| 词组 | heroics |
| 释义 | heroics Evans 1957 says that heroics is usually meant derisively, an opinion that accords with the OED treatment. The use Evans is talking about seems to have had its origin in the bombast and rhetoric of the heroic tragedies popular during the Restoration. The original use seems to have referred to the overwrought and high-flown language typical of the plays, but it has come also to be applied to the flamboyant posturing and action involved. Heroics are what the real hero does not indulge in: • He showed no enthusiasm, however, and merely remarked, without heroics, that it was up to him — N. Y. Tribune, November 1917 • ... representing in his outlook the majority of his contemporaries, who have no time for heroics but only for heroism —Times Literary Supp., 2 Jan. 1943 • The French soldiers were in fact played by German policemen, and Kubrick ruefully recalls how difficult it was to persuade them to stop playing at heroics and act scared —Andrew Bailey, Rolling Stone, 20 Jan. 1972 But the word has not been uniformly slighting or pejorative. Some authors have felt it to mean simply "heroic behavior": • ... contact with the Phoenicians conferred upon the Greeks the art of perpetuating their heroics in visible, graphic form —William Mason, A History of the Art of Writing, 1920 • It is impossible to exaggerate his veneration for the heroes and heroics of the American Revolution — Henry Seidel Canby, Walt Whitman, 1943 And it has been used of actions and efforts not really involving heroism at all, but rather determined or valiant effort. It turns up in sports reporting: • Willie's heroics were a notable part of the Giants' sweep of last week's crucial three-game series with Brooklyn —Newsweek, 19 July 1954 More recently it has been applied to the efforts of medical and rescue personnel. Copperud found a reference to rescue workers after an earthquake that puzzled him, because his dictionaries defined only the bombast and posturing. Dictionaries can sometimes miss new developments. Uses like Copperud's are simply the application of the sports use to situations in real life which demand performance under difficult circumstances: • ... enough damage had already been done that the most extraordinary medical heroics were still in vain —Robin Marantz Henig, N. Y. Times Mag., 28 Feb. 1982 There is really no problem here. The context will make the intent of the writer clear in most cases, and dictionaries will eventually catch up with writers. |
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