| 词组 | balance |
| 释义 | balance The extension of the meaning of this word to the remainder or rest of something other than money is an Americanism. It seems to have been first noticed in John Pickering's Vocabulary of 1816; the excerpt from this work quoted in the Dictionary of American English shows that Pickering considered it to be a Southernism. The earliest citation in the DAE, however, is from Pennsylvania, dated 1788. Noah Webster in a letter to Pickering in 1817 found the usage forced and unwarranted; he left it out of his 1828 dictionary. Joseph Hervey Hull's English Grammar, by Lectures of 1829 mentioned it in a list of incorrect phrases. Subsequently, the expression was damned in a number of 19th-century books, including Bache 1869, Richard Grant White 1870, and Ayres 1881. Grant White denies that the expression is an Americanism, citing an example from a publication called "Once a Week," which must have been British. Citations in the OED show that this sense of balance began to appear in British English in the latter half of the 19th century. The chorus of objection continued unabated into the 20th century: Vizetelly 1906, Bierce 1909, MacCracken & Sandison 1917, Jensen 1935, and many others right up to Copperud 1980 and Janis 1984. Heritage 1969 dislikes it, too, downplaying the fact that 53 precent of their usage panel has found it acceptable. But Heritage 1982 drops the usage note. Harper 1975, 1985 finds the usage entirely acceptable in informal contexts, and Reader's Digest 1983 finds it acceptable. The sense has now been in use for two centuries, and has been carped at—to no avail—for more than a century and a half. No solid reason for avoiding the sense has been brought forward in all that time, although a few commentators have tried to construct something based on the original meaning—"scales"—of balance. The whole controversy has been nothing more than a repetition from one usage book to another. Uses like the following are entirely standard: • About the balance of the book ... one can only say that it is so bad ... —William F. Buckley, Jr., N. Y. Times Book Rev. 6 June 1976 • The balance of the party was turned around and sent home —E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime, 1975 |
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