| 词组 | shibboleth |
| 释义 | shibboleth A story in the Bible tells how the pronunciation of the word shibboleth was used by the Gilead-ites to distinguish between the soldiers of their own army and those of their enemy, the Ephraimites, who were attempting to escape after being routed in battle. Shibboleth in the realm of grammar and usage denotes a word or a use of language that is supposed to distinguish the members of one group—usually the anointed, the educated, the elite—from another group—usually the illiterate, the uneducated, the rabble: • Still, "ain't" ... is the shibboleth that divides the saved from the damned —Barnard 1979 • ... another great Shibboleth of English syntax, the split infinitive —Howard 1984 It is apparently a fact that many of these traditional usages no longer work very well as shibboleths. Some of the people who devise aptitude tests for college-bound students have discovered that poor students were better at spotting many of the traditional shibboleths than good students were. Since the tests are supposed to help identify good students, those likely to be successful in college, the testers have removed many of the traditional shibboleths, including the famous split infinitive. Longman 1988 notes that shibboleth has also become a rather derogatory term for some entrenched or mindlessly repeated dogma or opinion. That use of shibboleth looks like this: • Of course, not everybody who calls himself or is called a Marxist or a Trotskyite subscribes to all (or any) of the relevant credos and shibboleths —Howard 1977 • ... sees himself as an anarchist, a rebel, a one-man opposition party to fashionable shibboleths and slogans —Michael Billington, N.Y. Times, 17 Jan. 1982 |
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