| 词组 | after |
| 释义 | after 1. In Irish dialect after is used in a construction to be after doing something about whose meaning there seems to have been some confusion. P. W. Joyce in English As We Speak It in Ireland (1910) explains it as an idiom by which the Irish get round the perfect tense—instead of "I have finished my work" they use "I am after finishing my work." Some older American dictionaries seem to have thought it to mean "to be about to" rather than "to have just done"; Gowers (in Fowler 1965) notes that some English novelists have made the same mistake. Here are a few genuine Irish examples: • 'Listen to me,' says I, 'do you think I did this on purpose? I'm after having two punctures...." —Rex MacGall, Irish Digest, November 1955 • Cracked Mary it is, that is after coming back this day from the asylum —Lady Gregory, The Full Moon, 1910 • I'm after thinking of something good, something very good unless I'm very much mistaken, said Fur-riskey —Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds, 1939 2. Longman 1984 thinks after meaning "afterwards" is not suitable for formal writing unless accompanied by an adverb like soon or shortly. The OED shows this construction used by Shakespeare, Thomas Fuller, Edmund Burke, and Horace Walpole, among others. Modern examples are standard but not of the highest formality: • ... during your trip through Britain (and ... across the Channel if you're touring the Continent after) — Richard Joseph, Your Trip to Britain, 1954 • ... walking to church with them on a Sunday, and going home after to a roast —Mary Deasy, The Hour of Spring, 1948 • During those periods when Thomas, and after, Butler, were occupied elsewhere —Current Biography 1947 It quite commonly goes with expressions of time: • ... Latin was the language of international scholarship in his day, as for centuries before and after — W. F. Bolton, A Short History of Literary English, 1967 • For years after, when Sal lie and I went to the National Arts Club, Mary Austin was there —The Autobiography of William Allen White, 1946 • He kept telling me for a week after, that those dancing girls wore ... the prettiest dresses —Eudora Welty, The Ponder Heart, 1954 And, of course, it is used with adverbs: • Not long after, a trio of friends... came in to see her —Robert M. Coates, New Yorker, 25 May 1963 • ... some of them not long after converted to fascism —Times Literary Supp., 5 June 1969 • ... the name "Georgy," having once been mispronounced "Doody" in childhood, may take on the latter form forever after —Selected Writings of Edward Sapir, ed. David G. Mandelbaum, 1949 • Soon after, in November 1947 —Current Biography, June 1965 • ... lightning again ripped the world apart and the thunder came tumbling right after —Rita Madocs, Ladies' Home Jour., September 1971 • ... and disappeared shortly after —Dictionary of American Biography, 1928 3. Jensen 1935 considered after redundant with a perfect participial phrase. Jensen seems to have stood alone. The use is entirely standard in biographical writing, where the order of events is emphasized, and is found in many other sources using standard English. A few samples: • Returning to Liverpool after having attained some popularity in Hamburg, they were booked for several months in the Cavern —Current Biography, December 1965 • My impression, after having excavated in several of the sites —Edward P. Lanning, Peru Before the Incas, 1967 • The first of these is more than a little suspect and I give it here (after having seen only the six copies recorded in this country) simply as an illustration — Fredson Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description, 1949 • She died in 1947 after having launched some hundreds of boys on their course in life —Times Literary Supp., 17 Feb. 1950 |
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