| 词组 | adequate |
| 释义 | adequate Follett 1966 touches on most of the points about adequate that others (Copperud 1964, 1970, 1980, Evans 1957, Partridge 1942) comment upon. He deals with idiom, first noting that adequate is normally followed by to: • ... occasions when school textbooks are not adequate to the purpose —Albert H. Marckwardt, Linguistics and the Teaching of English, 1966 • ... his resources weren't adequate to the ambition —F. R. Leavis, Revaluation, 1947 • This supply of literature was long found adequate to the demand —T. B. Macaulay, The History of England, vol. I, 1849 • The materials at present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818 However, he does not note that it is also followed by for: • Biggest casting problem: an actress adequate for the double role —Time, 24 Apr. 1944 • But projective coordinates ... though perfectly adequate for all projective properties —Bertrand Russell, Foundations of Geometry, 1897 • And the nobility was not much more adequate for the role attributed to it by Montesquieu —Times Literary Supp., 21 Sept. 1951 Follett says that idiom requires the gerund rather than the infinitive after to: • ... mind ... is not always adequate to mastering the forms of rage, horror, and disgust —Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself, 1959 However, the construction with the infinitive is more common in actual use: • ... attain the perfect music of their style under the stress of a stimulus adequate to arouse it —Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923 • ... tolls and concession rentals... will be more than adequate to cover the principal and interest on all the bonds —Wall Street Jour., 5 Nov. 1954 • Psychological explanations alone are not adequate to understand today's student radicals —Kenneth Ken-niston, Change, November-December 1969 Follett does acknowledge use without any complement, and in the Merriam-Webster files, adequate appears most frequently without a complement: • A rat has to have a protected home and an adequate food supply —Victor Heiser, An American Doctor's Odyssey, 1936 • ... simple causes which did not seem to him adequate —Joseph Conrad, Chance, 1913 • ... could be relied on to be socially adequate, in spite of a dangerous distaste for fools —Rose Macaulay, Told by an Idiot, 1923 • It may be that there is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income —Edmund Wilson, Memoirs of Hecate County, 1946 Follett calls adequate enough "too familiar" and "nonsense" (Evans, Partridge, and Bremner 1980 also find it redundant), but our files have no examples of it. Along with adequate enough, Follett mentions more adequate, less adequate, insufficiently adequate with disapproval; he believes adequate "resistant to comparison." Oddly enough, adequate escaped Partridge's lengthy list of adjectives that he thought should not be compared. Like other adjectives usage commentators call "uncomparable" or "absolute," adequate is an adjective with which more patently means "more nearly": • If a more adequate return is to be achieved —Augustus C. Long et al., Annual Report, Texaco Inc., 1970 • ... would regret the lack of a more adequate formal education —Current Biography, September 1966 • The future of civilization depends on our having a more adequate supply of both —Robert M. Hutch-ins, Center Mag., September 1968 • The convention asked for a more adequate Indian policy —Ray Allen Billington, Westward Expansion, 1949 • ... continued to champion the poem as the most adequate expression of the complex ambiguity of experience —Current Biography, July 1964 • ... not only is he the most ignorant and provincial of all the Marxist critics ... but probably the least adequate Marxist —Stanley Edgar Hyman, Antioch Rev., Winter 1947-1948 The intensifier very is occasionally found: • ... some very adequate salaries are given to a few — American Guide Series: New Jersey, 1939 • ... a very adequate summary of it was made by T. E. Hulme in a lecture —Herbert Read, The Philosophy of Modern Art, 1952 Copperud and Follett both observe that adequate is used in a conventional way by reviewers to convey faint praise or faint derogation. The sense (OED Supplement dates it from 1900) is generally recorded in dictionaries. • ... not particularly inspired. An adequate performance —Henry Barnard Stafford, Saturday Rev., 30 Mar. 1940 • ... is at best adequate as the slight, brooding producer and moonstruck lover —Judith Crist, Saturday Rev., 11 Dec. 1976 The sense is not limited to use by reviewers: • "... After all, in any other walk in life it doesn't matter if you're not very good; you can get along quite comfortably if you're just adequate...." —W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919 |
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