| 词组 | kind of a, sort of a |
| 释义 | kind of a, sort of a Here we have another English idiom that has come under the disapproving scrutiny of the critics. Leonard 1929 identifies Robert Baker, in his 1779 book, as the first to notice the construction. "Would not the a or an be better omitted? and is not 'a strange sort of man' a more correct, as well as a more elegant, way of speaking?" he asks. Apparently no one was listening; at least none of our 19th-century sources mentions the construction. Vizetelly 1906 rediscovered it. Bierce 1909 mentions it too, but he adds a fillip of his own; he lays logic on the problem: "Say that kind of man. Man here is generic, and a genus comprises many kinds. But there cannot be more than one kind of thing." We find the same logic solemnly repeated by Bernstein 1958, Shaw 1970, Bremner 1980, and Cook 1985. Most of the rest of the commentators simply advise omitting the a or an (as Baker did) and differ over whether the construction is informal or colloquial or wholly inadmissible. Curme 1931 finds the construction—with manner rather than kind or sort—as far back as the 14th-century travel book associated with the name of Sir John Mandeville. He described the crocodile as "a manner of a long serpent." These later examples use kind and sort: • ... and yet I have the wit to think my master is a kind of a knave —Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1595 • ... made a kind of a Jest —Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, 1722 • ... a very good sort of a fellow —Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, 1749 (in Curme and Jespersen 1909-49) • ... he left off the study of projectiles in a kind of a huff —Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 1759 • ... the men looked hard at him, anxious to see what sort of a looking "cove" he was —Herman Melville, Omoo, 1847 • You know what sort of a man King is —Henry Adams, letter, 17 Jan. 1861 • ... a couple card rooms and a kind of a summer parlor —Ring Lardner, The Big Town, 1921 • ... an answer to the question: "What sort of a man was Robert Burns?" —Saturday Rev., 1 Apr. 1939 • Lord Allenby, who was no kind of a mystic —Times Literary Supp., 2 Jan. 1943 • "... It is probably," the Doc concluded, "some sort of a millennium." —Thomas Heggen, Mister Roberts, 1946 • ... what kind of an ambassador he was —William Harlan Hale, The Reporter, 12 Jan. 1956 • It is apparently that kind of a show —Clive Barnes, N.Y. Times, 19 Nov. 1968 Type, incidentally, can also be found in this construction: • ... that type of a threat —Joseph McCarthy, 1954, quoted in Pyles 1979 Our files show that kind of or sort of without the following a or an is a much more common construction than the one with the article. No doubt many writers use both—Defoe writes both "a kind of a Jest" and "a kind of Jest" in Moll Flanders. But you are more likely to use the form without the article in most writing. Still, there never has been a sound reason for aspersing the less common idiom. If it is your idiom, there's no need to avoid it, especially in speech or in familiar writing. |
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