| 词组 | broke |
| 释义 | broke 1. There is some disagreement over the status of the participial adjective broke meaning "without funds, penniless." Harper 1985 calls it "informal," Phythian 1979 "slang," Bell & Cohn 1980 and Macmillan 1982 "colloquial," Vizetelly 1906 "misused," and Bryant 1962 "standard formal English." Our evidence shows that Bryant is closest to the mark. • Duncan's company, which had patented the name, went broke in 1965 —Ray Walters, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 28 May 1978 • ... there were times when he was downright irrational, as when he claimed in unbecoming panic to be going broke —Brendan Gill, New Yorker, 18 Sept. 1971 • We didn't have bank examiners and federal deposit insurance until banks started to go broke —J. Irwin Miller, Center Mag, September 1969 • Companies have crashed, leaving shareholders broke —Terry George, Weekend (London), 29 Oct. 1968 • Economically, Indonesia is broke and the quick answer to the problem is a massive injection of foreign aid —John Hughes, New Republic, 30 Apr. 1966 • ... bought a controlling interest in the old German mining firms, which had gone broke during the war —Emily Hahn, New Yorker, 29 Sept. 1956 • Thus far no toll road has gone broke —Fortune, July 1954 • Sometimes he was broke, and we would force ourselves to think of ways in which he might earn money —Stephen Spender, Partisan Rev., December 1948 • ... which will build us a more lasting prosperity. I have said that we cannot attain that in a nation half boom and half broke —Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio appeal for the NRA, 24 July 1933, in Nothing to Fear, ed. B. D. Zevin, 1946 This use derives from the verb break, which was used both transitively and intransitively, beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries, in the sense "to run out or cause to run out of money, go brankrupt." At the time, both broke and broken were in use as past participles, and both were used adjectivally in this sense—broken as early as Shakespeare, and broke as early as Samuel Pepys: • He tells me, also, that Mr. Edward Montagu is quite broke at Court with his repute and purse —Samuel Pepys, diary, 23 Dec. 1662 Swift used the word too; he wrote of a shopkeeper recently turned army officer: • ... I fancy he was broke, and has got a commission —Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, 25 Dec. 1710 Our evidence supports Bryant's view that the sense is standard English, at least in America. Perhaps it is time for usage writers to stop worrying about a usage some three centuries old. 2. For the use of broke in reference to horses, see break 2. |
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