| 词组 | back of, in back of |
| 释义 | back of, in back of In 1909 Ambrose Bierce included back of in his book of words and expressions to be banned. He did not mention in back of. In 1917 MacCracken & Sandison found back of "colloquial" and added a note for in back of "undesirable." Fowler 1926 mentions back of as an Americanism (as had Fitzedward Hall in 1880) without aspersing it. From these slender beginnings arose a tradition of condemning these inoffensive phrases for one reason or another that has lasted some 70 years. Here are a few of the mixed reviews: • Back of is colloquial only. In back of is a vulgarism —J. C. French, Writing, 1924 • Behind is Literary English; back of colloquial; in back of childish —J. C. Tressler, English in Action, Course 1, 1935 • back of for behind is a colloquialism; in back of for behind is an illiteracy. In front of is good English — Partridge 1942 This sort of inconsistent criticism persists at least to Guth 1985. A few commentators—Shaw 1975 and Prentice-Hall 1978, for instance—are sure there must be something wrong (it wouldn't be in those other books if there weren't something wrong), but they are not sure quite what; they settle for "wordy." Other commentators have found nothing wrong: Lurie 1927, Evans 1957, Copperud 1970 (retracting his earlier faultfinding), Reader's Digest 1983. Bernstein 1965, 1971 finds both standard but still has a preference for behind. So what was wrong with these phrases? Nothing really. They are Americanisms, as far as we know now; perhaps the native nervousness of American usageasters toward Americanisms is to blame. Back of is traced by the OED Supplement to 1694. Here are a few examples: • "I hunted one season back of the Kaatskills" — James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers, 1823 • If he misstated, he asked his friends from Georgia, back of him, to correct him —John C. Calhoun, Works, 1840 (in Thornton, 1939) • Back of the bluffs extends a fine agricultural region —William Cullen Bryant, Letters of A Traveller, 1850 • To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing.... There was nothing back of me that could approach it —Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889 (A Mark Twain Lexicon, 1938) • Back of the purely objective system of sounds ... there is a more restricted "inner" or "ideal" system —Edward Sapir, Language, 1921 • Bill placed it on the wall back of the bar —Joseph Mitchell, McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, 1938 • ... back of every exquisite dinner stands a temperamental chef—Time, 16 June 1952 • Franklin stood back of me in everything I wanted to do —Eleanor Roosevelt, quoted by Catherine Drinker Bowen, Atlantic, March 1970 • Back of the glittering facade of new office buildings is, perhaps, the most angry and unpleasant ghetto in all the country —John Kenneth Galbraith, New York, 15 Nov. 1971 • ... back of my activity there will be the coherence of my self —William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl, 1978 In back of is more recent and is not as well attested in our files. Curiously, Webster's Second labeled back of "Colloq., U.S." but left in back of unstigmatized. Nobody knows why. This quirk of labeling has been noticed in several usage books and may have influenced the usage panel of Heritage 1969 in finding in back of slightly less objectionable than back of. A few examples: • The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back of the smoke —Mark Twain, "How to Make History Dates Stick," 1899 (A Mark Twain Lexicon, 1938) • ... the expectations that lie in back of this charge — Abram Kardiner, The Individual and His Society, 1939 • One day, I was sitting in the tiny parlor in back of the store —John McNulty, New Yorker, 23 July 1949 • ... the Navy has always been strongly in back of the venture —Thomas Wood, N. Y. Herald Tribune, 21 June 1953 Both back of and in back of are standard in American English. |
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