| 词组 | bona fides |
| 释义 | bona fides Funny things have been known to happen to Latin words once they become incorporated into the English language. We have Latin plurals that look like singulars and so have become singular in English (see Latin plurals for several examples), and here we have a singular that looks like a plural and seems to be in the process of becoming one. Bona fides came out of law Latin in the 19th century. There is not much 19th-century evidence about it; presumably the term stayed close enough to the law to avoid adventuresome treatment. But it began to widen its use in the 20th century. Fowler 1926 seems to have been the first to spot an irregularity. He mentions an instance in which someone had pruned off the final -s to make a noun bona fide. The next irregularity was spotted by Partridge 1942—a use of bona fides with a plural verb: • As though Kingdom's bona fides were not accepted —R. Philmore, No Mourning in the Family, 1937 The OED Supplement has a similar example from someone who submitted it to the scholarly journal Notes and Queries in 1944: • If Mina's bona fides are once questioned.... These examples are too brief to give us a very certain idea of what the writer had in mind. But in 1954 a Mer-riam-Webster editor wondered if a new sense of the word was developing. He said he thought he had met it in contexts where it meant something like "evidences or proofs of genuineness or trustworthiness"—a sense roughly equivalent to credentials. Such a sense was, in fact, beginning to be used: • If bona fides to the union were necessary—and they probably were—the employer offered them in most substantial form —Clark Kerr & Lloyd Fisher, Atlantic, September 1949 In this example bona fides clearly means "evidences of good faith." But the intuition of one editor and a single confirming citation were not enough to establish the currency of the meaning, and it was omitted from Webster's Third. In the meantime several commentators followed in Partridge's footsteps and declared that bona fides was not a plural. None of them seems to have suspected a new sense developing, not even Reader's Digest 1983, which produces this example as an error: • [Question by CIA:] "How were Oswald's bona fides established?" The source of the question—the CIA—is very interesting, for a correspondent of William Safire, reprinted in Safire 1982, comments on the terminology used in the intelligence and counterintelligence business and notes among other things that there are people who volunteer information to intelligence services "whose 'bona fides' must be ascertained in order to establish their credibility." Is this, then, an established usage in the cloak-and-dagger business? Evidently so: • My bona fides in this extraordinary case are known to the Turks, to the British and to security officers of JAMMAT (Joint Allied Military Mission to Aid Turkey) —Ray Brock, letter to editor of Time, 31 Mar. 1952 • He [John A. McCone] added that "the bona fides of the man," which "were not known at the time of the testimony," had subsequently been established by the Central Intelligence Agency —quoted in N.Y. Times, 10 Oct. 1975 • When the war ended German intelligence archives were captured ... and Fritz Kolbe's bona fides were unambiguously established —Edward Jay Epstein, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 16 Jan. 1983 It would thus seem that the plural use is an established one in the intelligence world. But it is not limited to that milieu: • Once, Max was told, a Braxton Bragg had presented as his bona fides the photoinset ID wallet of an F.B.I, agent —Allen Lang, Ellery Queen's Mystery Mag., January 1962 • Yes, he said, the supply truck would be able to take me as soon as he had my bona fides —Emily Hahn, New Yorker, 15 Apr. 1967 • Spending on strategic forces is a kind of bona fides for Schlesinger of American intentions to keep up world responsibilities —Leslie H. Gelb, N. Y. Times Mag., 4 Aug. 1974 • He makes something of a try at the authentic, but he keeps letting his literary bona fides leak in —Stanley Kauffmann, Before My Eyes, 1980 And, you will have noted, this meaning is not always plural. Between the original sense and the one just discussed there is a transitional use which persists: • That should be sufficient to establish his bona fides as a Southerner —Emile Capouya, Saturday Rev., 25 July 1964 • ... there was no question about his bona fides as a college student; he was president of the Student Council —Robert Rice, New Yorker, 5 Mar. 1955 • ... I was anxious to establish his bona fides as a serious practitioner of the arts —Lawrence Durrell, Horizon, July 1949 In these examples bona fides means not "good faith" but "the fact of being what one claims to be." It is not a long stretch from "the fact of being" to "proof of the fact of being." In conclusion, we can say that bona fides is a word in transition. It is too late to drag in Latin to prove that the English word is supposed to be singular; it is an established plural in the intelligence-gathering community, and is treated as a plural or as if it were a plural by others. Actual usage is more complex than the simple examples in the handbooks would suggest. There seems to have been a sense development from "good faith" to "the fact of being genuine" to "evidence(s) or proofs) of being genuine." The last sense is often but not invariably used with a plural verb. The first two are seldom used with plural verbs. It is not unreasonable to object to use of a plural verb with the first two meanings. But even that use may someday become established. We must remember that bona fides is also English now, not just Latin. Incidentally, we have not yet collected an example like Fowler's of a singular bona fide meaning "an item of proof." |
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