| 词组 | illegible, unreadable |
| 释义 | illegible, unreadable The distinction to be made between these words is that illegible means "impossible to read; indecipherable" and unreadable chiefly means "lacking interest or attraction as reading; extremely dull or badly written": • ... the handwriting, though expressive, is almost illegible—Times Literary Supp., 12 Feb. 1970 • Protect prescription labels with transparent tape, so they won't become smudged and illegible —Dodi Schultz, Ladies' Home Jour., August 1971 • ... prose that was graceless, inflated, and very nearly unreadable —David Littlejohn, Commonweal, 30 Jan.1970 • ... issued their second highly technical, distinctly unreadable text —Marcia Seligson, McCall's, March 1971 This distinction has been noted by many commentators, dating back as far as Utter 1916. Several commentators, including Utter, Evans 1957, and Shaw 1975, have also noted that unreadable can sometimes mean "indecipherable," Fowler 1926, Krapp 1927, Partridge 1942, and Phythian 1979 will not allow this sense of unreadable, but it is treated as standard in dictionaries. It was first recorded in 1830. According to our written evidence, its use in current English is extremely rare. In fact, the closest thing we have to recent evidence of its use is a single citation from the magazine Infoworld, in which its meaning is not so much "impossible to decipher" as it is "impossible to see clearly enough for reading": • ... permitting them to function in reduced light conditions where LCDs [liquid crystal displays] are unreadable —Nancy Groth, Infoworld, 27 Jan. 1986 |
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