| 词组 | fun |
| 释义 | fun A few commentators and handbooks deplore the use of fun as an adjective, several others term it informal, and a couple who dislike it themselves still note how nouns have a way of turning into adjectives in English. Quite a few members of all groups believe the usage is new—Flesch 1983, for instance, thinks it only about twenty years old; Copperud 1980 concurs; Harper 1985 finds it a vogue usage of the early 1970s; Macmillan 1982 thinks it transitory. The OED Supplement, however, shows that it is a bit older. The Supplement calls it an attributive use of the noun passing into an adjective and cites examples from the middle of the 19th century on, including this title from 1853, which does have a modern ring: • Fun jottings; or, Laughs I have taken pen to. The recent flurry of use that has caught the attention of the commentators seems to have started after World War II: • This language problem has its fun side, too —Time, 2 Sept. 1946 • "... We may not be the best motel on the Highway but The Bluebird is certainly the cutest. A fun place " —Mary Jane Rolfs, No Vacancy, 1951 • New fun ideas are the poncho and the all-in-one shirt and shorts "walking suit" —Virginia Pope, N.Y. Times Mag., 13 June 1954 The usage had really caught on by the middle 1960s, helped, probably, by advertising for fun cars and fun furs. It has turned up in some unexpected places: • ... there were countless small boats for racing, fishing, or just fun sailing —Samuel Eliot Morison, Oxford History of the American People, 1965 And more predictable ones: • "A Few Selected Exits" is a fun book to read —Clive Barnes, N.Y. Times, 15 Apr. 1969 • ... doing the boogaloo on the beaches at Fort Lauderdale and other fun spots —Newsweek, 3 Apr. 1967 And it can be found outside the usual publishing centers: • ... two of the more fun nights he had had all summer —Kim Vought, The Beachcomber (Ocean City, Md.), 14 Aug. 1970 • ... a fun evening with a worship service and lots of food —Ellen Houx, Mineral Independent (Superior, Mont.), 4 Jan. 1973 It is used in the 1980s in just the way it was used in 1946: • Vocabulary is, indeed, the fun part of dialectology — Robert Claiborne, Our Marvelous Native Tongue, 1983 All of the examples shown so far are for attributive uses. No commentator has attempted to tackle the question of whether fun is a predicate adjective as well, and probably with good reason, for there is no sure way to prove that fun in "That was fun" is either an adjective or a noun. But notice that it is often linked with another adjective: • "Say it again, Tom." "The money's in the cave!" "Tom—honest injun, now—is it fun or earnest?" "Earnest, Huck...."—Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, 1876 • It is challenging and fun for children —Frances R. Horwich, NEA Jour., February 1965 • They think it is fun and good for young people — Rosemary Brown, Ladies' Home Jour., September 1971 • These are disappointing books. Starvation or Plenty? is more fun; Famine in Retreat? is safer —Times Literary Supp., 5 Mar. 1970 These uses suggest that some writers may well feel it to be a predicate as well as an attributive adjective. We have evidence from speech for so fun, funner, and fun-nest, which attest to established adjective status in speech. As an attributive adjective, fun is not often found in elevated contexts; as a quasi-predicate adjective, it is found in all contexts. |
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