| 词组 | free gift |
| 释义 | free gift Free gift is cited as a redundancy by many commentators. Its use appears to be most prevalent in the world of advertising, where copywriters are faced with the difficult task of persuading a wary public that something being given away—usually as a lure to new customers—has no strings attached. We have little evidence of its occurrence in general contexts, but what we do have is not the work of careless writers: • It's true that grace is the free gift of God but in order to put yourself in the way of being receptive to it you have to practice self-denial —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 21 June 1959 • ... something new and amiable, a free gift from science and high technology, a nice piece of bewilderment for the poets, an instruction in humility for all the rest of us —Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony, 1983 The point of the redundancy in these passages is presumably to give added emphasis to the idea of freedom. When used for this purpose in running text, free gift is perhaps less likely to offend than when used in frenetic advertising copy, but we doubt that it is immune to criticism in any context. |
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