| 词组 | albeit |
| 释义 | albeit Copperud 1970, 1980 observes that "a generation ago" albeit was considered archaic but is "now being revived." The source of the notice of revival is Gowers (in Fowler 1965). This is a most curious business, since albeit seems never to have gone out of use, though it may have faded somewhat in the later 19th century. If it did, the revival began decades before the commentators noticed. Johnson's Dictionary of 1755 had the word with three illustrations, one from Shakespeare's Othello (1605): • Of one, whose ... eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears, as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum. The OED quotes from 18th- and 19th-century sources including Southey, Thackeray, and the Irish novelist Charles Lever. Poutsma 1904-26 quotes from Kipling, and we have found albeit in the verse of the elder Holmes and of Yeats. Nonetheless, the brothers Fowler 1907 found it to be an archaism, citing two contemporary sources for censure. The opinion of 1907 was carried over to Fowler 1926, from whence it came to Krapp 1927. It does not seem to have been called archaic by any other commentators, although a Dictionary of Unusual Words published in 1948 included it with the Othello quotation above, and Janis 1984, who may have looked only into Fowler, thinks that it is "considered archaic by many." Since the word seems to have continued in use all along, Gowers's comment that it had been "picked up and dusted" is not especially apt; it has, however, considerably increased in use since the 1930s, to judge by evidence in the Merriam-Webster files. A selection of examples: • We have lived and we have learned, albeit the lesson was a costly one —Vanity Fair, January 1920 • ... through a hundred channels where waters flowed with steady force, albeit under a glassy surface —Sir Winston Churchill, Great Contemporaries, 1937 • It took that pause to make him realize The mountain he was climbing had the slant As of a book held up before his eyes (And was a text albeit done in plant)—Robert Frost, A Witness Tree, 1942 • The wind was new albeit it was the same that had blown before the time of man came to the hillside — Elizabeth Madox Roberts, The Time of Man, 1926 • That these ties, albeit the deepest, should have left me so remarkably free was a happy circumstance for my philosophy —George Santayana, Persons and Places, 1944 • ... the glamorous, albeit fast, colors of modern journalism —Vladimir Nabokov, New Republic, 13 Jan. 1941 • ... betraying clearly what the relationship between them was, albeit a fleeting one —Vita SackvilleWest, The Easter Party, 1953 • ... I watched the trees and the rain with increasing interest albeit with no radio support —E. B. White, New Yorker, 25 Sept. 1954 • ... conversation might have found its natural level, albeit low —Mary McCarthy, Atlantic, August 1970 • ... I should doubt very much that a literary manner of this sort was a matter of instinct. It is purely pre-conscious, and learned, albeit imperfectly —Donald Hall, Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird, 1978 • ... they had treated me as a pal, albeit a junior one —Anthony Bailey, New Yorker, 29 July 1985 |
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