| 词组 | relevant |
| 释义 | relevant 1. No one questions the use of relevant when it is an attributive adjective or when as a predicate adjective it is followed by a to phrase, as in this example: • It's simply that they are not relevant to my experience —James Baldwin, quoted in N. Y. Times Book Rev., 27 May 1984 But sometime in the middle 1960s relevant, conspicuously used as a predicate adjective without a prepositional phrase, came to be rather a vogue word, especially among college students. What was happening was not so much the development of a new construction as the development of a new meaning much used in that construction. Here we have some examples: • I felt life was more relevant here; I figured the race struggle is treated more significantly here —Morris B. Abram, quoted in Current Biography, October 1965 • In academic circles these days it is the fashion to be relevant —Johns Hopkins Mag., December 1965 • Great books are universally relevant and always contemporary —Mortimer J. Adler, Playboy, January 1966 • They are demanding that colleges and universities be socially and morally relevant —Kenneth B. Clark, American Scholar, Winter 1966-1967 The relevance implicit in the adjective in these uses is political or (especially) social relevance. As the usage continued to be very common in the early 1970s, it began to attract some unfavorable attention and soon appeared for denigration in Strunk & White 1972, Harper 1975, and subsequent American handbooks. The usage has also crossed the Atlantic, and so has the criticism: Howard 1984 reports its being decried in the House of Lords. The new sense has also been used in the more usual constructions, but these uses have not drawn fire from the critics: • ... piously asserts the need for relevant social science on a giant scale —Irving Louis Horowitz & Lee Rainwater, Trans-Action, June 1967 • Education is supposed to be relevant to contemporary issues —Robert M. Hutchins, Center Mag., September 1968 • ... the importance of making the curriculum relevant to social issues —Philip G. Altbach, The Progressive, October 1969 Those who dislike the socially relevant relevant will be glad to know that its popular usage has dropped off considerably in recent years. It is, however, not defunct: • For all its scholarship, it is intensely relevant —H. Jack Geiger, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 9 Jan. 1983 2. A number of commentators warn against the meta-thesized pronunciation and spelling revelvant. It sometimes turns up in surprising places: • ... furnishes references where révélant to STC — Times Literary Supp., 15 Oct. 1964 See metathesis. |
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