| 词组 | scenario |
| 释义 | scenario Scenario first attracted attention as a vogue word in the late 1960s, not long after it had crept out of theater and visual arts parlance into use by politicians and government officials and by the journalists who report what politicians and governmental officials say and do. We first encountered it in 1967: • His scenario for a settlement envisages the eventual reunification of Vietnam —Selig S. Harrison, New Republic, 25 Nov. 1967 • The oil industry, then, acts according to the classic Leninist scenario —Michael Harrington, American Power in the Twentieth Century, 1967 In these, the scenario is a sequence of events imagined, postulated, or projected. This is the primary new use of the word, and it is flourishing to the extent that Reader's Digest 1983 terms it "one of the unmistakable signature words of our period." The early critics of scenario were journalists, but in due time the writers of usage books joined their ranks: Newman 1974, Howard 1977, Ebbitt & Ebbitt 1982, and Janis 1984 all comment unfavorably. Reader's Digest 1983 and Harper 1975, 1985 explain rather than condemn. Both of them notice a use that cropped up in the Watergate hearings, in which real people had to follow a sort of scripted sequence of events, like the actors in a movie. This use seems to be fairly uncommon, but it apparently had occurred before Watergate: • The whole scenario is a recurrence of the one played out in 1960 when McNamara had to behave as if there were a "missile gap" to justify the campaign myth —Arthur Blaustein, Harper's, March 1969 If the verb play out is a clue to this use, we may also have it in the following example, although the context is not very clear: • Ollie North put him in touch with us. He has 3 or 4 scenarios he would like to play out —William J. Casey, in The Tower Commission Report, 1987 The popularity of scenario has brought about a further spread (some might call it metastasis) of meaning. In these two examples from British and Australian English, it is close in meaning to setting: • Nevertheless, Oxford is not an obvious scenario for dramatic confrontation —Isis, 19 Oct. 1974 • Stylish architect-designed concrete buildings dot the outback scenario —Gerald Frape, Nation Rev. (Melbourne), 17 Apr. 1975 In the next two examples, its meaning tends toward scene: • When leadoff hitter Steve Sax singled in the first for Los Angeles, Carlton quickly picked him off, a scenario that would be repeated in the final game — Ron Fimrite, Sports Illustrated, 17 Oct. 1983 John McHale, president of the Montreal Expos, said cocaine was the reason his team did not win its division championship in 1982 • "I don't think there's any doubt in '82 that whole scenario cost us a chance to win," McHale said — Murray Chass, N.Y. Times, 20 Aug. 1985 The most vigorous figurative sense, however, continues to be the original one: • It is called Seven Tomorrows, and it offers seven possible scenarios for the 1980s and 1990s —James Atlas, Atlantic, October 1984 • Our whole budget plan, I told them, depended on the accuracy of "Rosy Scenario," the five-year economic forecast we had fashioned in February —David A. Stockman, Newsweek, 28 Apr. 1986 |
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