| 词组 | sine qua non |
| 释义 | sine qua non The literal meaning of this Latin phrase is "without which not." It serves in English as a noun referring to something absolutely indispensable or essential, in which use it has drawn occasional criticism from usage commentators. Evans 1957, for example, considers it a cliché. Our evidence shows that its written use is common: • ... the tall ships seem to be the sine qua non of celebrations these days —Lawrence Van Gelder, N. Y. Times, 9 May 1982 • ... where fastidious editing is the sine qua non of staying in business —Arthur Plotnik, Publishers Weekly, 29 Oct. 1982 It occurs in speech much less frequently, perhaps because many people feel unsure about how to pronounce it. The usual pronunciations in American English are \\\\,sin-i-,kwä-'nän\\\\ and \\\\sin-i-,kwä-'nōn\\\\ sing Usage commentators dating back to Richard Grant White 1870 have agreed that sang is the usual past tense of sing. White regarded the past tense sung as an error, and a few more recent commentators have taken the same line, but most recognize that both sang and sung have had reputable use as the past tense of sing. In current English, the past tense sung is not so much wrong as simply old-fashioned. Samuel Johnson in his 1755 Dictionary listed the past tense as sung or sang, but over the intervening two centuries, sang has come to predominate. Here are a few older examples with sung: • Mrs. Bland sung it in boy's clothes the first time I heard it —Charles Lamb, letter, 2 Jan. 1810 • ... Huldy was just like a bee: she always sung when she was workin —Harriet Beecher Stowe, "The Minister's Housekeeper," 1871, in The Mirth of a Nation, ed. Walter Blair & Raven I. McDavid, Jr., 1983 • Once M'Cola, in the dark ... sung out a stream of what sounded like curses —Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa, 1935 |
| 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。