| 词组 | individual |
| 释义 | individual The contention of most commentators in the controversy over individual as a noun meaning "a human being" is this: it is acceptable when the individual is contrasted with a larger unit, such as society or the family, and it is acceptable when it stresses some special quality. These two examples illustrate: • The individual rebelled against restraint; society wanted to do what it pleased; all disliked the laws which Church and State were trying to fasten on them —Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, 1904 • But Donne would have been an individual at any time and place —T. S. Eliot, "Andrew Marvell," in Selected Essays, 1932 But there is something wrong with it when it points to no obvious contrast or no obvious special trait and simply means "person": • Now I hold it is not proper for a scientific gent To say another is an ass, at least to all intent; Nor should the individual who happens to be meant Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent —Bret Harte, "The Society upon the Stanislaus" (in Utter 1916) • There were many individuals of dashing appearance, whom I easily understood as belonging to the race of swell pick-pockets —Edgar Allan Poe, "The Man of the Crowd," reprinted in Encore, September 1945 The above distinction is essentially that given in Fowler 1926. But the controversy is older than Fowler, dating back at least to Bache 1869, who objects for no specific reason. Ayres 1881 objects more clearly. His objection is based on etymology: since individual suggests one that cannot be divided, it has to be used in opposition to an aggregate that is divisible. Bierce 1909 repeats the etymological objection. Our evidence shows that from sometime around the period of Ayres and Bache until the 1920s, it was fashionable to disparage individual used in the manner illustrated by Poe and Harte above. The OED marks a sort of midpoint in the early history of the controversy. The I sections were published in 1900; at this sense of individual, James A. H. Murray put a note: "Now chiefly as a colloquial vulgarism, or as a term of disparagement." The citations shown in the OED do not bear out this judgment, although the latest one (1888) does contain the phrase "unpleasant individual." Hall 1917 expresses puzzlement over the attack on the sense. He lists 38 authors in whose works he has seen it. Most of the authors are 18th- and 19th-century grammarians and philologists. Hall opines that literary use is on the decline, which may have been what Murray was getting at indirectly in the OED note. The earliest OED citation is from Samuel Johnson in 1742. Hall claims to have found it in Sir Thomas Browne a century earlier (he does not reproduce the citation, however), and Samuel Johnson had found it in Bacon and Pope (but the citations are curiously under the adjective in his Dictionary). • Neither is it enough to consult concerning Persons, ... what the Kinde and Character of the Person should be; For the greatest Errours are committed, and the most Iudgement is shewne, in the choice of Individuals —Francis Bacon, Essays, 1625 • Know, all the good that individuals find, Or God and Nature meant to mere Mankind, Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of Sense, Lie in three words, Health, Peace, and Competence —Alexander Pope, "Essay on Man," 1734 Johnson had abridged both of these. It seems likely, from these and the long list in Hall, that the OED readers for citations did not pay much attention to the use. (The same can be said for Merriam-Webster editors, too. We have a citation that complains of George Bor-row's using the term seven times in three pages of The Romany Rye, and even though that book was quite heavily marked for citations here, no one found individual.) The OED treatment had a curious effect. Murray's note presumably reflected use at the end of the 1890s, but it began to be repeated in American sources only about 20 years later—Utter 1916 has a version of it and so does Lincoln Library 1924. Webster 1909 carried the sense unlabeled, but the editors—apparently on the basis of a number of published opinions condemning the use—added a note similar to the OED's in 1925 (the note was kept in softened form in Webster's Second 1934; Webster's Third 1961 went back to the original stance of Webster 1909). It was clearly not the usage of Bacon or Pope or Johnson that brought on the controversy. The source of the complaints seems to have come from two quarters. Fowler notes that the "person" sense of individual was a jocular commonplace among 19th-century novelists, and Hall's evidence bears him out—Hall's most frequent users include Cooper, Hawthorne, Poe, and Dickens (Coleridge used it a lot, too). And it seems to have been a regular ornament of mid-19th-century journalism: Alford 1866 mentions it in passing on his way to an attack on the similar use of party. Mencken 1963 (abridged) quotes Alford and remarks that he could have been talking about American newspapers as well as British. Quite possibly journalistic overuse was behind the complaints of Bache, Ayres, and Bierce. We don't know which writers soured Fowler on the word, but we suspect that what might be termed high-toned use of the disputed sense of individual was never questioned: • Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right —Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," 1841 • Alas and alas! you may take it how you will, but the services of no single individual are indispensable — Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, 1881 • Faith, in the agonized hands of the individual, becomes an imaginative experiment —R. P. Black-mur, "Emily Dickinson," in American Harvest, ed. Allen Tate & John Peale Bishop, 1942 The journalistic mannerisms of late Victorian times are gone now. The disparaging use mentioned by Murray seems to have passed as well. If we are correct in our guess that late Victorian journalistic practice was the probable cause of the outcry, the whole issue should have died with the cause. But it has not. We find it mentioned (after Fowler) in Krapp 1927, Jensen 1935, Evans 1957, Copperud 1960, 1964, 1970, 1980, Bernstein 1965, Watt 1967, Heritage 1969, Shaw 1975, 1987, Zinsser 1976, Prentice Hall 1978, Little, Brown 1980, 1986, Bremner 1980, Reader's Digest 1983, Longman 1984, Bryson 1984, Trimmer & McCrimmon 1988, and undoubtedly many others. What do these people say about a subject that has been empty of content for, say, half a century? Mostly they repeat Fowler 1926 in one way or another. A few find new reasons for disapproval. Zinsser does not like individual because it is a longer word than person; Trimmer & McCrimmon says it is disapproved because it is overdone in college writing. It is interesting that not one commentator since Hall 1914 has commented on the literary background of the use. Our evidence from the last fifty years or so shows that individual as a noun is most often used in contrast to some larger group—just as Fowler said it should be. When the contrast is not evident, the word almost always seems to carry the notion of one person considered separately. We have no recent evidence of the older facetious use nor of the disparaging use. The following examples are typical: • His profession was, in fact, the main avenue by which individuals might climb out of the class of manual workers —Benjamin Farrington, Greek Science, 1953 • We must first be born as free individuals if we are to move beyond our individual limitations —Wayne C. Booth, Now Don't Try to Reason with Me, 1970 • Every individual is capable of injuring or killing himself —Thomas S. Szasz, Harper's, April 1972 • ... though he works with individuals, he thinks socially —Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself, 1959 • The accounts are rendered by individuals from the rank and file who took part —Ellen Cantarow, Change, May 1972 • Colleges and universities, like the majority of individuals, have usually been too passive —Calvin H. Plimpton, Amherst College Bulletin, November 1967 We see no need for continuing concern over individual. Almost all the examples we have from edited prose fit well within the guidelines suggested by Fowler and his followers. It seems probable that the usages that provoked the original criticism have simply gone out of fashion. For some other controversies that have been at least partly fueled by 19th-century journalistic fashion, see female; party; transpire. |
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