| 词组 | adumbrate |
| 释义 | adumbrate Adumbrate is a hard word, a learned word, frequently found in works of literary and art criticism. Around the time of World War II it came in for some disparagement by the British commentators Sir Ernest Gowers and Eric Partridge (Gowers 1948, Partridge 1942) when it began to surface in British government writing. Copperud 1970 finds in addition a couple of American commentators who discourage its use; the consensus, says Copperud, is that adumbrate is "formal, literary, and unsuitable for ordinary contexts." The problem, of course, is knowing just what contexts are ordinary. To be sure, the word is not found in children's stories or on the sports pages. It is, however, occasionally found in political writing—mostly British: • ... if the policy of milk direction adumbrated by the Ministry is not balanced with reason —The Economist, 20 Dec. 1947 • Such attitudes are only faintly adumbrated in the Conservative manifesto —Henry Fairlie, Observer Rev., 20 Mar. 1966 • ... the famous "Mr. X" article that adumbrated the Cold War policy of "firm containment " — Patrick J. Buchanan, TV Guide, 19 Apr. 1980 But mostly it is a word found in criticism and in other writings of learned people: • ... he was much better at adumbrating his doctrine through rhetorical devices —William Empson, Sewanee Rev., Spring 1948 • ... to overcome student self-protectiveness is a terribly ambitious enterprise, which can only be adumbrated even in the best institutions —David Ries-man, American Scholar, Summer 1969 • ... ideas first adumbrated in the work of these and other modern masters —Hilton Kramer, TV. Y. Times Mag., 4 Nov. 1979 |
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