| 词组 | breakdown |
| 释义 | breakdown The fuss over the use of breakdown in the sense of "division into categories" or "something analyzed by categories" was started, says Copperud 1970, 1980, by the same Lord Conesford who gave us the question at bottleneck. If Lord Conesford started it, it was picked up by Sir Ernest Gowers in his 1954 Complete Plain Words, where it still can be found in the 1973 edition. It has also found its way into a few American books, including Watt 1967, Bernstein 1965, and Shaw 1975. The gist of the problem seems to be first, that breakdown is too frequently used in this sense—it had a brief run as a hot political term in the early 1950s—and second, that it can result in ludicrous combinations when applied to nouns that stand for things which can be physically broken down. Our evidence shows that while breakdown was fashionable and even faddish for a while, that period has passed. Further, the possibility of ludicrous combinations is low. You need not fret at all about the word. • ... ratings services issue the individual breakdowns for 203 cities —Les Brown, N. Y. Times, 1 Dec. 1979 • So it is not surprising that Professor Emery should be more interested in Thomas's language than his thought; and the most valuable part of the introduction is a breakdown of the words Thomas used most often —Times Literary Supp., 30 July 1971 • It includes a breakdown of who sang what on every Drifters' single —Jon Landau, Rolling Stone, 20 Jan. 1972 • In a breakdown of these statistics, M. Henry disclosed that in an average year about seventy-five percent of the accidents occur in good weather —Jeremy Bernstein, New Yorker, 30 Oct. 1971 |
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