词组 | funny |
释义 | funny It is a bit funny that the sense of funny that means "strange, odd, peculiar" is still being treated as something less than standard. Here is a recent comment: • Often used in conversation as a utility word that has no precise meaning but may be clear enough in its context. It is generally too vague for college writing —Trimmer & McCrimmon 1988 This is little more than an elaboration of MacCracken &Sandison 1917: • ... inaccurate colloquialism for strange, odd. The OED traces this sense back to 1806. It labels the sense colloquial, and its examples seem to be from letters or transcribed conversation. It does appear to be a spoken use in origin. • She supposes my silence may have proceeded from resentment of her not having written &c. She is a funny one —Jane Austen, letter, 7 Jan. 1807 It was moving into more general use even before the turn of the century, and it is still common in standard, although perhaps not stodgily formal, sources. • "I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present," answered Dorian, with a funny look of penitence — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 • Once more Hastings got that funny impression of something put on and artificial in her tone —John Cowper Powys, Ducdame, 1925 • It is a funny place, this world of Capitalism — George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, 1928 • ... where everybody would expect you to stay and think it funny when you wouldn't —William Faulkner, Sanctuary, 1931 • For some funny reason we have never been accepted as Vermonters —Robert Frost, letter, May 1931 • ... being funny that way, she had had an intuition that something was really going to happen this time —Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day, 1949 • She was funny that way—that was the only explanation —Mary McCarthy, New Yorker, 23 Mar. 1957 • They make charming little begin ni ng-of-the-world music on funny little instruments —Elizabeth Hard-wick, N.Y. Rev. of Books, 6 Nov. 1969 • It's a very funny kind of sin—because you do it with the approval of the Dean of Women, your Minister, and both sets of parents —Margaret Mead, Barnard Alumnae, Winter 1971 • But chickens or tomatoes or detergent soap earmarked for the cooperatives have a funny way of falling into the busy hands of black marketeers — Ned Temko & Michael Winston, Christian Science Monitor, 19 May 1980 • Funny, nothing in Whitman ever seemed to me unwholesome —Robert Boyers, Times Literary Supp., 30 May 1980 • Considering how hard a man works to get himself into the White House, it's funny that once he gets there he can't wait to leave —And More by Andy Rooney, 1982 Unless your prose is of a truly elevated sort, there seems to be no real reason to avoid this use of funny. |
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