| 词组 | lady |
| 释义 | lady Lady is one of the fine old words of English. After perhaps 1100 years of use it began to be the subject of considerable discussion in usage books during the 19th century. As often happens, they did not agree with one another to any great extent. The use of lady in the sense of "wife" was considered a dreadful vulgarism by Gould 1867 and forbidden in the New York Evening Post by William Cullen Bryant at about the same time. Fitzedward Hall 1873 thought the usage archaic and cited two 18th-century authors, Oliver Goldsmith and Fanny Burney. Richard Grant White 1870 was not fazed by this usage at all; he said that he did not see what all the fuss was about and that if a man registering at a hotel wanted to designate his wife a lady, it was all right with him. There was generally more agreement on the broader issues. Almost everyone—even Ayres 1881 and George Perkins Marsh 1859—agreed that woman was a better general designation for the sex than lady, but almost all of them allowed lady to be an acceptable word for a woman of superior breeding or social refinement. The occasion of all this discussion seems to have been an American journalistic convention of the time that mandated referring to women in news reports as ladies. Perhaps those "hack journalists," as Marsh termed them, thought lady somehow more polite than woman; they probably never realized the storm of controversy they had unleashed. Ayres pays special attention to the case of working women. If the better class of women—in short, ladies—are required "from any cause soever to work in a store," Ayres holds that they are content to be called saleswomen. But "your young woman" for whom a job in a store is a degree of social advancement—"She, Heaven bless her! boils with indignation if she is not denominated a sales lady." The commentators of the earlier part of the 20th century contented themselves with reviewing the same 19th-century topics in pretty much the 19th-century way. After World War II, however, commentators began to be a little more sophisticated in their approach—even wary in a few cases—because American women had become more emancipated in their attitudes. Reader's Digest 1983 seems to grasp particularly well not only the diversity of attitudes towards lady but also the complexity of actual usage when they call lady "a word so full of social overtones and built-in gender assumptions that no one can prescribe rules of its usage for others." The subject matter, however, has not changed; it is almost entirely the same question of which is better, lady or woman, to use as a general indicator of sex (woman is now the all but universal choice), and which is better to use in light of what is known about a person's social position or refinement. Even the recognition found in Copperud 1970 and others that Ladies is regularly used as a form of address to an audience of women can be traced back as far as Gould 1867. A good dictionary can tell you nearly all of this. All the uses commented upon are listed as separate senses of the noun lady. You can even find a few additional uses of lady if you are interested, and the dictionary offers these without the social moralizing. If the subject matter of the commentators has remained essentially constant for more than a century now, what about usage? Is it any different? We can reply with some assurance that the 19th-century journalistic habit of referring to all women as ladies has nearly passed from the scene. Then too, lady has picked up at least one use since the old days: it is now used, especially in the gossip sheets and personality magazines, as a word for the young woman who is the usual but unmarried companion of a man who happens to be a television actor, a rock star, or some similar focus of fascinated attention. This is the old denigrated "wife" sense revived with a new, late-20th-century twist. • With lady Josephine and daughter Leah, 4, along for the ride ... —People, 9 May 1983 The examples that follow will tell you more about how lady is used in print; some simply use the word while others offer comment. One of the things you will probably notice is that no simple rule about when to use or not use lady will stand up against actual usage. People will choose between lady and woman in ways that seem most natural to them, although—as you will see—they sometimes do so to the displeasure of those to whom or about whom they are speaking. One of the considerations that affects one's attitude toward the word is who says or writes it and who hears or reads it. It will be of interest also to know when something was written. These examples cover a considerable span of years, though of course you will find more recent examples than old ones. • Talking of the ladies, methinks something should be observed of the Humour of the fair sex —William Congreve, "Concerning Humour in Comedy," 1695 • Mrs. Reynolds is the name of the Lady to whom I will remember you to-morrow —Charles Lamb, letter, 1810 • ... a lady very learned in stones, ferns, plants, and vermin —Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers, 1857 (in A. S. Hill 1895) • The woman who kissed him, and pinched his poke, was the lady that's known as Lou —Robert W. Service, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," 1907 • ... the trunk had been lost but was now found that contained what some lady was going to wear —Robert Frost, letter, 10 Nov. 1920 • A lady is—or in Ellen Terry's generation was—a person trained to the utmost attainable degree in the art and habit of concealing her feelings and maintaining an imperturbable composure under the most trying circumstances —George Bernard Shaw, preface, The Shaw-Terry Letters, 1931 • It was years ago, I remember, one Christmas Eve when I was dining with friends: a lady beside me made in the course of talk one of those allusions — Henry James, The Art of the Novel, 1934 • A lady who had paid a fine for streetwalking came in to protest not the publication of the news of her fine, but the fact that we called her a woman, and she assured us that she was as much of a lady as any of the other girls in this town. And from that hour to this, the Gazette has referred to all females as women except that police-court characters were always to be designated as "ladies" —The Autobiography of William Allen White, 1946 • ... it ... no more enhances the quality of a lady's output than does the assumption of ... cute and booksy noms de plume —James Thurber, Thurber Country, 1953 • ... [my motherj's usually the only lady present at these things and gets treated in highstyle by the auctioneer —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 6 Oct. 1956 • Whatever the fops and bullies may have thought of it, tragedy had a special appeal to the ladies —James Sutherland, English Literature of the Late Seventeenth Century, 1969 • At the end of the lecture Miss Stein rose; we all got up; and amid the babble of goodnights the ladies came forward from their compound —Allen Tate, Prose, Fall 1971 • ... [Boswell] thought it overstepping the limit when a lady suggested to him that perhaps the sexes would be equal in the next world —John Wain, Samuel Johnson, 1974 • She never has more than eight and serves sumptuous Haitian delicacies cooked by her Haitian lady — Andre Leon Talley, Women's Wear Daily, 17 Apr. 1978 • A story I wrote ... tells of a sixty-year-old man who has an adulterous affair with the lady across the street —Philip Roth, Reading Myself and Others, 1975 • She was a very elegant, honest-looking lady —E. L. Doctorow, Loon Lake, 1979 • ... another female stereotype—the elderly lady who seems to be everybody's white-haired grandmother but actually is a sharp, observant old dame who knows much more than she pretends to —Newgate Callendar, N Y. Times Book Rev., 28 Aug. 1983 • The auctioneer ... looked out on an audience containing Betty Friedan, Nora Ephron and other enlightened friends. "There are no ladies here—just women," he said sternly —Michael Small, People, 19 Sept. 1983 • Despite the efforts of feminists, working-class women across America, young and old, still resolutely refer to themselves as ladies —Michael Brody, Fortune, 11 Nov. 1985 • His mother had been a scrubwoman, and he wasn't going to let these ladies suffer the way she had —Tip O'Neill with William Novak, Man of the House, 1987 • For at least some speakers, the more demeaning the job, the more the person holding it... is likely to be described as a lady. Thus, cleaning lady is at least as common as cleaning woman, saleslady as saleswoman. But one says, normally, woman doctor. To say lady doctor is to be very condescending —Robin Lakoff, Language and Woman's Place, 1975 • ... explains how a lady artist (it was George Eliot) was able to deduce ... —O. B. Hardison, Jr., Entering the Maze, 1981 • One of my few unpublished stories ... was written on the advice of the lady agent just mentioned — Donald Hamilton, in Colloquium on Crime, ed. Robin W. Winks, 1986 • lady ... avoid using this in place of "woman" unless you intend shadings of meaning that describe someone who is elegant, "refined," and conscious of propriety and correct behavior. In most contexts this word is perceived as (and often is) condescending — Rosalie Maggio, The Nonsexist Word Finder, 1987 |
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