| 词组 | spouse |
| 释义 | spouse The advantage that spouse has over wife and husband is that it is not limited to a particular sex. This makes it a useful word in special contexts where the person referred to may be either male or female, as in legal documents and income tax forms. Its use outside such contexts has been advised against by several commentators, who generally regard it as too formal a word to be used in ordinary speech and writing for anything other than pseudo-elegant humor. Our evidence essentially supports the observations and opinions of the critics. Spouse is certainly not a word that occurs normally in casual speech, and in writing it seems to occur primarily when the writer is being deliberately coy or facetious or when its formality or lack of specific sexual reference makes it an appropriate choice: • If his spouse can digest all this pertinent information and dish it out later when he needs it most —Land Kaderli, Saturday Evening Post, 3 July 1954 • Religion was not his faith; it was his spouse, and he loved it... passionately —Time, 27 Dec. 1954 • ... when either parent buys a first-class or coach airplane ticket, the accompanying spouse and children under 25 years travel at greatly reduced rates —Paul J. C. Friedlander, N.Y. Times, 6 Nov. 1955 Sometimes, too, neither wife nor husband seems to be an appropriate choice: • Anthony Sullivan, a 33-year-old Australian, clasped the hand of his spouse, Richard F. Adams, 28, of Los Angeles —Grace Lichtenstein, N. Y. Times, 27 Apr. 1975 |
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