| 词组 | and/or |
| 释义 | and/or And/or, says Janis 1984, is "a formal expression used in law and commerce...." It is, in fact, more widely used than that, but Janis has aptly described its origin. David Mellinkoff shows us in The Language of the Law (1963), that and/or was used first in maritime shipping contracts (of a kind called charter party) in the middle of the 19th century. Who first used the device— it was then written and / and / or —we do not know, but no doubt the first user thought it a convenient way to indicate some limited variability in the contract. The trouble was, however, that one party to the contract might take one view of the matter and the other party a different view. So the interpretation of and/or became a matter of litigation in 1854. English judges had long practice in interpreting English conjunctions in contracts. Not only were there residual problems from translating Latin into English— three Latin conjunctions, ant, vel, and sive, of different functions in Latin, were all translated into English as or—but judicial interpretation had already allowed for and = or and or = and. (There is further information on American judicial interpretation of and and or in Margaret M. Bryant, English in the Law Courts, 1930.) And into these shifting tides of legal opinion came and/ or. There were three judges involved in the first and/or case; they reached three different conclusions as to what it meant. Mellinkoff cites a later case involving and/or in a shipping contract. Again there were three judges and three differing opinions. This time none of the three opinions agreed with any of the first three opinions. And/or thus began in a cloud of legal ambiguity, but such an inauspicious infancy proved no deterrent in its use. And/or seems to have established itself with some rapidity both in legal and business contexts. In the 1920s it attracted the vigorous opposition of Samuel Hardin Church, then president of Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, who seems to have been grievously offended by its occurrence in some correspondence with the Interstate Commerce Commission. Church peppered publishers and lexicographers with letters of protest, terming and/or an atrocious barbarism and "a hideous invention." Church's objection seems to have been aesthetic; he proposed replacing the hideous invention with its unsightly virgule by a new word (are you ready for this?): andor. Most of the more recent criticism in our files is likewise aesthetic—ugly is the usual epithet—although a few consider it confusing or ambiguous, and a few (Johnson 1982, Shaw 1970, 1975, Reader's Digest 1983) find it compact and convenient. Opdyke 1939 interestingly says that defenders of and/or claim Daniel Defoe used it, perhaps in The Compleat English Tradesman (1725, 1727), but no actual citations are produced. Mellinkoff says the term has both defenders and disparagers in the legal profession. A number of commentators recommend replacing "A and/or B" with "A or B or both." A note on form: and/or is nowadays usually found with the virgule. It has been written from time to time with a hyphen (and-or) and infrequently with only a space (and or). The one-word form advocated by Church seems entirely disused, although we had one notification of its adoption by the Georgia legislature in 1954. While most of the handbooks refer to legal, commercial, technical, or bureaucratic contexts, none of them provides much in the way of illustrative material. Our evidence shows that it has a wider use; we present some examples of that here. • "...and read aloud extracts therefrom for the general benefit and or diversion of the company —Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds, 1939 • ... will deduce that the speaker is poorly educated and/or stupid —Robert Claiborne, Our Marvelous Native Tongue, 1983 • The award ... goes to a trade-book editor under 40 who has shown special talent in discovering and/or getting the best work out of his authors —Victor S. Navasky, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 15 Apr. 1973 • ... discriminatory laws were passed almost everywhere to make certain women were treated as slaves and/or children —Pete Hamill, Cosmopolitan, April 1976 • In the public mind it is generally considered to be carried out by priests and/or ministers —Times Literary Supp., 19 Mar. 1970 • The book containing (1 ) the rites and ceremonies for the services, and/or (2) the rules and customs of discipline —Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1957 • "... attempts to dramatize the presumably hectic and/or nefarious goings-on in the newsrooms of big-city tabloids —Harrison Smith, Saturday Rev., 21 Aug. 1954 • As Brando hummed and/or drummed in some secluded hideaway—Time, 13 Oct. 1958 • ... and a bow or belt in the back, depending on the size and/or sophistication of the girl who gets it — New Yorker, 24 Nov. 1956 These examples are fairly typical of the general uses of and/or; we do have some, of course, that are vaguer than these. You may have observed that in each of these and/ or is used between only two options and that it can readily be understood in the sense "A or B or both." But if the number of options is increased, the number of possibilities multiplies, and the chance for ambiguity likewise increases. In "A, B, and/or C" lie "A or B or C," "A and B or C," "A or B and C," "A and B and C" The knotty problems of maritime law mentioned above were in fact of "A, B, and/or C" type. Little wonder the judges could reach so many conclusions. Most of the examples in our files use and/or between two alternatives. We have only a few examples of the "A, B, and/or C" type, two of which we give you here: • ... someone who feels he has been the victim of negligence by physicians, nurses, and/or hospitals — Center Mag., November/December 1971 • All you will end up with will be a set of platitudes, truisms, and/or trivialities —Nehemiah Jordan, Themes in Speculative Psychology, 1968 In these instances the multiplicity of possible combinations seems not to matter. Which might suggest, to some, that and/or serves no purpose in them and might well have been avoided. If you have a need to use and/or, we recommend that you use it only between two alternatives, where the meaning will obviously be "A or B or both." In longer series and/or will likely be either vague or unnecessary. |
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