| 词组 | etc. |
| 释义 | etc. This abbreviation of the Latin et cetera means literally "and others of the same kind." Most commentators have one or two things to say about its proper use. The most frequently repeated point is that etc. should not be preceded by and, since et means "and" in Latin. Our evidence suggests that this is not a serious problem in edited prose, inasmuch as we have no examples of and etc. in our files. A few commentators also warn that etc. should not be used at the end of a list introduced by for example or such as (as in "... such photographic materials as lenses, filters, etc."). The redundancy of etc. in such contexts is not strongly felt, however, and the usage considered erroneous by the commentators does occur in standard writing: • ... had such Indian names applied to them as coon, moose, possum, skunk, etc. —Mathews 1931 • ... by such function words as can, must, should, have, etc. —C. C. Fries, The Structure of English, 1952 There is disagreement about the contexts in which etc. can be appropriately used. Some critics favor restricting it to such special contexts as footnotes and technical writing, but others find its use in ordinary prose unobjectionable, recommending only that it be avoided in formal usage. What our evidence shows is that etc. now occurs commonly in ordinary expository writing: • ... the full texts of pastoral letters, ... private communications, speeches, etc. —Doris Grumbach, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 8 July 1979 • ... street language, dialects, admixtures of foreign tongues, etc. —Simon 1980 If you dislike the sound of etc. in such contexts, alternatives are and so on, and so forth, and and the like. The use of etc. in reference to persons rather than to things is defended by Fowler 1926, but other commentators have been less tolerant of it (Partridge 1942 considers it "insulting"). Its occurrence is rare enough that the question of its acceptability is largely moot. Here is one of our few examples: • ... the novels of Proust, James, Hardy, Twain, Förster, Huxley, etc. —N.Y. Times, 20 Oct. 1967 A far more likely choice in such a context would be et al. Et cetera is often mispronounced \\\\ek-'set-ər-a\\\\ The analogous mispronunciation, substituting \\\\ek-\\\\ for \\\\et-\\\\, also occurs in French, and the reason is doubtless the same in both languages: assimilation of an unusual initial sound-sequence (no other familiar word in either language begins with \\\\ets-\\\\) to a common one. Words like exceptional, ecstatic, and eccentric abound in English. Whether influenced by this pronunciation or by purely orthographical considerations (ct being a more common sequence of letters than tc), etc. itself is often mispelled ect. This was, for instance, the form regularly used by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his letters. Remembering that the phrase begins with Latin et "and" should prevent you from committing either the mispronunciation or the misspelling. |
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