encourage the author to go on authoring... ? —N. Y. Times Book Rev., 7 July 1918 We have little evidence since for Fielding's intransitive verb, and you will not find it recorded in a dictionary. • An author authors, but never in the present tense. No one says, when asked what he or she is doing, "I'm authoring." —Roy Blount, Jr., N.Y. Times Book Rev., 17 Oct. 1982 Our next bit of evidence is the surfacing of Chapman's verb again, applied to the game of ice hockey: • ... when Buddy Maracle authored the goal which roused the ire of Coach Eddie Powers —J. Earl Chevalier, Springfield (Mass.) Republican, 22 Jan. 1931 The use of Chapman's verb in sports seems not to have died out, although our evidence is quite sporadic: • ... no-hitters authored by Koufax, Haddix and Feller —Alan C. Hoffman, Away, Summer 1981 Chapman's verb has occasional use in areas other than sports, too: • ... his acts ... are conditioned by his own character as a living creature and by the environment in which he lives, but he authors them out of these materials —Iredell Jenkins, Rev. of Metaphysics, December 1951 • ... seems to treat these urges as if they, too, were authored by some outside agency —James C. Moloney, Psychoanalytic Rev., April 1948 Finally we come to the transitive verb that everyone loves to hate: • The edition on painting is authored by a number of leading authorities on the subject —Birmingham (Mich.) Eccentric, 10 Sept. 1936 • He authored a saying, oft repeated among dairymen, "Treat the cow kindly, boys; remember she's a lady—and a mother." —American Guide Series: Minnesota, 1938 • Samuel Hopkins Adams authored the screen success called "It Happened One Night" —TV. Y. Herald Tribune Book Rev., 26 Feb. 1939 • ... Volume I of this series, published in 1937 and authored by Dorothy Garrod and Dorothea Bate — Science, 3 May 1940 • As the Princess Sapieha, she authored two best sellers of her own —Bennett Cerf, Saturday Rev., 23 Aug. 1947 • ... Christopher Morley has authored, co-authored, and edited over fifty books of poetry, fiction, autobiography, essays, and drama —Whitney Balliett, Saturday Rev., 26 Dec. 1953 • He has in fact authored more than 700 magazine pieces —Cleveland Amory, Saturday Rev., 30 Oct. 1971 The last three examples suggest that author as a verb has appeared with some frequency in the pages of Saturday Review. H. L. Mencken ascribes it to Variety, but he gives no actual citations. In a footnote in his fourth edition of The American Language, he opines that the American use of the verb originated in the show-business journal, but says his earliest actual example comes from Editor and Publisher, 21 Aug. 1927. He does not print the example, though. These examples reveal another interesting point: author is not limited to books, as most of the commentators suppose. Two of our three earliest citations are not about books: in one a saying is authored, in the other a screen success. Almost half the evidence in our files is for something other than a literary production. The nonliterary writings that are most frequently authored are legislative bills, legal opinions, and such: • ... authored a postal pay reclassification bill —Current Biography, February 1964 • One of the incipient "Stop Muskie" plans being discussed ... has been largely authored by Representative Bella Abzug —Richard Reeves, New York, 1 Feb. 1972 • ... authored one of several resolutions introduced in Congress —Current Biography 1950 • He authored last May's conservative-leaning opinion —Time, 20 Oct. 1958 • ... a compromise version, along the lines of the House bill, will be quickly substituted. Who authors this substitute will bear heavily on the final vote — New Republic, 15 May 1950 In addition, we have references to movies, the books of musicals, radio or television programs, songs, games, and so on. And, of course, software for the computer: • ... uses a microcomputer game he authored to teach high-ranking managers how to make decisions — William W. Gunn, InfoWorld, 16 May 1983 You may have noticed that author is used of things like legislation, plans, and musical plays in which more than one hand is likely to have been involved. It is often used when joint effort is explicitly indicated: • A description of Latin syntax, authored by two scholars —Ernst Pulgram, Word, April 1954 • Authored by N. E. Welch, D. S. Billingsley, and C. D. Holland of the Department of Chemical Engineering — Texas Engineering Experiment Station News, September 1961 • ... as stressed in the jointly authored document — Paul E. Fenlon, AAUP Bulletin, December 1967 The fuss over this verb has been somewhat overblown. We have seen that the oldest sense—the Chapman sense—continues in sporadic use; it has never been censured. The Fielding intransitive, still not recognized by dictionaries, may yet accrete enough evidence to get into future unabridged dictionaries, if only through facetious use. The 20th-century transitive—the Mencken Variety sense, if you will—is used chiefly in journalism and is not a literary word. It is easily avoided by those who dislike it. The most useful function of author would seem to be in connection with joint effort in production of a piece, and in connection with things like computer games that are not regularly associated with writing. |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。