| 词组 | simple reason |
| 释义 | simple reason This phrase has attracted surprisingly strong criticism from several commentators (Bernstein 1958, 1965, Copperud 1970, 1980, and Shaw 1975, 1987), who regard it as verbose and patronizing. Because it is a phrase whose meaning is self-explanatory (and therefore not a candidate for dictionary entry), we have gathered little evidence of its use over the years, but we suspect that it occurs commonly in speech and fairly often in writing. Here is one example: • He said he wouldn't publish John Gould Fletcher's book for two simple reasons: first because it wouldn't sell and second because he hated the kind of thing Fletcher wrote —Robert Frost, letter, 10 Mar. 1924 It seems clear that simple reason can, in fact, have a certain mildly hostile or patronizing tone, although in written use the hostility is probably more often directed toward a third party (as in the above quotation) than toward the reader. The question of verbosity specifically concerns the phrase for the simple reason that, which, the critics observe, can be replaced by the single word because. But if a writer or speaker wants to express a little irritation, for the simple reason that does it better than because. If, for example, you hate to fish and someone keeps asking you why you won't go fishing, you might finally say, "For the simple reason that standing knee-deep in water and being eaten alive by mosquitoes is not my idea of a good time." Your ideas about fishing might be wrong, but your use of the language would not be. |
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