| 词组 | alright, all right |
| 释义 | alright, all right Is alright all right? The answer is a qualified yes, with these cautions. First, all right is much more common in print than alright. Second, many people, including the authors of just about every writer's handbook, think alright is all wrong. Third, alright is more likely to be found in print in comic strips (like "Doonesbury"), trade journals, and newspapers and magazines (Rolling Stone, Cosmopolitan, Punch, or The American Rifleman, for instance) than in more literary sources, although it does appear from time to time in literature as well. How did alright come to be in this situation? It has a complex and somewhat mysterious history. It seems to have been formed in Old English as ealriht, but was used in senses that are now obsolete. In those days before printing, the spelling and compounding of a word depended entirely on scribal practice, which varied considerably. Early citations for the word in the OED and Middle English Dictionary show such variant forms as eall right, alrihtes, al riht, alriht, all rihht, al rizt, and al right. It is not until Chaucer's "Criseyde was this lady name, al right" (ca. 1385) that we find an early citation for what sounds like a modern use. After Chaucer, however, there is a long gap in the record, and we have no examples of all right until the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, where it appears as part of a longer phrase, all right as my leg, in which all is a pronoun. •STAND. Five guineas. [Gives her money.] • PAR. Are they right? [Examines them.] No Gray's-Inn pieces amongst 'em. All right as my leg.—George Farquhar, Sir Harry Wildair, 1701 (quoted from S.P.E. Tract 18, 1924) In Robinson Crusoe (1719) we find "desir'd him to ... keep all right in the Ship" (OED), with all still a pronoun. Uses of the two words as a fixed phrase begin to turn up only in the first half of the nineteenth century. • That was all right, my friend. —Percy Bysshe Shelley, Scenes from Goethe's Faust, 1822 (OED) • 'Stand firm, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick, looking down. 'All right, sir,' replied Mr. Weiler. —Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers, 1S31 (S.P.E. Tract 18) • I got your letter all right. —Edward Fitzgerald, letter, 1844 (S.P.E. Tract 18) What happened to the phrase between Chaucer and Shelley we simply don't know. It may have continued in oral use all along but have been seldom used in works that have survived. Or it may have been re-formed in modern English. At any rate, before the nineteenth century ended, alright had appeared in print. • I think I shall pass alright —Durham University Jour., November 1893 (OED Supplement) Alright did not appear in a Merriam-Webster dictionary until 1934, but several dictionary users had spotted its omission earlier and had written to us to urge its inclusion. The earliest of these was a New York businessman named William E. Scott: • I wish you would submit to your experts the feasibility of putting the word alright into use. As a matter of fact it is used quite extensively without the authority of dictionaries because it is the quick common-sense way of doing. The cable and telegraph companies are the ones who profit by the lack of an authoritative ruling that alright is synonymous with all right—25 Sept. 1913 Scott's letter suggests some of the influences that kept alright in use. A still stronger force is that of analogy: words like altogether, already, and although were similarly formed in Old or Middle English, and had come into modern English as solid words. When alright came to be a matter of dispute, many commentators recognized the force of analogy and then had to devise reasons to deny its applicability. The controversy over the appropriateness of alright seems to have begun in the early 20th century. In August 1909, this answer to a letter from a reader appeared in the Literary Digest. It was probably written by Frank Vizetelly; his A Desk Book of Errors in English ( 1906) carries the same message. The correct form is "all right"; this is the commonly accepted form to-day. Formerly "alright" had some vogue and like "already" was formed of two words, but altho "all ready" was displaced early in our literature (1380) by "already" "all right" did not meet with the same fate. There was reaction against alright in Great Britain too. In 1924 the Society for Pure English published a symposium on alright (Tract 18), and here H. W. Fowler took up the cudgels against it. He appears to have been irritated by alright primarily because he considered it bad spelling. His Modern English Usage of 1926 condensed his 1924 denunciation; from that point on nearly all usage commentators fall into line. We have recorded thirty-five to forty commentators, both British and American, expressing disapproval; only one or two dissent. It should be noted, however, that the usual way of disapproving alright is to append a pejorative label (as illiterate or colloquial) to it or to deny it exists; no very cogent reasons are presented for its being considered wrong. Even the critics of alright admit it is found more often in manuscript than in print; undoubtedly it would be even more frequent in print than it is if copy editors were less hostile. (Theodore Dreiser used it repeatedly in the manuscript of The 'Genius' in 1914; H. L. Mencken had him change it to all right.) Our evidence shows that it is used in letters, real and fictional: • I hope that this procedure is alright with you —editor, N.Y. publishing house, letter received at Mer-riam-Webster, 1964 • I had intended to ask you to give a lecture much like you have in the past. I hope that is alright with you —director, technical writing institute, letter received at Merriam-Webster, 1984 • Yes, I did get your letter alright —Margaret Kennedy, The Feast, 1950 • He told Regina that he had told me and she said that was alright —Flannery O'Connor, letter, July 1952 Miss O'Connor used both spellings: • ... but if so I can do without it all right —letter, 1 Jan. 1956 One of the points involved in the discussion of the propriety of alright hinges on the assertion that all right represents one stress pattern in speech, and alright another. Evans 1962 alludes to this point when he says, "My own—dissenting—opinion is that most people who write alright instead of all right (when they mean "alright" and not "all right") are not slovenly. They are simply asking for the privilege of making a distinction in writing which is accepted in speech." This argument is difficult to evaluate because stress patterns are observable only in speech, whereas alright is purely a spelling variant. But it is a fact of some relevance, perhaps, that when alright is used in fiction, it is very often used in representing the speech of the characters: • "My briefing alright, First Sergeant?" —Josiah Bunting, The Lionheads, 1972 • 'Alright. O.K. I'll write him a cheque right now.' — Mordecai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, 1959 • "... It's goin' to be alright...." —Waldo Frank, Not Heaven, 1953 • "Alright, wait a minute," —Langston Hughes, Laughing to Keep from Crying, 1952 • "Well, alright, but you're going to miss your golf...." —Pat Frank, Hold Back the Night, 1952 • Alright, already! I'll turn on the grill! —Gary B. Trudeau, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, 1973 It appears in Molly Bloom's soliloquy: • ... however alright well seen then let him go to her —James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922 It is also used in other transcribed speech. • "Alright, darling. I was wrong. I apologise." — Eamonn Andrews, Punch, 1 May 1974 • Mom said, "Yes, it's lonely here alright. It's lonely." —John Allan May, Christian Science Monitor, 1 Aug. 1953 • ... so let's look at Bittman. Bittman says he is trying to blackmail the White House. Alright you called Bittman —Richard M. Nixon, in The White House Transcripts, 1974 • "Okay honey, I've ironed your blue ensemble if that's alright...." —Jim Guzzo, Springfield (Mass.) Republican, 30 Dec. 1984 From the beginning alright seems to have reached print primarily in journalistic and business publications. We have plenty of evidence that it continues to appear in these publications: • There's plenty of luxury here alright —Variety, 28 Jan. 1942 • The first batch of aquatic ovines will get by alright —T. J. McManus, Tasmanian Jour, of Agriculture, May 1962 • War is there alright —Richard Gilman, New Republic, 25 Nov. 1967 • ... came out alright in the end —National Jeweler, January 1942 • Berkeley is a weird city, alright —Ralph J. Gleason, Rolling Stone, 13 May 1971 • Alright, alright—I know, it was all the fault of those confounded British colonialists! —Brian Walker, Bicycling!, January 1971 • We got through it alright —Avery Corman, Cosmopolitan, October 1974 • ... the movie tells us it's alright for him to cheat his customers —David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor, 11 Sept. 1980 • Gutenberg's movable type was alright for the middle ages —British Printer, February 1976 • They will see him alright for food and female company —Jonathan Sale, Punch, 1 Oct. 1975 Finally, we have a little evidence from books where speech is not being re-created. • Men don't want a woman to wilt on them. That was alright in Mother's time —Vivian Ellis, Faint Harmony, 1934 • The first two years of the medical school were alright —Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 1933 • Trying to decide if it is alright to say anxious when you mean eager —Quinn 1980 Summary: in its modern use alright has reached print primarily through journalistic and business publication and is still to be found in those sources. It has appeared now and again in literature, at least from the mid-twenties, though mostly in fictional dialogue. Its critics acknowledge that it is more often to be found in manuscript than in print; it would likely be much more nearly as frequent as all right if it were not so regularly suppressed by copy editors. It seems to have some acceptance in British English—in spite of disapproval in British handbooks: it is the standard spelling in Punch and the King's Printer at Ottawa officially sanctioned its use as far back as 1928. The OED Supplement calls it simply "a frequent spelling of all right." It remains a commonly written but less often printed variant of all right. It is clearly standard in general prose, but is widely condemned nonetheless by writers on usage. |
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