| 词组 | leery, leary |
| 释义 | leery, leary 1. Leery and its less common variant leary have been in use for quite a while: Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary dates the spelling leery from about 1718. Perhaps because the word appeared first in thieves' cant, it formerly carried with it a slang label, a label which some language commentators still approve: Bernstein 1965, for one, suggests avoiding its use and substituting instead chary or wary, among others. The OED labels its entry slang, and while it is true that this sense of leery is seldom encountered in British English, it has become quite common in standard American English. The slang label of Webster's Second (1934) was dropped from Webster's Third (1961). 2. When leery or leary is used with a preposition, it is most likely to be followed by of: • ... the presidency of the world would be an office of comparatively little power—nothing to be leery of —E. B. White, Harper's, July 1942 • ... is leery of wise New York politicians and reporters —Richard Reeves, New York, 21 Dec. 1971 • ... with nervous Republicans still leery of the supply-side theology —William Greider, Atlantic, December 1981 Leery or leary is also used less frequently with about and very occasionally with as to: • "... I'm kind of leery about churches, and I'm kind of leery about preachers too." —Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land, 1965 • "... This was something new and, frankly, some of us were a wee bit leery as to the outcome." —Edward N. Saveth & Ralph Bass, Think, July 1953 |
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