| 词组 | how |
| 释义 | how How as a conjunction in the sense of that is aspersed by Ayres 1881, Vizetelly 1906, Bernstein 1965, and Phythian 1979—which makes nearly a century of aspersing. The usage itself is a bit older, however; the OED tracks it back to Aelfric, the Anglo-Saxon grammarian and writer of religious prose, around 1000. It is a little unfair to equate the usage flatly with that, although the OED does so and our dictionaries do too. It is, in fact, a usage in which the underlying notion of "the way or manner in which" is weakened to varying extents, and in many cases appears—at least to the modern reader—to be entirely absent. Here are a few older examples of the use: • And anon the tidings came to king Philip of France how the King of England was at Boulogne —Lord Berners, translation of Froissart's Chronicles, 1523 • When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John —John 1:4 (AV), 1611 • And it is pretty to hear how the King had some notice of this challenge a week or two ago, and did give it to my Lord General to confine the Duke — Samuel Pepys, diary, 17 Jan. 1668 • I have heard how some critics have been pacified with claret and a supper, and others laid asleep with soft notes of flattery —Samuel Johnson (in Ayres 1881) • Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master Peter —Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1844 (in OED) If there is a problem with this use of how—and Evans 1957 declares it standard—it may be that it is falling out of literary and written use and being more and more confined to speech. We do have 20th-century evidence, but not a great deal since mid-century, except in speech: • It was odd how writers never seemed to have anything to do except write or live —Martha Gellhorn, Atlantic, March 1953 • I won't waste your time this afternoon in telling you, in the political tradition, all about how I am myself a farmer —Adlai E. Stevenson, Speeches, ed. Richard Harrity, 1952 The OED notes that this sense of how has appeared as part of the compounds how that (found in Chaucer and the King James Bible) and as how (attested as early as Smollett's Roderick Random in 1748); how that is apparently no longer used, but as how continues in modern use. See as how. |
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