| 词组 | substitute |
| 释义 | substitute In its oldest and still most common transitive sense, substitute means "to put or use in place of another": • ... echoes of a more spontaneous life before the Puritan middle class had substituted asceticism for beauty ... —Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, 1930 • Such logic encourages the state to substitute its vision ... for the religious views of the Amish —Stephen Arons, Saturday Rev., 15 Jan. 1972 However, the OED shows that substitute has also been used since the 17th century to mean "to take the place of; replace": • Good brandy was being substituted by vile whiskey —Catherine C. Hopley, Life in the South, 1863 (OED) The OED said in 1915 that this use was "now regarded as incorrect." Fowler 1926 was strong in his objection to this newer sense, which he found to be increasingly common and which he regarded as a serious threat to the older meaning of the word. Fowler illustrated the "corruption," as he called it, with a full twenty quotations, presumably culled from British periodicals. Several later commentators have repeated Fowler's criticism. Bernstein 1965, for one, describes the use of substitute to mean "replace" as "a common solecism." The volume of the OED Supplement published in 1986 calls this use of substitute incorrect. Despite this criticism, there is ample evidence showing substitute being used in this sense in standard writing on both sides of the Atlantic: • ... left all the horses, which he substituted with mules —Dictionary of American History, 1940 • ... names like Jane are always substituted by the pronoun she —Robert A. Hall, Jr., American Speech, October 1951 • ... at least substitute conjecture with facts —Maurice Friedberg, Saturday Rev., 4 Dec. 1971 • ... concludes that British Rail's proposals to compensate ... at rates of four, five, and six per cent, are inadequate and substitutes them with levels of five, 1% and 10 per cent. —Daily Telegraph, 25 July 1974 (OED Supplement) • ... first-rate criminals were substituted by hi-jackers, hostage-takers, and other blackmailers —George Mikes, Punch, 1 Jan. 1975 • ... the pungent pines ... have been substituted by filling stations, Pizza Huts, and shoddy motels — Suzanne Wilding, Town & Country, August 1976 Given its use in general, and even sometimes scholarly, writing and its presence in the language for more than 300 years, we see no reason to dismiss this use of substitute as an error, and it has been recognized as standard in Merriam-Webster dictionaries since Webster's Second (1934). On the other hand, it is the less common sense of the word, and to some ears it will seem less than idiomatic. Faced with this potential for a negative reaction, you may want to avoid this sense of substitute, but worries about confused meaning need not concern you. The choice of preposition almost always makes the meaning clear. The older sense of substitute is used with for ("substitute a new version for the old one"); the "replace" sense is used with by or with ("substitute the old version with (or by) a new one"). |
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