| 词组 | alibi |
| 释义 | alibi The extended sense of alibi meaning any excuse is an Americanism; although it was overlooked by the Dictionary of American English, the Dictionary of Americanisms recorded the noun, citing a 1912 story in Collier's. "The rot started in the United States," says Howard 1980. He cites Big Bill Tilden (as does OED Supplement): • Don't offer alibis for losing —Lawn Tennis, 1922 This sense was apparently popular in spoken American English from around the time just before World War I. That it already had a good foothold is attested by Ring Lardner's use of the word in the title of one of his bestknown stories, "Alibi Ike" (first published in 1915). The story begins: • His right name was Frank X. Farrell, and I guess the X stood for "Excuse me." Because he never pulled a play, good or bad, on or off the field, without apol-ogizin' for it. • "Alibi Ike" was the name Carey wished on him the first day he reported down South. A bit further on Lardner writes: • "He's got the world beat," says Carey to Jack and I. "I've knew lots o' guys that had an alibi for every mistake they made.... But this baby can't even go to bed without apologizin'...." —Ring Lardner, "Alibi Ike," in How to Write Short Stories, 1924 Lardner's association of alibi with baseball is appropriate; sports contexts are among the earliest for the word in this sense. Besides Big Bill Tilden, we have these examples: • Among the countless alibis that go hand in hand with bad golf — Vanity Fair, December 1919 • ... "I dropped it because the sun was in my eyes." Sport's oldest alibi —N.Y. Times, 16 May 1928 • No room is left for alibis in the pre-battle statements of Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey, and their two managers —Emporia (Kans.) Gazette, 22 Sept. 1927 But writers for American newspapers and magazines used it in other contexts, too—especially politics. • After putting through his program, the governor must face the people at the polls without alibis — Emporia (Kans.) Gazette, 3 Feb. 1927 • Leaders of the Labor Party are quite willing to allow the Liberals to hold a check rein over them if they can only obtain office. It would give them a perfect alibi —N.Y. Times, 21 Oct. 1928 • They want an alibi to gouge the public —Time, 18 Jan. 1926 It even began to crop up in the fiction of others than Ring Lardner: • And the meaning Aline had to jump at, knowing nothing, get instinctively or not at all. Esther would be one to leave herself always a clear alibi —Sherwood Anderson, Dark Laughter, 1925 As soon as any new expression becomes widespread and popular enough, it will draw critical attention. The extended sense of alibi had only to wait until 1925 for disapproval: John A. Powell in How to Write Business Letters (1925) said it should not be used, and M. V. P. Yeaman in American Speech, November 1925, noticed it unfavorably—his examples are from conversation. In Australia, The Bulletin (New South Wales) for 14 Apr. 1927 answered a letter from a lawyer complaining about the new alibi: The Yanks have corrupted it to signify any sort of defence, explanation or excuse. Thus a man arriving with a black eye offers his "alibi" that he got it chopping wood. It may be only vernacular American as yet, but it has got into the newspapers and fiction, and hence is probably beyond eradication. Krapp 1927 also notes the new sense "In careless colloquial speech," and Weseen 1928 calls it a misuse. Fowler 1926 seems not to have noticed it, so the earliest British disapproval we have found is in Partridge 1942. Subsequent British commentators followed Partridge— a complaining letter to the Picture Post in 1949, an editorial in the Manchester Guardian in 1950, Lord Cones-ford in the Saturday Evening Post in 1957. Gowers in Fowler 1965 gives it a fairly long disapproval, quoting two unnamed English politicians. Others sustain the tradition: Sellers 1975, Phythian 1979, Bryson 1980, Longman 1984, and Chambers 1985 record widespread disapproval. Howard 1980 doesn't like it either but considers it established. There is a bit of a British-American split here. While some American handbooks and commentators follow the early condemnation (for instance Shaw 1962, Bell & Cohn 1980, Oxford American Dictionary 1980), more are neutral (for instance Nickles 1974, Reader's Digest 1983, Janis 1984, Bremner 1980, Kilpatrick 1984), and both Bernstein 1971 and William Safire (New York Magazine, 24 July 1983) defend it; in Bernstein's words: The hand-wringers suppose that it is merely a synonym for excuse, but it is more than that. It carries a connotation of slight or outright dishonesty and it represents a plea to get out from under. Even the usage panels of Heritage 1969, 1982 and Harper 1975, 1985 split nearly evenly on it. The use, therefore, seems to be regarded with considerably less disfavor in the U.S. than in the U.K. The sense itself, however, to judge from the examples in the British handbooks, is now established on both sides of the Atlantic. Here are a few examples more recent than the ones given above: • ... we lie to ourselves, in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension —Aldous Huxley, The Olive Tree, 1937 • Partly, they are the new alibi of great wealth —Harold J. Laski, New Republic, 5 Aug. 1946 • Direct treachery by friends in publishing a private manuscript was one alibi a poet could plead —J. W. Saunders, Essays in Criticism, April 1951 • ... I intend to let everyone know about them, even if I am depriving reluctant hosts of an excellent alibi —New Yorker, 20 Mar. 1954 • ... given the noise of a helicopter ride there may have been some misunderstanding. But I do not use this as an alibi —Henry J. Kissinger, quoted in N. Y. Times, 12 June 1974 • It is, on the other hand, a wonderful alibi for refusing to attempt anything less —Hilton Kramer, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 19 Feb. 1984 The American Heritage usage panel, almost half of which accepted the extended sense of alibi as a noun, rejected intransitive use of the verb in writing by a wide margin. The OED Supplement shows that the verb has been in use since 1909. It too was establishing itself by the 1920s and is now fully established, in general prose, in both transitive and intransitive uses: • He let the men alibi away to their heart's content — Printer's Ink, 23 Aug. 1923 • ... haughtily refuse to alibi themselves when suspected —Emporia (Kans.) Gazette, 25 Oct. 1926 • ... a belief that is very much in the service of moral alibi-ing —Weston La Barre, The Human Animal, 1954 • ... wherein he endeavors to alibi reversal, surprise, and defeat —S. L. A. Marshall, Saturday Rev., 9 Oct. 1954 • They cannot point to the basest elements of their public and say, "They wanted chaff and slops," and thus alibi their failures —Frank Luther Mott, The News in America, 1952 • ... this secretary asked if she mightn't take the message, and alibied. "You see, the delegates are all in the meeting now," she said —New Yorker, 23 Sept. 1950 • They might enter with a rather rough admonition of, "What do youse guys think you're up to anyhow?" This, however, was merely to alibi the fact that they were crashing —Anita Loos, Gourmet, January 1970 • ... he didn't alibi. He took the blame for his four interceptions —Dave Anderson, N. Y. Times, 8 Sept. 1980 The extended senses of alibi have been around for about three quarters of a century, and they have been upwardly mobile in status—the noun perhaps more than the verb. The usage is more controversial in British English than American English but is established in both. |
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