| 词组 | hither |
| 释义 | hither 1. Hither, thither, whither. These three analogous adverbs, which basically mean "to here," "to there," and "to where," have been described by various commentators as old-fashioned, archaic, obsolescent, formal, pompous, and literary. The adequacy of any of those descriptions may be questioned ("old-fashioned" is probably best), but it is clear, in any case, that these are not ordinary words in common, everyday use. Of the three, hither is least likely to be used alone. • Hither Beecher removed his household in 1810 — Dictionary of American Biography, 1929 It occurs most often in the company of thither or yon: • ... the flame ... blew hither and thither on the wind —James Stephens, The Crock of Gold, 1912 • ... have continued to do, hither and thither in the world —Glenway Wescott, Prose, Fall 1971 • ... elegant wood carvings jutting out hither and yon —Russell Baker, Growing Up, 1982 • ... her fevered eyes roamed hither and yon over the headlines —Katherine Anne Porter, Ladies' Home Jour., August 1971 It also continues to be used in the adjective come-hither: • ... a pretty girl with a well turned ankle and a come-hither smile —The Autobiography of William Allen White, 1946 Thither occurs considerably more often as a solitary adverb than hither. When used straightforwardly, it usually relates to movement to a geographical location, especially when such movement is on a large scale or is a major undertaking: • ... who seem to have migrated thither from Sennar —Sir James G. Frazer, Aftermath, 1937 • ... the merchants had flocked thither from the South and West with their households to taste of all the luscious feasts —F. Scott Fitzgerald, "May Day," in The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1945 • ... to support any British army that marched thither —Samuel Eliot Morison, Oxford History of the American People, 1965 • He had relatives in New York and thither he sailed —Dictionary of American Biography, 1944 Thither is also sometimes used to deliberately evoke the language of the past: • ... has assembled accessories from all over the store, and thither we advise you to hie —New Yorker, 10 Dec. 1949 It is also used with hither, of course, and less commonly, with yon: • ... random couples necking thither and yon —Bennett M. Berger, Trans-Action, May 1971 The most common—or least uncommon—of these adverbs in current English is whither. It occurs in the same kinds of contexts as thither: • ... had left Chicago, whither he had emigrated, for the Soviet Union —Horace Sutton, Saturday Rev., 5 June 1971 • ... born in Quebec, whither his parents had removed —Dictionary of American Biography, 1928 • ... the voyage from New York whither they had flown from the West Indies —Peter D. Whitney, N.Y. Times, 2 May 1954 Whither is also used figuratively: • The ... self-serving leader must try to imagine whither this restlessness may lead in the next five years —Michael Novak, Center Mag., March-April 1971 • ... describe the general musical situation in America and whither we are heading —Thomas Lask, N. Y. Times, 12 Mar. 1971 • ... to discover whither modern science is hurrying us —Howard Mumford Jones, Saturday Rev., 12 June 1954 A related figurative use is in rhetorical questions, which typically consist simply of whither followed by a noun, with no accompanying verb: • With the exodus of the beautiful people and a generation gap among present upperclassmen and underclassmen, whither Harvard? —Franklin Chu, Change, December 1970 • ... many a symposium on whither the arts —John Leonard, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 15 Feb. 1976 • Whither the phonograph record? —Paul Kresh, Stereo Rev., September 1971 Hither, thither, and whither show no sign of passing into obsolescence in the near future. Their place in current English is not large, but it appears to be firmly established. 2. In addition to its adverbial uses, hither has been used as an adjective meaning "near" since the 14th century: • ... this was just the hither edge of the oil slick — Archibald MacLeish, N.Y. Times, 17 June 1973 • ... at the hither side of the great bell —William Dean Howells, Venetian Life, new ed., 1872 • ... in the steppes of eastern Europe or hither Asia — W. P. Lehmann, Language, January-March 1954 Although not in the vocabulary of most people, this adjective has obvious staying power. The only commentators to have taken note of it are Hall 1917 and Evans 1957, both of whom regarded it with approval. |
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