| 词组 | afraid |
| 释义 | afraid 1. Chambers 1985 and Evans 1957 discuss the constructions afraid is found in. It is derived from a past participle in Middle English and is used now as a predicate adjective, not as an attributive adjective. Afraid can be followed by a clause: • Afraid that any precipitous action on his part might well cost him his position —NEA Jour., January 1965 • He seemed afraid, if he were kind, he might be ridiculed —Edwin A. Peeples, Saturday Evening Post, 25 Dec. 1954 It can be followed by an infinitive: • ... ready to say bluntly what every one else is afraid to say —T. S. Eliot, "Charles Whibley," in Selected Essays, 1932 • ... is not afraid to go out and ask a playwright or a director just what he thinks he's doing —Richard Schickel, Harper's, November 1970 The usual preposition after afraid is of, which can be followed by a noun or a gerund: • We have been much too much afraid of the Russians —Edmund Wilson, A Piece of My Mind, 1956 • "... She told me she was afraid of him. He had threatened to kill her." —Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest, 1929 • "... were you so afraid of a man like Keegan, you wouldn't step forward ... ?" —Anthony Trollope, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, 1847 • Some of us are afraid of dying —Thomas Pynchon, V., 1963 • But I am now as much afraid of drinking as of bathing —Tobias Smollett, Humphry Clinker, 1771 Afraid is also followed by for; in this construction the object is not the source of the threat but rather what is threatened: • ... clerks, who had come early because they were afraid for their jobs —Wirt Williams, The Enemy, 1951 • The men aren't afraid for their jobs, either, because unemployment is negligible —John Fischer, Harper's, January 1969 • ... once or twice she is in real physical danger and genuinely afraid for herself — Times Literary Supp., February 1969 2. Bierce 1909 directs us flatly, "Do not say T am afraid it will rain.' Say, I fear that it will rain." End of direction. Vizetelly 1920 cannot find any reason for this proscription; Utter 1916 opines that the objection seems to be based on the theory that an adjective cannot take a dependent clause. Utter says that this "construction has long been good English," even though the censorious condemn it as colloquial. Among the censorious must be listed Krapp 1927, who calls it colloquial. The element of fear in Bierce's example is not strong, a fact that makes his revision seem less than sensible. In Utter's (I'm afraid I can't go) and Krapp's (I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the next train) examples, it is even weaker. This aspect of the expression is picked on by our next two commentators, Bremner 1980 and Freeman 1983. Here is what Bremner says: • Try to avoid afraid unless the context calls for fear, fright, terror, alarm. Don't use it casually, as in "I'm afraid not".... And Freeman: • The expression "She's afraid he's right" is an informal—and incorrect—way of saying "She fears that he's right." And "I'm afraid not" is folksy for "I think not." The use of afraid should be restricted to reflect a real cause for fear, fright, or alarm. As noted above, Utter mentions the long history of this construction. Shakespeare certainly used it: • I am afraid, sir, Do what you can, yours will not be entreated —The Taming of the Shrew, 1594 • I am afraid this great lubber, the world, will prove a cockney —Twelfth Night, 1602 • I am half afraid he will have need of washing —The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1601 And it has been used in impeccable literary sources ever since: • Disagreeable enough (as most necessities are) but, I am afraid, unavoidable —Thomas Gray, letter, 16 July 1740 (OED Supplement) • I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813 (OED Supplement) • ... though even that is more, I am afraid, than my powers are up to —Henry Adams, letter, 9 Feb. 1859 • But when I use it now, I am afraid, it will usually be a dignified way of circling round the more indefinable aspects of a novelist's skill —Bernard De Voto, The World of Fiction, 1950 • ... I am afraid that often in reading the Cantos I feel as if what is being said were not much better than nothing —F. R. Leavis, New Bearings in English Poetry, new ed., 1950 • I am afraid that it is a feeling that I share —William Styron, This Quiet Dust and Other Writings, 1982 The expression may at times suggest informality, but it is in no way incorrect. |
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