| 词组 | hoi polloi |
| 释义 | hoi polloi 1. Use with "the." Hoi polloi is a Greek term that literally means "the many." Its use in English stretches back to a time when a good education consisted largely of mastering Greek and Latin. Hoi polloi was adopted by the well-educated as a term for the unprivileged masses. It was originally written in Greek letters: • If by the people you understand the multitude, the ol iroXXol —John Dryden, Of Dramatick Poesie, An Essay, 1668 (OED Supplement) • ... one or two others, with myself, put on masks, and went on the stage with the ol iroXXoi —Lord Byron, Detached Thoughts, 1821 As its use became more widespread in the 19th century, the transliterated form hoi polloi (rarely oi polloi) came to be preferred: • After which the oi polloi are enrolled as they can find interest —James Fenimore Cooper, Gleanings from Europe, 1837 (OED Supplement) • The hoi polloi, as we say at Oxford, are mindless— all blank —Read & Reflect, 1855 (OED Supplement) Proper usage of hoi polloi did not become a subject of controversy until the early 20th century, when the argument that this term should not be preceded by the— because hoi literally means "the"—first began to be heard. The issue was not taken up by usage commentators until 1926, when H. W. Fowler asserted that "These Greek words ... are equally uncomfortable in English whether the ( = hoi) is prefixed to them or not..." and recommended avoiding the term entirely. Similar advice has since been given by Evans 1957 and Bernstein 1977. Other recent critics, such as Shaw 1975, have said only that hoi polloi should not be used with the. It is interesting to note that when hoi polloi was used by writers who had actually been educated in Greek, it was invariably preceded by the. Perhaps writers such as Dryden and Byron understood that English and Greek are two different languages, and that, whatever its literal meaning in Greek, hoi does not mean "the" in English. There is, in fact, no such independent word as hoi in English—there is only the term hoi polloi, which functions not as two words but as one, the sense of which is basically "commoners" or "rabble." In idiomatic English, it is no more redundant to say "the hoi polloi" than it is to say "the rabble," and most writers who use the term continue to precede it with the: • ... the local hoi polloi —Herbert R. Mayes, Saturday Rev., 9 Oct. 1971 • ... the hoi polloi like us —Daily Mirror (London), 7 Nov. 1974 • ... trouble with the hoi polloi —John Taylor, Punch, 27 Nov. 1974 • ... the hoi polloi ... can actually walk in off the street —Mordecai Richler, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 5 Jan. 1975 • ... letting in the hoi polloi —Judy Klemesrud, N. Y. Times, 19 Dec. 1975 • ... mingling with the Roman hoi polloi —Richard Grenier, Cosmopolitan, October 1976 • Let the hoi polloi stand around —Abby Rand, Harper's Bazaar, November 1980 • ... the hoi polloi finally began —Frank Deford, Sports Illustrated, 9 July 1984 Use of hoi polloi without the is considerably less common, although not rare: • ... while it "brought the news" of the world to hoi polloi —Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York, 15 Oct. 1973 • ... nauseating the civilized filmgoer, while around him hoi polloi laugh their heads off —John Simon, N.Y. Times, 24 Nov. 1974 • The critic walls out hoi polloi —Richard A. Lanham, Style: An Anti-Textbook, 1974 • ... tales of hoi polloi successfully routed from our private oceans —Russell Baker, N. Y. Times, 13 June 1982 Hoi polloi without the is certainly standard, but it sometimes has an unidiomatic ring to it (Bernstein 1977 describes it as "clumsy"). The decision you have to make as an intelligent writer, therefore, is whether you care more for etymology than for idiom. We recommend that you favor idiom, but if etymology has won you over, keep in mind that simply omitting the is not always enough. The purist should find fault with both of the following quotations: • ... the chic and the near chic, and plain hoi polloi —John Corry, N.Y. Times, 27 Mar. 1974 • ... an aloof... intellectual who did not cater to hoi-polloi —Harry Markson, N.Y. Times, 5 June 1983 The first, in the purist's view, is like saying "plain the masses," and in the second there ought not to be a hyphen, as we do not join "the" and "masses" with a hyphen. 2. An issue about which there has been surprisingly little comment is the use of hoi polloi to mean "the snobby elite," a sense which is almost directly opposed to the term's original meaning. Only Bernstein 1977 and Bryson 1984 have mentioned (and censured) this sense. Perhaps other commentators have chosen to ignore it— or have simply been unaware of it—because it occurs so rarely in print. We have only two written examples of it in our files, well separated in time: • I could fly over to Europe and join the rich hoi polloi at Monte Carlo —Westbrook Pegler, Times News-Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.), 25 Sept. 1955 • It was the beginning of his Christmas present to them—a day away from their desks ... dining and drinking elbow-to-elbow with the Palm Beach hoi polloi —James T. Wooten, NY. Times, 21 Dec. 1972 Indications are, however, that this sense of hoi polloi is extremely common in speech. We first heard of it in the early 1950s, when it was reported to be well established in spoken use in such diverse locales as central New Jersey, southern California, Cleveland, Ohio, and Las Vegas, Nevada. Several members of our editoral staff at that time also testified to its common occurrence, and similar testimony in the years since strongly suggests that this sense of hoi polloi may now be more widely known and frequently used in speech than the older, etymologically accurate sense. We do not know for certain how this new sense originated. Bernstein 1977 speculates that it may have come about because of association of hoi with high. Another possibility is that the new sense developed out of the inherent snobbery of hoi polloi. In its original sense, hoi polloi is a term used by snobs or—more often—in mocking imitation of snobs. Even its sound has a quality of haughtiness and condescension (much like that of hoity-toity, a term that has undergone a similar extension of meaning in the 20th century, from its former sense, "frivolous," to its current sense, "marked by an air of superiority"). It may be that people unfamiliar with the meaning of hoi polloi, but conscious of its strong associations with snobbery, have misunderstood it as an arrogant term for the haves rather than a contemptuous term for the have-nots. |
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