| 词组 | abject |
| 释义 | abject Nickles 1974 and Safire (N.Y. Times, 2 Sept. 1984) call the phrase abject poverty a cliché. Our evidence shows that abject is frequently used to modify poverty; in this use abject is not much more than an intensifier: • ... the Place Maubert, still at the end of the nineteenth century the area of the most abject poverty — Times Literary Supp., 14 Nov. 1968 Our earliest evidence for the phrase, however, does not refer to economic circumstances: • ... while they profess to build upon Naturalism an edifying and attractive philosophy of life, they disguise from themselves and others the bare and abject poverty of the scheme —W. R. Inge, The Church in the World, 1928 Nickles strikes further at abject by claiming it "tends to generate clichés in clusters, vitiating any noun it accompanies." This is a patent overstatement. Abject connotes two kinds of low degree: one of low circumstances—abasement—and one of servility or spineless-ness—debasement. It can be applied directly to persons: • Farmers who have to work 16 hours a day to pay rent and interest on mortgages in addition to buying necessities for their families are not free: they are abject slaves —George Bernard Shaw, New Republic, 22 Nov. 1954 • ... the time would come that no human being should be humiliated or be made abject —Katherine Anne Porter, The Never-Ending Wrong, 1977 • ... Bloom beholds himself, in a hideous vision, looking on at Blazes Boylan and Molly, an abject cuckold —Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle, 1931 • He was abject before Wolf Larsen and almost grovelled to Johansen —Jack London, The Sea-Wolf, 1904 • ... a sinner, and a repentant prostrate abject sinner —George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 1859 More often it is applied to the actions and conditions of such persons: • ... my critical intelligence sometimes shrivels to an abject nodding of the head —Lewis H. Lapham, Harper's, May 1971 • ... the aversion my person inspired even in its most abject and obsequious attitudes —Samuel Beckett, Evergreen, June 1967 • The possibility of humiliation ... touched a vein of abject cowardice in his composition —H. G. Wells, Joan and Peter, 1918 • Then, what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859 • ... when the least sickness attacked her, under the most abject depression and terror of death —W. M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, 1848 • The sensation of nameless terror and abject fear ... overmastered me completely —Rudyard Kipling, "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes," 1888 • ... having dictated to our enemies the terms of a most abject surrender —Archibald MacLeish, Saturday Rev., 9 Feb. 1946 • ... without fear, but with the most abject awe of the aristocracy —T. S. Eliot, "Philip Massinger," Selected Essays, 1932 • Conway survived and penned an abject apology to Washington —American Guide Series: Maryland, 1940 These examples are typical uses of abject. The most frequently modified nouns, after poverty, are fear, terror, surrender, and apology. It seems unlikely that any of the writers cited considered abject to have a vitiating effect. |
| 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。