| 词组 | blame on, blame for |
| 释义 | blame on, blame for The real difference between "blame someone for" and "blame something on" is the direct object; in the first the direct object is the cause— usually a person—of the problem, and in the second the direct object is the problem. The first construction is older; the second is not attested in the OED until 1835. In 1881 the pseudonymous Alfred Ayres in The Verbalist took note of the newer construction. Blame on, said Ayres, "is a gross vulgarism which we sometimes hear from persons of considerable culture." Ayres does not stop to explain why it is a vulgarism or how such cultured persons are capable of using such a vulgarism—or even to prescribe blame for. It is a simple ex cathedra pronouncement, and from Ayres it spread rapidly into other American usage books, textbooks, and dictionaries and eventually even into British publications. Vizetelly 1906 called it "indefensible slang," and he blackened the expression in his dictionary, Funk & Wagnalls 1913, and in his later books. Censure of one kind or another turns up in Utter 1916, MacCracken & Sandison 1917, Lincoln Library 1924, Whipple 1924, Lurie 1927, Krapp 1927, Jensen 1935 and so on down to more recent publications such as Bernstein 1958, 1965, Shaw 1970, 1975, Gowers in Fowler 1965 (Fowler 1926 ignored it), Phythian 1979, Bremner 1980, Oxford American Dictionary 1980, Freeman 1983. Others along the way had found the construction standard—Evans 1957, Copperud 1964, 1970, 1980, Flesch 1964, Bryant 1962, Harper 1975, 1985, Heritage 1969—as indeed it had been all the time. Our files show blame on and blame for to be about equally frequent. • The firm blame the closures on "heavy losses and a world-wide fall in demand" —Keith Mason & Ian Hepburn, The Sun (London), 31 Oct. 1974 • ... begins by blaming everything on the parents — Pauline Kael, Harper's, February 1969 • ... maneuvering to blame any breakdown in the talks on the other side —I. F. Stone's Bi-Weekly, 5 Apr. 1971 • ... have only themselves to blame for the fact that alimony is necessary —Germaine Greer, McCall's, March 1971 • ... parents blame the urban school system for their children's failures —Fred M. Hechinger, N.Y. Times, 9 Jan. 1969 • ... blames this culture for conceiving of art as having to do with personal privilege and pleasure —Lionel Trilling, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 7 Mar. 1954 A few other prepositions are used with blame, but less often: • ... not to blame onto Latin the results of sloppy teaching —Marion Friedmann, in Verbatim, December 1974 • ... tended to blame the evasion of such subject-matter... to the persistence of the romantic tradition — Times Literary Supp., 21 July 1966 • ... she blamed us with killing the canary birds, too —New Yorker, 25 Sept. 1926 |
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