| 词组 | envelope |
| 释义 | envelope 1. The two pronunciations of the noun, \\\\en-və-,lōp\\\\ and \\\\'än-və-,lōp\\\\, are used with about equal frequency and are both fully acceptable, but the \\\\'än-\\\\ version is sometimes stridently decried. Evans 1962 calls it "a strange, ignorant mispronunciation," and approvingly cites Kenyon and Knott's dismissal of it as "pseudo-French" in A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English (1944). It is really not pseudo-French, nor ignorant, and as used by most speakers today it appears naturally, with no affectation or striving for style. If you were to try to anglicize the French word enveloppe, \\\\'än-və-,lōp\\\\ is exactly what you would come up with—a pronunciation like that of encore, en route, and many others. The real objection one might make to it is that envelope has been in our language since Middle English times, so that it deserves to be spoken like such other very old borrowings from French as envy, rather than to vary between two versions, as do envoy or en route, which were borrowed in more recent times. Such a calmly philological consideration cannot well be the source of the peculiar venom directed against \\\\'än-\\\\, however. For this we must look to more revealing animadversions, such as one in the February 1926 issue of American Speech, which refers to someone who "is tempted to invest in a very high silk hat such as the doorkeeper uses at the British Museum, take to using onvelopes, write only cheques at the bank" Or this from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1958): • Oh, she was very genteel: she said "excuse me" whenever a slight burp interrupted her flowing speech, called an envelope an ahnvelope.... Thus, \\\\'än-və-,lōp\\\\ is (or was) considered not so much wrong as non-U: a dreadful indication of the middle classes getting above themselves. 2. Envelop, envelope. The use of envelope as a variant spelling for the verb and of envelop as a variant spelling for the noun is now so uncommon as to look downright peculiar: • She looked as though she might somehow envelope me —Gerald Warner Brace, Bell's Landing, 1955 • ... nor did he mention his promotions, though they were revealed on his envelops —Gerald Sykes, The Center of the Stage, 1952 |
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