| 词组 | absolutely |
| 释义 | absolutely Usage commentators have taken up a couple of points about absolutely. 1. Howard 1978 notes the emergence of absolutely in England as a vogue word for yes; he thinks it fairly recent. The usage appears, from dictionary evidence, to have been originally American: the earliest citation in the OED Supplement is from Mark Twain's The American Claimant, 1892. It appeared in British English somewhat earlier than Howard thinks; the OED Supplement lists it from Alec Waugh in 1917 and James Joyce's Ulysses, 1922. Harper 1985 labels it entirely acceptable in both speech and writing. It appears to be more common in speech. 2. At least since the 1920s commentators have been disparaging the intensive use of absolutely. Thus Ball 1923: Absolutely is a favorite word nowadays; like positively, quite, literally, and some other words, it is much used, but seldom needed. I. A. Richards, in Basic English and Its Uses, 1943, says In all but a few contexts absolutely is an absolutely (completely) meaningless intensifier There are two separate uses here. The first is use as what Quirk et al. 1985 terms a "maximizer"—it indicates the greatest degree of something. Here are a few typical instances: • Unwilling to make myself disagreeable ... , I absolutely refused —Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1788 • She was no longer absolutely bent on winning him —George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 1859 • Constance was absolutely in the wrong —Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale, 1908 • And where else but in England can one find three expensive but flourishing weeklies devoted to absolutely nothing but the life of the rich and the titled? —Aldous Huxley, The Olive Tree, 1937 • ... its legitimacy, if not absolutely assured, is certainly strengthened —Thurgood Marshall, Center Mag., September 1969 • ... while Ralph Fox avoided doctrinal cant absolutely —Times Literary Supp., 19 Feb. 1971 • ... neither disavowal nor avowal seemed absolutely essential —John Kenneth Galbraith, Harper's, February 1971 • ... these letters should be rewritten until they are absolutely perfect —Amy Vanderbilt, Ladies' Home Jour., September 1971 Although it can be argued that the adverb might have been omitted in some of these instances without great loss, its intensifying or maximizing purpose is clear. We have another set of instances, however, in which the intensity of the adverb is much diminished. Such use is not especially modern: • She grew absolutely ashamed of herself —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813 • ... so absolutely flooded by the Hawkesbury and its tributaries, that the farmers are forced to fly for their lives —Anthony Trollope, from Australia and New Zealand, 1873, in Wanderers in Australia, ed. Colin Roderick, 1949 • John McClain of the New York Journal-American (March 19, 1965) described the sets as "absolutely magnificent beige and pastel etchings" —Current Biography, December 1967 • Markel had been absolutely shattered when he had not been invited —Gay Talese, Harper's, February 1969 • ... my piano playing was absolutely terrible —Rosemary Brown, Ladies' Home Jour., September 1971 • I washed my hair and it was absolutely glorious — Abby Darer, in Ladies' Home Jour., January 1971 This second use, as you can see, is more open to criticism as unnecessary or meaningless than the first; there is a considerable difference between the use of absolutely in "no drug can be proved absolutely harmless" and that in "he was absolutely shattered when he was not invited." The weakened use, however, does have literary authority. If it is a fault, it is, to paraphrase the 18th-century grammarian Joseph Priestley, but a venial fault. |
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