| 词组 | gent |
| 释义 | gent This shortened form of gentleman was once vilified by the cultivated and would-be cultivated, but no one seems to care much about it any more. The OED notes that "Early in the [ 19th] century the word was colloquial and slightly jocular; about 1840 its use came to be regarded as a mark of low breeding." American commentators in particular seem to have regarded gent with loathing; for example, Ayres 1881 described it as "perhaps, the most offensive" of vulgarisms, and Emily Post 1927 dismissed it as "unspeakable." Many other late 19th- and early 20th-century critics, both American and British, took unfavorable notice of the word, but among current commentators its use has become a non-issue (the one exception is Gowers in Fowler 1965, who revises somewhat the comments made by Fowler 1926). Many dictionaries, on the other hand, continue to give this word a restrictive label, such as slang, informal, or colloquial. What our evidence indicates is that gent still turns up commonly in published writing, but the writers who use it, by and large, do not take it very seriously. It has something of a British quality to American ears, and much of our recent evidence for it is from British sources: • ... they struck poses, later to be copied by gents who invaded the bathroom —Philip Hope-Wallace, The Guardian, 14 Nov. 1973 • ... implicit separation of the gents from the chaps —William Feaver, The Listener, 18 July 1974 • ... a back view of a muscular gent on page ten — Marje Proops, Daily Mirror (London), 25 Feb. 1975 American writers use it in much the same ironic or mildly mocking way: • ... an antiquated ... gent who wouldn't stop yelling and pounding his cane —John Schulian, Inside Sports, 31 Aug. 1981 • ... his voice is majestically bland. (If he weren't such an impressive gent, he could be Salieri to Pavarotti's Mozart.) —Pauline Kael, New Yorker, 29 Oct. 1984 And it is also the word of choice when describing a dapper Englishman: • ... an English gent dropped in the other day and ordered twenty-eight shirts —John de St. Jorre, Town & Country, November 1982 • Until recently in London, you could tell a true city gent by his bowler and brolly —Leslie Maudel-Viney, N.Y. Times, 24 Aug. 1986 In addition, gent is sometimes used in place of gentleman when the longer word seems inappropriately formal: • That meant one 95-year-old gent took the lead. The poor fellow looked absolutely ancient —David R. Papke, Commonweal, 3 Oct. 1969 • He is a slender, soft-spoken gent with wide-spaced pale-blue eyes —Roger Angell, New Yorker, 12 Mar. 1984 |
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