| 词组 | enormity, enormousness |
| 释义 | enormity, enormousness The usage experts insist that enormity is improperly used to denote large size and is properly used only to denote wickedness, outrage, or crime. Enormousness is the word recommended for large size. This recommendation from Strunk & White 1979 for enormity is typical: "Use only in the sense 'monstrous wickedness.'" The recommendation is not just simple, it is an oversimplification, as the first definition of enormity in Webster's Second shows: • 1. State or quality of exceeding a measure or rule, or of being immoderate, monstrous, or outrageous; as, the enormity of an offense. This suggests a much wider range of application than just "monstrous wickedness." Let's have a look at some of these applications. First, we find that enormity can carry overtones of moral transgression: • Sin, remember, is a twofold enormity —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916 • ... the always ugly inequality in the distribution of this world's goods, in ceasing to be a practical necessity, has become a moral enormity —Arnold J. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, 1948 • Twenty years after the war we stand shocked and amazed at the enormity of the German crimes — Times Literary Supp., 30 Dec. 1965 It may also denote an outrage against one's sense of decency or one's sense of what is right: • One should pause to absorb this in its full innovative enormity—a United States Senator tapped and trailed on his legislative rounds by American Army agents? —Andrew St. George, Harper's, November 1973 • The vulgarity of his age has suddenly been revealed to him in all its enormity —Albert Dasnoy, Encounter, February 1955 At other times it may stress the gravity of a situation, the seriousness of what may happen because of some act or event. The emphasis here is on the dire consequences, rather than the moral obloquy: • I confess the crime, and own the enormity of its consequences, and the danger of its example —Samuel Johnson, letter written for Dr. Dodd, June 1777 She was violently ill, and she was afraid that she was dying. She was too frightened to let Tom-Tom go for help, and while he dosed her as he could, she confessed to him about herself and Turl. As soon as she told it she became easier and went off to sleep, either before she had time to realize the enormity of what she had done, or while she was still too occupied in being alive to care —"Centaur in Brass," in The Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 1950 • Now the enormity of his running away rode heavily on him —Read and Young America Mag., 15 Nov. 1952 • She perceived as no one in the family could the enormity of the misfortune —E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime, 1975 The grave situation described may carry distinct overtones of being a considerable departure from what is normal: • They awakened; they sat up; and then the enormity of their situation burst upon them. • "How did the fire start?" asked Pablo plaintively, and no one knew —John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat, 1935 But in spite of what the critics say, enormity is often used simply to denote great size or extent. It is applied to things that are literally or figuratively great in size: • ... explains to a certain extent the enormity of its craters and the loftiness of its mountain peaks —The Strand, May 1905 • The enormity of the explosion gives us several things to think about —Manchester Guardian Weekly, 30 Sept. 1921 • ... demonstrating... the enormity and joyous function of his genital member —Robert Coover, Evergreen, June 1967 • What has given the battle its special flavor and intensity, however, is not just the size of the combatants and the enormity of the prize —Richard Austin Smith, Fortune, January 1966 • Husband doubts friend appreciates enormity of his good fortune —John Barth, The Floating Opera, 1956 Quite often enormity will be used to suggest a size that is beyond normal bounds, a size that is unexpectedly great. Here the notion of monstrousness may creep in, but without the notion of wickedness. This use can be either literal or figurative. For instance, the first quotation below describes the dirigible Hindenberg as seen by a child on the streets of New York: • The enormity of her was out of scale with everything, out of scale with the houses and the cars on the street and the people now shouting and pointing and looking up; she was like a scoop of sky come down to earth, or a floating building —E. L. Doctorow, World's Fair, 1985 • ... it was as though one had flown near enough to the sun to realize its monstrous enormity, and had then returned to earth again appalled by its distance from us —Sacheverell Sitwell, All Summer in a Day, 1926 Now the singer can be heard on her first recital album and while the positive impression of her singing is sustained, the real enormity of the voice can be inferred. • Listeners at Carnegie Hall were driven back into their seats by the volume of the Jones super-voice — Howard Klein, N.Y. Times, 18 Dec. 1966 In many instances the notion of great size is colored by aspects of the first sense of enormity as defined in Webster's Second. One common figurative use blends together the notions of immoderateness, excess, and monstrousness to suggest a size that is daunting or overwhelming: • ... the enormity of the task of teachers in slum schools —James B. Conant, Slums and Suburbs, 1961 • In view of the enormity of population pressures in India, the condom machine is like a black joke — Michael T. Kaufman, N.Y. Times, 11 Nov. 1979 • ... helpful, self-effacing individuals, whose own creative powers may well be devoured by the enormity of the task before them —Joyce Carol Oates, American Poetry Rev., vol. 3, no. 5, 1974 Interestingly, it is this use that most often catches the eye of the commentators: • "Impressed by the enormity of the job and the far-reaching scope of the military, Mr. Lovett knows ..." "The enormity of the collection long ago discouraged the academy with its limited staff." Authorities on usage are virtually unanimous in reserving "enormity" for the idea of wickedness — Bernstein 1958 • On the challenge of the Presidency, Mr. Reagan said: "I have always been well aware of the enormity of it, the difficulties...." —William Safire, N. Y. Times, 8 Mar. 1981 Writers since the last half of the 19th century have used the interplay of the notions of enormous size and of wickedness or outrageousness to give their uses of the word a richness of meaning that they have directed in various ways. Here, for instance, we have a writer combining size with moral outrage: • The enormity of existing stockpiles of atomic weapons —New Republic, 21 Dec. 1953 Here we have a writer combining the two notions in order to get in a sly dig at an opponent: • My other correspondent has a somewhat juster notion of the magnitude of his proposition, or, as I should rather say, of its enormity —Richard Grant White 1870 Another writer uses it for humorous effect: • That is one of the lessons that buses remind you of ... the enormity of the female behind —Beverly Nichols, Punch, 12 Dec. 1973 Sometimes even the "enormous wickedness" sense has been employed tongue-in-cheek: • Lecture her two boys on the enormity of telling a fib —William Black, The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, 1872 (OED) • ... that solemn warning against the enormity of the split infinitive —Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923 In their rush to correct misuses the commentators tend to leave the impression that enormity is a mass noun meaning "monstrous wickedness." This impression overlooks long and frequent use of the word as a count noun. The count use has been recognized by dictionaries since Samuel Johnson's of 1755. Its application ranges from atrocious, sinful, or vicious acts to lesser sins and peccadilloes. It is seldom applied to things that are merely big. • We shall speak of the particular abuses and enormities of the government —Edmund Spenser, quoted in Johnson 1755 • Hastily excusing herself to Lady Mendip, with whom she had been discussing the latest enormities of the Government —Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise, 1933 • ... have as little success in achieving integration as they are having in preventing U.S. enormities and escalation in Indo-China —W. H. Ferry, Center Mag., March 1968 • Actually, Johnson adored London and was exhilarated no end by its racy surface, enormities included —Paul Fussell, Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, 1971 • There are many little enormities in the world, which our preachers would be very glad to see removed — Joseph Addison, quoted in Johnson 1755 • ... Miss Loos saw that, far more amusing than a brash, frank narrative ... would be for Lorelei to practise her enormities with the most complete and wide-eyed naīveté —Peter Forster, London Calling, 22 Apr. 1954 But what about enormousness? It has simply never been a very popular word. It developed in the 17th century, later than enormity, and its original sense, too, was associated with wickedness: • Such is the infinitenesse and enormousnesse of our rebellious Sin —John Donne, sermon, ca. 1631 (OED) This sense appears to have dropped out of use. It developed the meaning of "enormous size" about the same time that enormity did; the earliest OED example for this sense is dated 1802 and the earliest two for the same sense of enormity are 1792 and 1802. It is, indeed, sometimes used in this sense, as the critics recommend that it be: • The plane, the hangar, the assembly equipment, the very workers themselves conveyed an impression of almost antiseptic cleanliness, and this, along with the enormousness of everything, gave the scene a feeling of unreality —John Brooks, New Yorker, 26 Apr. 1969 • ... in contrast to the general shapeless enormousness of the vegetation —Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica, 1929 It is also used on occasion as what appears to be a mechanical replacement for enormity—in contexts where standard, well-attested uses of enormity (like those we have already examined) would have been at least as appropriate: • ... Bengali civil servants ... are dispirited, unhopeful, buried in mindless routine, and crushed by the enormousness of their daily challenges —C. Stephen Baldwin, Saturday Rev., 6 Nov. 1971 • As I see it, there is still another telling Kafkaesque dimension to Watergate now that President Ford has written his version of The End. It is the enormousness of the frustration ... , the sense of waste, futility, and hopelessness —Philip Roth, Reading Myself and Others, 1975 But in spite of the adjurations of the critics, enormousness does not find a great many users. The reasons for stigmatizing the size sense of enormity are not known. It was simply characterized without explanation by Henry Bradley, editor of the E volume of the OED (1893), in these words: "this use is now regarded as incorrect." The sense was labeled obsolete or rare in Webster 1909, but the labels were removed in Webster's Second, leaving the sense unstigmatized. Both editions have synonymy notes that distinguish between enormity and enormousness by stressing the sense of wickedness for enormity. It seems possible that the critics derived their opinion from the synonymy notes, since they clearly have not heeded the definitions. The earliest usage book statement we have, from MacCracken & Sandison 1917, appears to have been taken directly from the Webster 1909 synonymy: "Enormity refers to abnormal wickedness, enormousness to excessive size." This summary has been repeated with minor variations by numerous subsequent critics, but there is some recent evidence that a different view is beginning to find expression: • ... I think the time has come to abandon the ramparts on "enormity's" connotation of wickedness — William Safire, N.Y. Times, 8 Mar. 1981 • Conservatives hold that enormity means only 'extreme badness,' never 'enormous size.' We feel that this rule is obsolete and that it is acceptable to use the word in either sense, or in both at once — Reader's Digest 1983 We agree with these two commentators. We have seen that there is no clear basis for the "rule" at all. We suggest that you follow the writers rather than the critics: writers use enormity with a richness and subtlety that the critics have failed to take account of. The stigmatized sense is entirely standard and has been for more than a century and a half. |
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