| 词组 | illy |
| 释义 | illy This little-used adverb was once the object of impassioned criticism: • The Illy Haters Union is not so strong in numbers as the Anti-Infinitive Splitters Guild, but its members are of more desperate and determined character. They are embattled minute men, sworn that only over their dead bodies shall the adverb illy be admitted to literary respectability —N.Y. Sun, 10 Nov. 1931 Illy is actually quite an old word, recorded in writing as early as 1549. Its written use has never been truly common, however. Samuel Johnson did not include it in his dictionary of 1755, and British travelers, hearing it spoken in the U.S., mistook it for an Americanism in the early 1800s (as is noted in Mencken 1936). Illy did not originate in America, but it does seem to have had far more use in the U.S. than in Great Britain. Its career as a usage issue has also been chiefly American. It was routinely vilified by American commentators throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The argument against illy ran as follows: since illy is established as both an adverb and adjective, illy is superfluous, and its use is equivalent to using welly in place of well. What this argument ignores is that there are many similar adverbial pairs in English—for example, full and fully, right and rightly. There is, in fact, nothing intrinsically wrong with illy. The reason for its existence may be that adverbs ending in -ly are normally preferred when the adverb precedes the verb or participle it modifies ("It was rightly done" or "It was done right" but not "It was right done"). Most of the evidence for illy shows it occuring before a verb or participle: • Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival —Thomas Jefferson, Writings, 1785 (OED) • Never were two beings more illy assorted —Washington Irving, Oliver Goldsmith, 1849 (OED) • I fear it has been illy and inadequately done —The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg, ed. Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr., 1952 • ... no graceful memoir of a life well or illy spent — Saturday Rev., 5 June 1965 (OED Supplement) Of course, illy is also used before verbs and participles, and is far more common than illy. (More common than either are such synonymous adverbs as poorly and badly.) Illy is no longer a hot issue among usage commentators—partly, we suppose, because it is such an uncommon word, and partly because the most influential usage book of the 20th century, Fowler 1926, makes no mention of it. Illy seems now to have fallen entirely out of use in British English. In American English, it is standard but rare. There are probably still some people who cringe at the sight or sound of it, but we feel almost certain that the Illy Haters Union has long since been disbanded. |
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