| 词组 | bite |
| 释义 | bite Bite has two past participles, bitten and bit. Bitten is by far the more common—it is the usual form of the past participle. Bit, the less common form, was thought archaic when the OED was edited. The Dictionary of American Regional English reports several dialect surveys on the subject; bit is used especially by respondents that are male and less educated. The highest reported use of bit was by 33 percent of respondents in California and Nevada in 1971. At any rate the dialect geographers have established that bit as past participle is alive and well in speech. How does it fare in print? Our evidence shows that it still occurs, and in standard English contexts, but not nearly as. often as bitten. Harper 1975, 1985 has an interesting observation. Bitten, they say, can be used as past participle in both active and passive constructions, but bit can be used only in active ones. Our recent evidence agrees in general, but not in every particular. In the examples below you will see that in print the past participle bit occurs more often in several fixed phrases than in more general and literal senses of bite. While the passive construction is not usual, it is not impossible (it seems to be not uncommon in speech). • They'd bit their own hook —The Collected Verse of A. B. Paterson, 1946 • I have bit my tongue and held back —William How-ells, The Heathens, 1948 • ... few leases have bit the dust —William F. Long-good, Saturday Evening Post, 4 Dec. 1954 • I have bit off more than I can chew —Flannery O'Conner, letter, 9 Nov. 1962 • ... hoping not to get bit by mosquitoes —Robert Coo ver, Harper's, January 1972 • He's bit the bullet and we haven't —Senator Mike Mansfield, quoted in The Economist, 31 May 1975 • In the past year or so, most of the large independents have bit the dust —Stephen J. Sansweet, Wall Street Jour., 23 June 1982 • ... ceiling molding—fittings that might have bit the bin a short decade ago —Donald Vining, Metropolitan Home, October 1982 Conclusion: these citations, spanning about 40 years, are not evidence that bit is beginning to rival bitten in frequency, but only that bit continues to be used now and then, especially in various fixed phrases of bite. It almost always occurs in an active construction. Bitten is the usual past participle. |
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