| 词组 | rooftop |
| 释义 | rooftop Theodore Bernstein had a definite dislike for this word and recommended (in The Careful Writer, 1965, and elsewhere) that it always be replaced by either housetop or roof. No other commentator has expressed disapproval of it. It is not a new word (the OED has a citation for it from 1611), but it was an extremely rare one—at least in print—until about the middle of the 20th century, and it has only recently been entered in dictionaries. Its omission from dictionaries may have been what caused Bernstein to disapprove of it in the first place; however, it is now a common word, universally recognized as standard. Like housetop, it refers especially to the level surface of a flat roof: • ... loping over the rooftops to safety in a vacant lot —Charles Perry, Rolling Stone, 3 Aug. 1972 • ... nesting on the gravelly rooftops of shopping complexes —Elizabeth Cary Pierson, Blair & Ketchum's Country Jour., June 1980 Its most distinctive use is as an attributive adjective meaning "situated or taking place on a rooftop": • ... sitting two tables away in the rooftop nightclub —David Butwin, Saturday Rev., 13 Nov. 1971 • ... using a rooftop observatory to track the Apollo 13 spacecraft —Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr., New Yorker, 11 Nov. 1972 • ... were handsomely refurbished and a rooftop indoor pool added —Linda Gwinn, Town & Country, April 1980 Note that neither housetop nor roof can be idiomatically substituted for rooftop in these three passages. |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。