| 词组 | used to, use to |
| 释义 | used to, use to Use was once commonly employed as an intransitive verb meaning "to be in the habit or custom; be wont": • I did this night give the waterman who uses to carry me 105. —Samuel Pepys, diary, 24 Mar. 1667 • The English then useing to let grow on their upper-lip large Mustachio's —John Milton, The History of Britain, 1670 (OED) • He does not use to be the last on these occasions — George Lillo, London Merchant, 1731 But this sense of use now occurs only in the past tense with to: • ... the passion this issue used to ignite in the State Department —Henry Brandon, Atlantic, March 1970 Used to is extremely common in both speech and writing. Such problems as arise with it have to do basically with the d of used. Because the d is not pronounced, used to is indistinguishable in speech from use to. It may be, in fact, that many people actually say use to rather than used to—that is, the word they have in mind is use rather than used ("We use to be good friends")—but since the pronunciations are essentially identical, it makes no difference. In writing, however, use to in place of used to is an error. The problem becomes a little trickier in constructions with did. The form considered correct following did, at least in American English, is use to. Just as we say "Did he want to?" rather than "Did he wanted to?," so we say "Did he use to?" rather than "Did he used to?" Here again, it may be that some people actually say "did ... used to," but the question is moot in speech. Only in writing does it become an issue. Our evidence shows that most writers do remember to drop the d of used following did: • "Didn't he use to go with Laura?" she asked —Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions, 1948 • "... It didn't use to be like that." —James Jones, From Here to Eternity, 1951 • I believe Polk did use to be a town —Eudora Welty, The Ponder Heart, 1954 • Didn't half-mast use to represent mourning? —Lois Long, New Yorker, 21 Oct. 1967 But "did ... used to" does sometimes find its way into print: • "Did you used to walk with them?" he asked Con-cetta —Constantine FitzGibbon, The Holiday, 1953 • He told me, "Today orchestras announce auditions, which they didn't used to do " —James Lincoln Collier, Village Voice, 28 Feb. 1968 In American English, such usage is considered an error, but among the British it appears to have won some measure of acceptance. Chambers 1985 finds that in questions the phrases "Did he use to ..." and "Did he used to ..." are both "unexceptionable." Longman 1988, discussing the various negative forms of used to (which include used not to and usedn't to, both rare in American English), asserts that "the commoner negative ... has become They didn't use to or (perhaps better) They didn't used to." What reason there is for thinking that didn't used to is "perhaps better" than didn't use to is not clear. In American English, according to our evidence, the usual and correct form is didn't use to. See also supposed to. |
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