| 词组 | benedict |
| 释义 | benedict This term for a newly married man who has long been a bachelor is derived from Benedick, a character in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Benedick professes to be a confirmed bachelor but at the end of the play marries Beatrice, with whom he has exchanged barbed remarks throughout. Somehow the spelling got changed to benedict; it is spelled with a -ct by Sir Walter Scott in 1821. A few commentators— Fowler 1926, Krapp 1927—point out that the -ct spelling is unetymological, but it has become the established one. The spelling may perhaps have been influenced by a use of benedict meaning "a bachelor." We have very scant evidence that such a use was known; one source derives it from St. Benedict, whom it calls "patron saint of celibates." The "bachelor" sense, in any case, appears not to have been widespread. Copperud 1970 calls benedict "society-page lingo," but none of our evidence is from society pages. Here are a few examples: • Some are bachelors, others benedicts —Esquire, July 1970 • ... when, one evening, the Canadian benedict began extolling Jacqueline Susann's "The Love Machine" —S. J. Perelman, New Yorker, 12 Feb. 1972 • He had married our great-aunt Margaret shortly before the death of our parents and so became our guardian while still a benedict —Mary McCarthy, New Yorker, 15 Dec. 1951 The spelling benedick has occasionally been used: • ... tho' less likely than ever to become a Benedick —Lord Byron, letter, 29 Nov. 1813 We have no actual 20th-century citations for Shakespeare's spelling. You can consider benedict the established form. The word does not seem to be used very frequently any more. |
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