| 词组 | self-deprecating, self-deprecatory |
| 释义 | self-deprecating, self-deprecatory These adjectives are apparently of quite recent formation. They are occasionally dragged into the dispute about deprecate and depreciate, to the obfuscation of that issue. The earliest citation we know of for self-deprecatory is included—without a date—in Fowler 1907, in which it is treated as a misuse of deprecate: • In the present self-deprecatory mood in which the English people find themselves —Spectator The Fowlers prescribed self-depreciatory, but self-depreciatory is a word that no one seems ever to have actually used. About the time that self-deprecatory was first recorded, deprecate was beginning to be used in a new way (our earliest example is from 1898). This was a sense reflecting personal modesty: "to play down, undervalue, or discount one's own accomplishments." Since this use of the verb was always directed at the subject, the appropriate adjective related to it would be self-deprecatory. Despite the Fowlers' disapproval, self-deprecatory has continued in reputable use, and it has recently been joined by the synonymous self-deprecating, which we first recorded in 1952. Here is an example or two of each: • Some kind of embarrassment about her own intentions, though, has made her trim her novel with that self-deprecating humour lady columnists in Sunday newspapers use to protect themselves —Times Literary Supp., 2 Oct. 1969 • ... a short, unpretentious and self-deprecating account of the work he did —Doris Grumbach, TV. Y. Times Book Rev., 3 Feb. 1980 • ... cultivate a flat, unrhetorical style to convey a self-deprecatory impression —Times Literary Supp., 14 Nov. 1968 • ... the indirect demonstration (under a veil of self-deprecatory remarks) of how right he was and how misguided were most others —Walter Mills, Center Mag., March 1968 Of the two, self-deprecating appears to be the more frequently used. See also deprecate, depreciate; deprecating, deprecatory, depreciatory; self-depreciation, self-deprecation. |
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