| 词组 | holocaust |
| 释义 | holocaust Usage writers who claim that holocaust is not a synonym for disaster and who, because of the older sense of a completely burnt sacrificial offering, say that holocaust has the more specific meaning "fiery destruction entailing loss of life" (Bernstein 1965) or "wholesale destruction by fire" (Bremner 1980) are taking advantage of the critic's license to discuss only a small incident in the whole story. Holocaust has had a more complicated semantic development than this restriction suggests. The "burnt sacrifice" sense appeared in English by the middle of the 13th century, and related figurative uses are attested in the OED from 1497 on, although they are rarely found today. Uses in which the notions of death and destruction are preeminent did not develop until a couple of centuries later, but once started, they flourished more vigorously than the uses related to sacrifice. As a result, holocaust commonly refers to large-scale destruction, loss of life, fire, or all three at once: • In many cases the population of guano birds shows marked cyclical changes—usually a gradual build-up followed by holocaust—Nature, 1 Dec. 1951 • ... no fewer than seventy revolutions or civil wars up to 1903. Then the fighting stopped, after a terrible holocaust—H. Mathews, The Nation, 8 Nov. 1952 • In the July 1967 holocaust ... about 2700 stores were ransacked —Russell Dynes & E. L. Quaran-tells, Trans-Action, May 1968 • ... our long repressed fear of nuclear holocaust — Vogue, October 1982 • ... the building burns ... in a luridly awful holocaust —Valentine Cunningham, Times Literary Supp., 23 Sept. 1983 • ... increase the threat of global holocaust —Natalie Angier, Time, 24 Dec. 1984 One specific application of the word is, of course, to the genocidal slaughter of European Jews by the Nazis during World War II. When used this way, holocaust is often capitalized and is usually preceded by the unless it is used as an attributive: • ... a survivor of the holocaust —Barbara A. Ban-non, Publishers Weekly, 3 Jan. 1977 • ... a country so obsessed by the Holocaust —Atlantic, April 1983 • ... concentration camps where Holocaust victims were exterminated —William R. Doerner, Time, 13 May 1985 Figurative meanings branch out in several directions from the basic meanings discussed above. Some are synonymous with disaster or describe some natural disaster (these are what critics specifically disapprove of). Some allude to the Holocaust, and others have a more tenuous connection to one of the basic meanings. • ... the holocaust of bank failures —E. W. Kem-merer, The ABC of the Federal Reserve System, 1936 • ... a spiritual holocaust —Maxwell Geismar, The Last of the Provincials, 1947 • The Edsel holocaust threw us into The Dark Age of Applied Science —Jim Siegelman, Harpers Weekly, 12 July 1976 • ... awakens to the ethical holocaust around him — Judith Crist, Saturday Rev., 2 Oct. 1976 • ... turn an ordinary matrimonial war into an explosive do-or-die end-of-the-world holocaust —J. Alan Ornstein, The Lion's Share: A Combat Manual for the Divorcing Male, 1978 • ... Jackson's policy of Indian removal—a particularly shocking episode in America's home-grown holocaust —Eric Foner, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 2 Mar. 1980 • ... after the tornado ... in a township garage that had survived the holocaust —Civia Tamarkin, People, 9 My 1984 Holocaust is still in the process of acquiring new shades of meaning, and the current interest in the Holocaust seems likely to spur this development on. The criticized "disaster" meaning is a part of this natural evolutionary process, so we see no reason to single it out as being particularly worthy of censure. |
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