| 词组 | underwhelm |
| 释义 | underwhelm Some mystery surrounds the coinage of underwhelm. Several sources cite the playwright George S. Kaufman as its originator, but other sources suggest other possibilities, and Red Smith is quoted in Harper 1975, 1985 as having the impression that he coined the word himself. Chances are, in fact, that the word was coined by more than one inventive writer. Our earliest record of it is from the New Yorker in 1944, when it was used by Howard Brubaker in the form of the participial adjective underwhelming. We first found it used as a transitive verb in 1949: • And Dr. James B. Conant's recent effort to find a cause for hope ... leaves me, in the words of Abner Dean, utterly underwhelmed —Philip Wylie, letter to the editor, Atlantic, April 1949 But it was not until the mid 1960s that we began to see it with any frequency. Its use became increasingly common in the 1970s and continues to be common today: • ... feeling quite underwhelmed at the thought of what Roy Strong and Liberty's could produce — Kenneth Robinson, Punch, 2 Sept. 1975 • ... the actual numbers were underwhelming — David Shaw, TV Guide, 7 Sept. 1984 • ... a psychology book that had left me underwhelmed —Susan Brownmiller, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 12 Jan. 1986 Underwhelm is certainly an innocuous word. It serves as a mildly humorous way of describing something unimpressive, and its common use has so far been largely uncontroversial. The only criticism that we know of is by the Harper usage panelists, who find it unacceptable by a large majority, essentially because they see it as a joke that is no longer funny. Several of the panelists regard its popularity as a fad, but over 40 years of increasing use strongly suggests that underwhelm is here to stay. |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。