| 词组 | reliable |
| 释义 | reliable Lounsbury 1908 commented that the controversy over reliable was then a century or more old (he did not say who started it, unfortunately) and showed no signs of dying out. The issue was etymology: since reliable means "able to be relied on" rather than "able to rely," it was held to have been improperly formed. Its critics were many. Lounsbury cited the English essayist Thomas De Quincey. The OED says that Worcester's 1860 dictionary objected to the formation. Alford 1866 condemned the word. Richard Grant White 1870 devoted seven pages to its denunciation; in these he found grounds for dismissing (to his own satisfaction) the defense based on analogy with such similarly formed words as available, indispensable, laughable, and unaccountable. (The analogical words were mentioned in Webster 1864.) Reliable was placed on William Cullen Bryant's 1877 Index Expurgatorius. In Great Britain it was commonly condemned as an Americanism, although De Quincey thought that Coleridge had coined it. Neither guess was right; reliable had been in sporadic use since the 16th century, but in frequent popular use only since the middle of the 19th. Reliable looks like another example of a usage issue brought on by a sudden increase in use. In spite of Lounsbury's feeling that the issue would not die soon, it did. The last serious objector we have found is Bierce 1909. Reliable is mentioned in Utter 1916, but he only quotes the OED note and tells his readers they can use trustworthy as an alternative if they prefer. Hall 1917 gives an account of the controversy, but more recent references are hard to find. Why did a subject pursued with such vehemence for a century or so suddenly lose interest? Since its real cause was apparently the noticeable increase in use in the mid-19th century, it probably died because people simply got used to the word. In any case, there is no usage problem with reliable anymore. |
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