| 词组 | target |
| 释义 | target Several commentators have aimed their guns at the figurative use of target to mean "an objective or goal to be achieved." This sense of target seems to have originated in World War II. Its most characteristic use relates to industrial production: • The 1942 production targets set by the government home timber production department were exceeded —Britannica Book of the Year 1944 • ... the failure of plants to reach their target —John Baker White, Atlantic, April 1949 • ... the production of cloth, cement, sugar and coal has exceeded the targets —Adlai E. Stevenson, Look, 14 July 1953 • Production targets had to be cut back again and again —Newsweek, 11 Jan. 1954 Another familiar use is with reference to a specific time or date at or by which something is to be done: • ... the target date for the invasion of France (Operation Overlord) was set at May 1, 1944 —Franklin D. Roosevelt, 25 May 1943, in Franklin D. Roosevelt's Own Story, ed. Donald Day, 1951 • When the project is completed—1976 is the target date —Bruce Kovner, New York, 7 Feb. 1972 Criticism of target in this figurative sense originated in England, and the issue has continued to be primarily a British one. In the 1948 edition of Plain Words, Sir Ernest Gowers quoted at length a London Times editorial in which the new use of target was drolly ridiculed. The basis of the criticism was—and still is—that it only makes metaphorical sense to speak of hitting or missing a target, not of reaching, exceeding, or achieving one. The extent to which this argument has been accepted and repeated in Great Britain is due in part to the considerable influence of Gowers, and in part to the stream of witticisms the subject has inspired (many of which date back to the original Times editorial). More than one commentator has noted, for example, how curious it is that when a production target is doubled it doesn't become twice as easy to hit, as you might expect, but twice as hard. This sort of thing makes for entertaining usage books and helps to keep the issue alive. Despite the repeated criticism, however, the use of target to mean "an objective or goal to be achieved" has continued unabated. As Evans 1957 has noted, it occurs somewhat more frequently in Great Britain than in the U.S. (another reason for the more widespread criticism among the British), but its occurrence in American English is not at all uncommon. The critics continue to regard the figurative target as, at best, a needless synonym for goal or objective, but it is distinguished from those words in at least one important respect: it almost always refers to a specific quantity or time. A shoelace company that has a goal of increasing production may have as its production target 760,000 shoelaces a month. It is this connotation of specificity that makes the figurative target a distinct and useful word and assures that its widespread use will continue. |
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