| 词组 | awesome |
| 释义 | awesome The use of awesome as a generalized term of approval is relatively recent and has not received much comment in usage books. Harper 1985 tested their usage panel on the subject with the expression. The panel may have been bemused by the example sentence, which referred to the New York Yankees' relief pitcher Goose Gossage. Several panel members were sufficiently impressed with Gossage's fastball to feel the description apt. Awesome has been part of the standard hyperbole of sports broadcasting and writing for several years. It may have been popularized by professional football broadcasts; when great came to be applied freely to plays and players of average to good quality, awesome was rushed in to supply the idea of better than average. The use of the word in sportswriting is not quite so recent as you might imagine, although our earliest citation appears to be sarcastic: • After this awesome exhibition the Yanks settled down and played baseball —N.Y. Times, 21 June 1925 A couple of more recent examples: • ... finished his season in awesome fashion, winning eight of his last nine decisions and posting a 1.07 earned-run average for that span —Roger Angell, New Yorker, 3 Dec. 1984 • The depth of quality on the Steeler squad is awesome—there is no apparent weakness anywhere — Anson Mount, Playboy, August 1979 Such use is, however, far from limited to the world of sports. Howard 1984 says that preppies favor the word. Our files are perhaps not finely attuned enough to the usage of preppies to confirm this transatlantic observation, but we do have evidence of its use in the speech and writing of young people: • The article on Henry Thomas of E.T. was totally awesome —letter to editor, People, 13 Sept. 1982 • Wildlife Camp was good to me too. My Quest was called Lakes and Streams. It was awesome —letter to editor, Ranger Rick, March 1985 • "It's totally awesome," said 9-year-old Robin Meisner of Newton —Bella English & Patricia Currier, Boston Globe, 1 Jan. 1986 This use, which appears to be chiefly oral, often attracts the intensifier totally. It is strictly a generalized term of approval. Marge Piercy, one of the Harper panelists, wrote "We lost 'awful' so then we needed 'awesome' " It is quite possible that her summary of the situation helps account for the growth in the use of awesome. The OED marks awesome "Chiefly Scotch." Its introduction into present-day English seems to have come from Sir Walter Scott early in the 19th century, at approximately the same time that the weakened sense, "disagreeable, objectionable," of awful was developing. This sense, and the simple intensive sense that developed later may well have influenced some writers to choose awesome for "inspiring awe." Here are a few representative older examples: • To harness its power in peaceful and productive service was even then our hope and our goal, but its awesome destructiveness overshadowed its potential for good —Dwight D. Eisenhower, message on atomic energy, 17 Feb. 1954 • Your nomination, awesome as I find it, has not enlarged my capacities —Adlai E. Stevenson, Speeches, ed. Richard Harrity, 1952 • ... the physician's awesome responsibility for life and death —Gerald Wendt, N.Y. Herald Tribune Book Rev., 9 Oct. 1949 • ... in the past three years have come awesome but not inspiring improvements upon the original forms of atomic death —Norman Cousins, Saturday Rev., 7 Aug. 1948 • One night this week, the flood reached its awesome crest —Time, 7 July 1947 • It was an awesome sight to watch the great seas piling in —Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall, Pitcairn 's Island, 1934 Compare these with these more recent examples: • ... there is something manic, even awesome, about the sergeant's pious belief in the infallibility of his polygraph —William Styron, This Quiet Dust and Other Writings, 1982 • ... embryonic development in every species poses some of the most awesome mysteries —Gary Blon-ston, Science 84, March 1984 • The number of orchestral and operatic works based on his poems is awesome —D. J. R. Bruckner, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 16 Oct. 1983 • ... for several years they were considered too costly to import, even by stores that offer other luxury goods. Now, thanks to the strengthening dollar, the prices no longer seem awesome —Abby Rand, Town & Country, December 1982 • The U.S. economy looks awesome, especially to outsiders — Wall Street Jour., 8 Oct. 1984 • ... some of the more awesome vintages of Bordeaux and Burgundy —Jay Jacobs, Gourmet, March 1980 Awesome has not lost its primary meanings, but even if we set the sports and spoken use as a generalized term of approval aside, it seems to be becoming less intense. It may well be following a pattern of development similar to that followed by awful a century earlier. |
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