| 词组 | senior citizen |
| 释义 | senior citizen The earliest evidence for senior citizen indicates that it originated as a politician's euphemism: • Mr. Downey had an inspiration to do something on behalf of what he calls, for campaign purposes, "our senior citizens" —Time, 24 Oct. 1938 (OED Supplement) We do not know the outcome of Mr. Downey's campaign, but we do know that senior citizen eventually gained an established place in the vocabulary of English. We have no further evidence of its use until 1954, but by 1960 it had become a common term, and it remains common today. Senior citizen has succeeded because people have felt a need for a term that refers to the elderly without any derogatory connotations. Those who dislike it, including many usage commentators, regard it as a well-meant but vapid euphemism at best. Like any euphemism that survives for many years, however, it has lost much of its euphemistic quality. Frequent and prolonged use has made senior citizen a familiar and unremarkable term for most people. It is especially common in the plural as a term for referring to elderly people in general or in a group: • ... started construction last month on its first public housing development for senior citizens —New Englander, April 1962 • ... annual convention of the National League of Senior Citizens —TV. Y. Times, 22 May 1962 • ... fulfilling the needs of many of our senior citizens by offering them a healthful, productive, and convivial life —Bill Davidson, Saturday Evening Post, 16 Jan. 1965 • ... running their own scheme to help senior citizens in their town —Christian Science Monitor, 22 Mar. 1965 • ... a group of senior citizens who had come ... for the morning show —New Yorker, 24 Dec. 1966 • ... about 25 percent of all the poverty is borne by our senior citizens —Leon H. Keyserling, New Republic, 18 Mar. 1967 • Ninety senior citizens from Kansas City, Mo., will arrive in Boise tonight —Idaho Daily Statesman, 6 Aug. 1968 Its use in the singular to describe an individual is less common, but not rare: • ... one more indignant senior citizen penning complaints about the universal decay of virtue —John Updike, TV. Y. Times Book Rev., 25 Nov. 1962 • ... maintains an active schedule as an insurance broker, unofficial historian and senior citizen —Stephen Dolley, Westways, September 1967 • ... Westmoreland, 70, a white-haired senior citizen —Linda Marx, People, 22 Oct. 1984 Critics who dislike senior citizen recommend that you use instead such words as old, aged, elderly, and retired to describe old, aged, elderly, and retired persons. Another possibility is the noun senior, used as a short form of senior citizen: • Apartments for seniors that are within the modest budgets of people living on their social security payments —Eleanor Gurewitsch, Christian Science Monitor, 9 June 1977 • The seniors can count on the coffee hour to follow for genial, intelligent conversation —Carol Bly, Letters from the Country, 1981 • ... many striking examples of seniors who lead productive lives —Booklist, 1 June 1984 |
| 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。