| 词组 | learn |
| 释义 | learn 1. The use of learn to mean "teach" was once perfectly respectable: • Sweet prince, you learn me noble thankfulness — Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1599 • ... having learned him English so well that he could answer me —Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 1719 • I have too much pride to stand indebted to Great Britain for books to learn our children the letters of the alphabet —Noah Webster, letter, Weekly Monitor, 15 Feb. 1785 The OED includes many citations for the "teach" sense of learn, dating back to the beginning of the 13th century. Samuel Johnson treated it as a standard sense in the first edition of his dictionary, published in 1755. But the 1785 edition included the note "This sense is now obsolete." By the 19th century, its loss of prestige was generally recognized. Noah Webster noted in his American Dictionary ( 1828) that "this use of learn is found in respectable writers, but is now deemed inelegant as well as improper." The OED labeled it "vulgar" in 1902. The "teach" sense of learn has persisted in dialectal and substandard speech, but its only use in writing is now in the representation or deliberate imitation of such speech: • ... there is certainly no lack of correspondence schools that learns you the art of short-story writing —Ring Lardner, How to Write Short Stories, 1924 • ... if he'd only learned himself to speak good grammar he would probly be a Major today —James Jones, From Here to Eternity, 1951 • I'll learn him to touch my gun! —Agnes Sligh Turn-bull, The Gown of Glory, 1951 • My daddy learned it to me —Leonard Eversole, quoted in Our Appalachia, ed. Laurel Shackelford & Bill Weinberg, 1977 2. Even though Lindley Murray disapproved learnt in 1795, the British use both learnt and learned as the past tense and past participle of learn. • ... learned to live off man's left-overs —Gordon Hard & Frank Manolson, Observer Mag., 25 Nov. 1973 • When I went to my prep school, I learned the piano —Charles, Prince of Wales, quoted in Observer Rev., 9 June 1974 • ... Magistrate Riley's colleagues have learnt their lesson —Private Eye, 5 Apr. 1974 • ... he first learnt, really learnt, the pleasure of reading —British Book News, July 1983 Learnt is no longer very common in American English. Simon 1980 criticizes an American book for using it; he calls it obsolescent and slightly fuddy-duddy. It turns up occasionally: • ... according to the system learnt in their course — Ring Lardner, How to Write Short Stories, 1924 But the usual form in American English is learned: • ... a slightly reticent girl who had learned to carry her beauty well —Frank Conroy, Harper's, November 1970 • ... was horrified when she learned what had happened —Jay Mclnerney, Bright Lights, Big City, 1984 |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。