| 词组 | feasible |
| 释义 | feasible Feasible has three senses in the OED. As defined briefly in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, they are, in historical order, "capable of being done or carried out," "capable of being used or dealt with successfully," and "reasonable, likely." In 1926 H. W. Fowler announced that he did not like the third sense, which he had noticed coming into common use. It was his opinion that the third sense of feasible was simply a fancy substitution for possible or probable, and he attacked it by insisting that feasible be limited to its first sense (he ignores the second) and by bringing in the first half of an OED note on the third sense to the effect that the sense was not justified etymologically (feasible goes back to the Latin verb for do) and was recognized in no other dictionary. He omitted the rest of the note: "though supported by considerable literary authority." Indeed, the sense goes back to Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century and had been in use about 250 years when Fowler was offended by it. To clinch his point about the proper uses of possible and feasible, Fowler tells us that a thunderstorm is possible but not feasible (an example repeated, with minor changes, in Bremner 1980, Longman 1984, Shaw 1987, and Copperud 1970, 1980). The example, however, is beside the point: writers do not use feasible of storms. The three definitions are not really discrete, in spite of the etymological disclaimer in the OED. In order to frame a definition of reasonable length, the lexicographer often has to sort examples of an adjective according to the kinds of nouns it modifies. The second and third senses in the OED account for the application of feasible to things that are not doable, even though the underlying notion of feasible is not much changed. • Sand is used as a filter medium in preference to other feasible materials —Herbert R. Mauersberger, American Handbook of Synthetic Textiles, 1952 • ... the cove off which the ship lay at anchor offered the only feasible landing place —Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall, Pitcairn 's Island, 1934 • ... where a qualified judgment respecting his fitness is clearly feasible —William Van Alstyne, AAUP Bulletin, September 1971 • ... to keep as cool as feasible, and to wait —Ned Temko, Christian Science Monitor, 12 Dec. 1979 • I am not here concerned with the question whether such a "humanistic" civilization ... is or is not desirable; only with the question whether it is feasible —T. S. Eliot, "The Humanism of Irving Babbitt," in Selected Essays, 1932 • The most feasible interpretation is that dust and breccia probably were formed at an early stage in the history of the moon —Mitsunobu Tatsumoto & John N. Rosholt, Science, 30 Jan. 1970 • ... by crossing the one and only feasible pass — Douglas Carruthers, Beyond the Caspian, 1949 None of the things described as feasible in these examples can be done; in each case the word suggests that whatever is in question is within the realm of practical possibility or reasonable likelihood. Possible cannot be substituted for feasible in some of these contexts and still make sense; in those where it can be substituted it often changes the meaning. There is one construction—"it is feasible that"—in which possible can substitute very nicely. Some of Fowler's examples are of this construction. All of our examples of it are British: • As the Chapel pre-dated any knowledge of printing, it is feasible that the founder planned to give the people religious instruction by the pictorial medium — Martin Thornbill, Explorer's Scotland, 1952 • It is quite feasible that the line is corrupt —Norman Blake, The English Language in Medieval Literature, 1977 Whatever is feasible is more reasonable or more likely than what is merely possible. To point a finger at a use of feasible and say that possible was meant is to try to read the writer's mind. These are cases where we would do better to give the writer credit for having chosen the right word to convey the intended meaning. |
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