| 词组 | averse to, from |
| 释义 | averse to, from Samuel Johnson, in his Dictionary of 1755, has this comment at sense 3 of averse: "It has most properly from before the object of aversion." He illustrates this with quotations from Hooker, Clarendon, and Pope. At sense 4 he adds, "Very frequently, but improperly, to." This he illustrates with quotations from Clarendon and Swift. Lowth 1762 agrees with Johnson: "So the noun aversion, (that is, a turning away,) as likewise the adjective averse, seems to require the preposition from after it; and not so properly to admit of to, or for, which are often used with it." Lowth's opinion, as you can see, is based on translating the Latin roots of the English word, and then selecting the preposition that translates Latin a as the appropriate complement. Johnson's statements are presumably also based on the Latin. But not everyone agreed with Lowth and Johnson. Priestley 1761 notes some writers using averse from and some averse to; the latter he finds "more truly English." Lindley Murray 1795 echoes Priestley and also brings in Campbell 1776 as being in favor of to and rejecting the etymological argument. The preponderance of usage has been on the side of Priestley, Murray, and Campbell. Even Sam Johnson the conversationalist did not heed Johnson the lexicographer: • Why, Sir, you cannot call that pleasure to which all are averse —1769, in Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791 Although Hodgson 1889 terms averse to a blunder, he acknowledges it to be "almost universal"; Vizetelly 1906 says that "present usage prefers averse to." But averse from has not disappeared. Although some American handbooks (Raub 1897 corrects British examples of averse from to averse to) advise against using it and others (Reader's Digest 1983 for instance) find it pedantic, averse from is still in good, albeit predominantly British, usage. • ... Democratic senators from the East were no less averse from free trade than their Republican colleagues —Samuel Eliot Morison, Oxford History of the American People, 1965 • ... was not at all averse from a spice of gossip — Bonamy Dobrée, English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century, 1700-1740, 1959 • He was by no means averse from constructing a theory first, making observations second —D. H. Pennington, Seventeenth Century Europe, 1970 • ... averse from killing, he just tells the ... bank staff that this is the greatest day in their lives —Dilys Powell, The Sunday Times (London), 2 June 1974 • ... tries to strike a middle course, averse both from exaggeration and from whitewashing —Times Literary Supp., 10 Dec. 1954 • I am inveterately averse from any sort of fuss —Max Beerbohm, Seven Men, 1920 Twentieth-century British commentators have differed over the question. The Fowler brothers (1907) favor averse to, and Fowler 1926 terms averse from a pedantry, as does Partridge 1942. Gowers 1948 favors averse from, but lets Fowler's opinion stand in his revision (Fowler 1965). Mittins et al. 1970 cites a number of other British commentators with varying opinions. Sellers 1975 finds averse to more common, as does Phy-thian 1979; neither condemns averse from. Averse to is, in fact, the more common phrase in both varieties of English: • Not that the Princetonian is always averse to putting on the glitz —Guy D. Garcia, Time, 28 Nov. 1983 • They are not averse to sipping human blood on occasion —Donald Dale Jackson, Smithsonian, November 1982 • ... naturally he was not totally averse to the promotion he got from the defenders of the peculiar institution —Times Literary Supp., 12 Feb. 1970 • Although Campbell is not averse to polemics —Stephen Spender, New Republic, 2 Feb. 1953 • No wonder he was averse to the novels of Stendhal —W. H. Auden, New Yorker, 2 May 1953 • ... a horror of cruelty which made me very averse to war —Bertrand Russell, London Calling, 24 Mar. 1955 • Gaunt had never been averse to an audience at these moments —Ngaio Marsh, Colour Scheme, 1943 See also adverse, averse. |
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