| 词组 | grow |
| 释义 | grow One of the many senses of grow is "to become," a sense that has been in common use for many centuries: • ... black beard will turn white, a curl'd pate will grow bald —Shakespeare, Henry V, 1599 Fortunately for Shakespeare, he did not have Richard Grant White as a copy editor: • Now, grow means increase, the enlargement of a present quality or condition, not a change in character of that quality or condition. A rough sea may grow rougher, a dark sky grow black, but a smooth sea becomes rough, a clear sky becomes black, ... and the moon, or anything else that lessens, does not grow [smaller], but becomes smaller —Richard Grant White 1870 White would have told Shakespeare that a curled pate does not grow bald, but becomes bald. What Shakespeare would have told White we can only guess. White's opinions were influential enough in the late 19th century to persuade many people that there was something wrong with the "become" sense of grow, especially in the phrase grow smaller. A few writers on usage were still raising the issue in the 1920s, but the groundlessness of White's objection was by that time widely recognized: such commentators as Vizetelly 1906, Utter 1916, and Hall 1926 pointed out that the "become" sense had a long history of highly respectable use. Later commentators such as Partridge 1942, Evans 1957, and Bernstein 1971 have also defended the "become" sense, but the issue appears not to be entirely dead. Longman 1984 includes the note, "Some people dislike the combination grow smaller as illogical." Be that as it may, we cannot recommend that you devote much effort to avoiding grow smaller. Grow in its "become" sense usually implies a gradual, continuous process of change, and its use with those implications is entirely appropriate whether the change involves an increase or a decrease—in size or in any other quality: • ... the lighting grows gradually dimmer —American Guide Series: Minnesota, 1938 • As technical arguments grew more complex — Homer Page, Not Man Apart, July 1971 • ... as the world itself grows smaller, its institutions perforce grow bigger —Osborn Elliott, One Nation Divisible (published speech), November 1969 |
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