| 词组 | upward, upwards |
| 释义 | upward, upwards The adjective is upward: • She shifted her bill to a slightly upward angle —Josephine & Gilbert Fernandez, Massachusetts Audubon, June 1968 The adverb may be either upward or, less commonly, upwards. Both are standard: • ... the electric door groans and rattles upward — Frank Conroy, Harper's, November 1970 • ... its small flame will flicker upward —Laurence Learner, Harper's, December 1971 • Theater ideas are absorbed upwards —Stuart W. Little, New York, 24 Apr. 1972 Both upward and upwards are used with of to mean "more than; in excess of." Upwards of is considerably more common than upward of: • ... that an ostensibly sane adult would pay upwards of 2,000 recession dollars for a glorified calculator — Curt Suplee, Smithsonian, April 1983 • ... had won upwards of $7 million but had squandered that fortune —William Nack, Sports Illustrated, 23 July 1984 • ... ranging from about $35 for the smallest frying pan to upward of $ 150 for a large covered casserole —Cara Greenberg, Metropolitan Home, December 1983 Such usage, which was first recorded in the early 18th century, was disliked by Alfred Ayres in 1881 and by Ambrose Bierce in 1909, but is now recognized as perfectly reputable. What little controversy there is has to do with the use of upwards of (and upward of) to mean "a little less than; about; approximately." Clear-cut examples of such usage are extremely hard to find. In fact, the exact meaning of upwards of'is often difficult to pin down: • ... now estimated that the average candidate for Congress needs upwards of a hundred thousand dollars for an effective race, and in the more populous states this sum is not unusual in a contest for the state legislature —Harry S. Ashmore, Center Mag., January 1969 Does the writer mean "more than a hundred thousand dollars"? Perhaps, but the later reference to "this sum" (that is, a hundred thousand dollars) suggests that the meaning of upwards of in this case may be closer to "approximately" or "as much as and possibly more than." Certainly upwards of is less unequivocal than more than. What can be said definitely is that upwards of almost always occurs before an amount that the writer regards as impressively high. On those extremely rare occasions when it occurs before an amount that is not so regarded, some such definition as "approximately" seems to be called for: • He outlined upwards of a thousand words by means of which, he maintained, almost anything could be expressed —Selected Writings of Louise Pound, 1949 |
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