| 词组 | balmy, barmy |
| 释义 | balmy, barmy Balmy is an old word, going back to the 15th century. It was used in contexts like these: • ... sallied forth to enjoy the balmy breeze of morning —Thomas Love Peacock, Headlong Hall, 1816 • The balmy summer air, the restful quiet —Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, 1876 Around the middle of the 19th century it developed a new sense suggesting weakness or unbalance of mind. This sense is used in contexts like these: • "... I think I'd have gone balmy if it weren't for • Walt Whitman —Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop, 1919 • "Two breakfasts? Wanting to let the child bathe? The man's balmy." —Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust, 1934 Gowers in Fowler 1965 considers this later sense of balmy a misspelling of barmy, which has the same meaning: • ... He knew He had to get out of it or go barmy — Richard Llewellyn, None But the Lonely Heart, 1943 Gower's objection to balmy was raised earlier by someone writing in the Westminster Gazette of 30 May 1896, as a citation in the OED Supplement shows. The Supplement editors stand firmly against both Gowers and Gazette: barmy in this sense is an alteration of the earlier—by some forty years—balmy. You need not worry about using the spelling balmy. Both barmy and balmy are originally British. Our files show balmy to be more common in American English than barmy. |
| 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。