| 词组 | slow, slowly |
| 释义 | slow, slowly The controversy over whether slow is a proper adverb seems to have come in with the automobile, which brought with it the "GO SLOW" and "DRIVE SLOW" signs. We find comment on the subject as far back as MacCracken & Sandison 1917, in which we are told that conservative signmakers prefer slowly but that slow is gaining ground. The automotive aspect of the question is still sometimes mentioned: • The adverb slow is used mainly by highway police, who order us to go slow. Careful writers prefer the adverb slowly —Oxford American Dictionary 1980 But restriction of adverbial slow to the vocabulary of policemen is simply uninformed. Slow is an old adverb, and it has had many users other than highway police: • ... but, O, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes!—Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, 1596 • I pray you have a continent forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower —Shakespeare, King Lear, 1606 • Faith this letter goes on but slow; it is a week old — Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, 16 Feb. 1711 • Twice I have walked out with Miss Goldsmid & her friend Mrs. Naylor But Lord! Lord! how slow they walk —Edward Lear, letter, 16 Feb. 1862 • The war moves slow if it moves at all —Robert Frost, letter, 7 Mar. 1944 • He drives slower, staring ahead for the slightest clues of road —Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, 1985 • God the Master Mechanic died slow, with many a confusing deathbed word —John Updike, New Yorker, 30 Dec. 1985 Slow, however, has a rather restricted range of application. Except in exclamatory expressions ("... how slow they walk"), slow regularly follows the verb it modifies, and the verb is regularly one of action or motion. Slowly is more generally applicable. It can precede the verb: • ... a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied —T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," 1917, in American Harvest, ed. Allen Tate & John Peale Bishop, 1942 • It was almost as if something... were slowly circling the tent —Arthur C. Clarke, Boy's Life, August 1967 It can follow the same sort of verbs slow can: • ... because, she said, I drove too slowly —David Plante, Difficult Women, 1983 • ... I tried to walk as slowly as I could —Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa, 1935 It can follow verbs with which slow would not be idiomatic, and appear in contexts where slow would not be idiomatic for other reasons: • ... the leadership turned slowly toward bombing as a means of striking back —David Halberstam, Harper's, February 1971 • ... grain by grain, as the pigeon said when he picked up the bushel of corn slowly —Edward Lear, letter, 29 May 1862 • ... I did an abrupt about-face ... and started walking slowly away —James Jones, Harper's, February 1971 Slowly also modifies participial adjectives: • ... the slowly accumulated intimacy on which Mrs. Wharton places such redeeming value —Richard Poirier, A World Elsewhere, 1966 • ... stares gravely out over lines of slowly moving cars —Irwin Shaw, Harper's, September 1970 Slow is not used with past participles, but it can form compounds (usually hyphenated) with some present participles, including moving: • ... slow-moving shell-encrusted survivors from an earlier epoch —John Fischer, Harper's, February 1971 Slow and slowly should really present no usage problem. They each have their proper place, and good writers keep them there. See also flat adverbs. |
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