| 词组 | face up to |
| 释义 | face up to Face up, which is almost always followed by to, is considered to be an Americanism and has been soundly belabored by British critics going back to Partridge 1942 and Ivor Brown 1945; Copperud 1970, 1980 also mentions Lord Conesford, who found many things to dislike in American English shortly after World War II. The apparent spur to comment was the growing use of the expression in British English: • ... he could face up to the fact that Ernest was not everybody's cup of tea —Nevil Shute, Most Secret, 1945 • ... we should bury the past in its entirety, and face up exclusively to the present —Horizon, November 1945 • Judaism today must face up to such problems — Raphael Lowe, London Calling, 25 Mar. 1954 • ... not facing up to life —Angus Macleod, New Statesman & Nation, 26 Dec. 1953 The general thrust of British criticism is that the up to is superfluous, since face says it all. This charge is rebutted by Bernstein 1965, Copperud, and Harper 1975, 1985. In general, then, American commentators defend the phrase and British commentators denigrate it. The claim that the phrase is an Americanism is made on doubtful grounds. The earliest attestation of it is from an Oxford professor, Sir Walter Raleigh, who used it in a letter dated 4 September 1920. The citation is given in the OED Supplement and in Foster 1968. Foster says that Raleigh had been in the United States before 1920, and assumes he picked up the phrase here. The assumption may well be true, but printed American evidence for face up to does not appear in our files until 1924, 1926, and 1927, and the OED Supplement has British examples from 1925 and 1935 too. The phrase was apparently making progress on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time. Face up to is common in American English: • ... how a British family faced up to the dark realities of the war —Allan Nevins, Saturday Rev., 20 Sept. 1941 • It faces up frankly to Russia's known opposition — Adlai E. Stevenson, Saturday Rev., 28 Feb. 1953 • I wanted to get her to face up to what would happen —Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land, 1965 • Custine finally faced up to this situation —George F. Kennan, New Yorker, 1 May 1971 • Movies and songs about growing up and facing up —Richard Corliss, Apartment Life, July 1980 British use seems to have continued unabated in spite of the critics. It is interesting to compare these examples two decades apart: • ... though it could be wished that the author had not been so "genuinely bilingual" as to adopt with enthusiasm the phrase "facing up to" —Times Literary Supp., 16 Dec. 1949 • The British educational establishment did not on the whole face up to the Hegelian-Marxist challenge — Times Literary Supp., 5 Mar. 1970 |
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