| 词组 | fruition |
| 释义 | fruition The original sense offruition is "enjoyment." The sense is found in the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, and it is common in older literature: • ... I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition —Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766 Sometime in the 19th century the word began to be used in the sense of "a bearing of fruit" or, in its more usual figurative application, "realization, accomplishment." The OED was one of the first dictionaries to record this use; the editor of F, Henry Bradley, thought it must be a blunder based on an erroneous association with the word fruit. He found the sense in use in both England and America but noted it was not countenanced by British dictionaries or by Webster or Worcester in America. His examples are all American: one from context, and two from other American dictionaries— both probably more recent than the Webster and Worcester he had checked. The new sense seems not to have excited much comment at first. There was a little flurry of newspaper interest and some letters of inquiry to Merriam-Webster editors in the 1920s, mostly because Webster 1909 had omitted the sense. But Webster's Second entered it in 1934, and after that the inquiries stopped. Then in the middle 1960s, several commentators discovered the original sense practically all at once. Flesch 1964, Bernstein 1965, and Gowers in Fowler 1965 all disparaged the new sense. Copperud 1970, 1980 observes that the old sense was practically unknown by then and dismisses their objections as pedantry. Howard 1977 and Bryson 1984 also accept the figurative use. The original sense, because of its liturgical use, is not yet archaic, though liturgies are changing and older versions of the English Bible are being replaced. All the same, it is pretty unusual in everyday contexts. The original extension to the ripening of fruit or crops is also seldom met. The ordinary use is the entirely figurative one: • It is no accident for the soul to be embodied: her very essence is to express and bring to fruition the functions and resources of the body —George San-tayana, in A Century of the Essay, ed. David Daiches, 1951 • ... we then think of him as still mindful of the old ideals and sure to bring them elsewhere to fruition —William James, Pragmatism, 1907 • The remarkable human relationship that dominated Cubism between 1909, when it came into full fruition, and 1914 —Janet Flanner, New Yorker, 13 Oct. 1956 • ... harbors large ambitions that require a helpmate rather than a playfellow to bring them to fruition — Joseph P. Lash, McCall's, October 1971 |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。