| 词组 | fine |
| 释义 | fine 1. If you had to plow through the abundant evidence for the adjective fine in our files, you might tend to agree with those handbooks that call it, when used to denote superior quality, an overused counterword. But what is equally obvious is that writers don't seem to feel it the least bit empty of content. It is used especially, though not at all exclusively, by reviewers, for whom it apparently suggests a measured or discriminating appreciation of something good. It seems to be able to denote superior quality without the suggestion of overstatement. It is frequently used in the superlative. Here are some samples of use: • It is a very fine army—the best in South America — Graham Greene, Harper's, March 1972 • ... where a translator, however fine a scholar, is not a writer ... —Leo Rosten, Harper's, July 1972 • On balance, however, 1970 should prove a fine year, and a benison to the wine lover —Robert J. Misch, McCall's, March 1971 • A fine detective story, admirably bolstered with trade expertise —Times Literary Supp., 22 Oct. 1971 • ... there are few indications that its culture was more than superficial; fine clothes rather than fine feelings —James Sutherland, English Literature of the Late Seventeenth Century, 1969 • Yet his writing over the past two decades has included some of his finest poems —Times Literary Supp., 16 Apr. 1970 • ... the scripts ... are in the finest traditions of the BBC —Gene Shalit, Ladies' Home Jour., August 1971 As a predicate adjective it tends to be a more generalized (and less emphatic) term of approval: • The job was fine—for a while —Vivian Cadden, McCall's, October 1971 • Unsaturated olive and corn and peanut oils are fine for cooking and salads —Dodi Schultz, Ladies' Home Jour., August 1971 • This is no "value-free" book, which is fine with me —Peter Steinfels, Commonweal, 9 Oct. 1970 2. The adverb fine is called colloquial by a number of commentators, but colloquial, which is often used to disparage rather than merely to refer to standard spoken English, is a misleading label. In present-day use adverbial fine has two chief meanings. The less frequent one, "with a very narrow margin of time or space," usually goes with the verbs cut or run: • He had only forty minutes left, and would be cutting it too fine if he tried to find Hood —Pierre Salinger, On Instructions of My Government, 1971 The more frequent sense means "very well, excellently": • I liked your Maine poems fine —Archibald Mac-Leish, letter, 25 Jan. 1929 • The dress ... is beautiful and fits fine —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 1 Jan. 1959 • Miss Lillian withstood the operation extremely fine —Dr. John R. Robinson 3d, quoted in N. Y. Times, 3 Oct. 1980 The adverb fine can be found in discursive prose as well as in speech and friendly correspondence: • This bloodless September stuff suits me fine — Edward Hoagland, Harper's, February 1971 • A set of miniature chisels from Korea ... held up fine —Claude D. Crowley, Early American Life, February 1977 • They could walk fine in real life, but in front of the fashion photographers' cameras they were forced to become physical incompetents —New Yorker, 5 Oct. 1981 In these two uses the adverbial fine is not idiomatically interchangeable with finely. |
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