| 词组 | affect, effect |
| 释义 | affect, effect There are two verbs affect. The first means, among other things, "to make a show of liking; to put on a pretense of," and the second, "to produce an effect in or on, influence." Effect has been used for the second of these since at least 1494 and for the first since 1652. Clearly, we are talking about a long-term confusion here. It happens that effect is a verb, too, with a meaning roughly "to bring about." And, to complete the picture, both affect and effect are nouns. Even though effect is the only one in common use (affect is a technical term in psychology), affect is sometimes put in its place. All of this history of befuddlement has left us with a fat collection of warning notices. Nearly every handbook published in the 20th century—from Vizetelly 1906 to Chambers 1985—contains one. Does anybody pay attention? Our evidence suggests that nearly everyone who gets published does, although we have substantial evidence for mistaken usage too. Although the verb affect and the noun effect are a semantic pair—if you affect something, the result is an effect—and this fact alone is bound to create some uncertainty, confusion is probably not the whole problem. More likely it is often simply inattention to spelling. When, for instance, a professional basketball player named Darryl Dawkins commented upon some electrodes attached to his shoulder during a game for therapeutic purposes, and a wire service sent the comment out as "It effected my interplanetary funksmanship," it was not Dawkins who used the wrong verb but a careless professional journalist. Many other of our examples of the mistake probably attest to poor proofreading, or no proofreading; a few— such as dictionary manuscript errors and mistakes in business letters—suggest ordinary inattention in writing. Here are a handful of correct usages of the several verbs: • ... the luxury of contemporary London, which he affected to find nauseating —Paul Fussell, Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, 1971 • That is all I have, I said, affecting a pathos in my voice —Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds, 1939 • This was the last age in which writers were seriously affected by the doctrines associated with the traditional literary 'kinds' —John Butt, English Literature in the Mid-Eighteenth Century, edited & completed by Geoffrey Carnall, 1979 • No one at AAI measured how day care affects the company —Andrea Fooner, Inc. Mag., 5 May 1981 • ... drop them a card and tell them your release has been effected —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 19 Apr. 1963 • ... this President has a mandate to effect some serious changes —Andrew Hacker, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 24 Oct. 1982 And of effect, noun (we will omit affect, noun): • ... prose which essays effects beyond the mere conveying of basic information —Anthony Burgess, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 5 Feb. 1984 • An unimaginative crescendo of stage effects —Jon Pareles, N. Y. Times, 16 Jan. 1984 The verbs affect and effect and the nouns affect and effect are clearly enough differentiated in meaning that it is unlikely that you will go wrong if you pay attention to your intended meaning. If you entertain any nagging doubts, a dictionary will settle them. |
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