| 词组 | idea |
| 释义 | idea From Jensen 1935 to Trimmer & McCrimmon 1988 we find a modest tradition in handbooks—mostly those intended for college freshmen—fostering the view that idea means "mental conception, notion" and that its use in other significations is vague, imprecise, or indiscriminate. This restriction will not withstand examination of even a modest selection of typical modern uses of idea. To begin with, it is worth observing that the sense the handbooks insist upon as being the precise meaning is the very one decried as "modern cant" by Dr. Johnson (reported by James Boswell in Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791). Richard Chenevix Trench quotes Boswell and adds his own thoughts on the subject (in the 13th edition of English Past & Present, 1886): • What now is 'idea' for us? How infinite the fall of this word from the time when Milton sang of the Creator contemplating his newly-created world, 'how it showed, Answering his great idea," to the present use, when this person 'has an idea that the train has started,' and the other 'had no idea that the dinner would be so bad.' Matters have not mended since the times of Dr. Johnson; who, as Boswell tells us, 'was particularly indignant against the almost universal use of the word idea in the sense of notion or opinion, when it is clear that idea can only signify something of which an image can be formed in the mind.' There is perhaps no word in the whole compass of the language so ill treated, so rarely employed with any tolerable correctness; in none is the distance so immense between what properly it means, and the slovenly uses which popularly it is made to serve. Before looking at those modern uses, let us remind ourselves that idea is a polysemous word—that is, a word of many meanings—and compared to such workhorses as break, run, set, and take, it is a word of little semantic spread indeed. The following uses are all standard: • The idea rather is to terrorize liberal Senators with the thought of a runaway convention —Arien J. Large, Wall Street Jour., 2 June 1969 • ... but they die comforted, in cleanliness and in dignity. That was the idea of the place —Michael T. Kaufman, N.Y. Times Mag., 9 Dec. 1979 • ... a booster dose ... every three or four years is a good idea —Dodi Schultz, Ladies' Home Jour., August 1971 • They begin with an ideological premise rather than with an idea for a story —Lewis H. Lapham, Harper's, November 1971 • ... it greatly strengthened his romantic attachment to the idea of the English gentleman —Arthur Miz-ener, The Saddest Story, 1971 • The natty look of navy and white is having a strong revival this spring with classical nautical shapes as well as Oriental ideas —Women's Wear Daily, 25 Oct. 1980 • ... had little idea of what they wanted to do —Larry A.Van Dyne, Change, September 1971 • We have very very little idea about Indian population here —Everett H. Emerson, radio interview, 3 July 1975 • ... our compensation was a room in the Allerton Hotel. The idea being: if we showed enough initiative, we'd rent the room and thus have compensation for our singing —Win Stracke, quoted in Studs Terkel, Hard Times, 1970 • The plot of his opera is an original idea about life after death —Rosemary Brown, Ladies' Home Jour., September 1971 |
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