| 词组 | intrigue |
| 释义 | intrigue The most common sense of the verb intrigue is "to arouse the interest and curiosity of," as in "the story intrigued them." This sense is now so well established and widely used that anyone unfamiliar with its history will probably be surprised to learn that it did not exist until about a hundred years ago. The earliest evidence of its use (in the OED Supplement) is from 1894. Once it had been introduced, however, it caught on quickly, and within a few decades it had become both extremely common and, among certain people, extremely unpopular. The new and common sense of intrigue was widely disliked in the early 20th century for two basic reasons: it was new and it was common. Its frequent appearance in newspapers sent some readers to their dictionaries, where they found only such definitions for the verb intrigue as "to cheat or trick," and "to plot or scheme." Where had the new sense come from? It appears to have been borrowed directly from French, where it had developed from a sense essentially synonymous with puzzle (which had itself developed from the "cheat or trick" sense). Its French origin enabled Fowler 1926 to attack it as a "Gallicism" having "no merit whatever except that of unfamiliarity to the English reader, & at the same time the great demerit of being identical with & therefore confusing the sense of a good English word." Fowler condemned intrigue as a worthless and pretentious substitute for such verbs as puzzle, fascinate, and interest. The new sense of intrigue was already firmly established in English by the time Fowler censured it. It has been included as a standard sense in Merriam-Webster dictionaries since 1919, when it was added to the New Words section of Webster 1909. Its widespread use has continued unabated throughout the 20th century. Critical attacks against it have also continued, but since the 1940s they have been relatively rare and relatively mild. New reasons have been devised for disliking it; Partridge 1942 and Bernstein 1965, for example, claim that it is incorrectly derived from the French verb, which, they say, means "to puzzle." In fact, the French verb means both "to puzzle" and "to arouse the curiosity of." By far the most popular criticism in recent decades has been that intrigue is "overworked," a description that has the advantage of being both insubstantial and impossible to refute. Almost all commentators now acknowledge that the disputed sense of intrigue is standard. The one recent exception is Simon 1980, who echoes Fowler when he describes it as "a flagrant Gallicism." We include all this information solely as a matter of interest—not to suggest that you should feel the least hesitation about using intrigue. This useful verb may have been a gallicism in the 1890s, but it is certainly not a gallicism now. As several commentators have pointed out, it has connotations that distinguish it from fascinate, interest, and other such verbs; something that intrigues us not only fascinates us, it fascinates us by making us curious, by making us want to find out more. Sir Ernest Gowers rightly suggests in Fowler 1965 that the popularity of intrigue is largely explained by the fact that no other verb has quite the same meaning. • "I must confess," he said, "the New Woman and the New Girl intrigue me profoundly " —H. G. Wells, Ann Veronica, 1909 • ... were naturally intrigued by hearing Judith refer to herself ... as a Used Gourd —Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm, 1932 • "I read about your party ... and I was intrigued by a woman who preferred Kreisler to a jewel." — George Bernard Shaw, quoted in Woman's Home Companion, April 1954 • My seatmate's business, incidentally, intrigued me —Bennett Cerf, Saturday Rev., 29 May 1954 • ... a problem that intrigued the seventeenth-century mind as fully as it does our own —Noam Chomsky, Columbia Forum, Spring 1968 • ... friends would be intrigued by the difference in Bundy —David Halberstam, Harper's, July 1969 |
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