| 词组 | lesser |
| 释义 | lesser 1. Samuel Johnson in his 1755 dictionary aspersed the formation of lesser as a "barbarous corruption" because he considered it a double comparative (see double comparison). Less does serve as a comparative of little, and it did so in Middle English when lesser was formed. Whoever coined lesser seems to have considered less not a comparative of little, but an independent adjective meaning "unimportant." At any rate Johnson recognized that the irregularity of its formation had had no effect on its literary use; he presents citations from Spenser, Shakespeare, Bishop Burnet, John Locke, and Pope. The tenth edition (1880) of Goold Brown 1851 demonstrates at considerable length that some 19th-century American grammarians pruned Johnson's remarks down to the "barbarous corruption" part, omitting his mitigating comments—"adopted by poets, and then by writers of prose, till it has all the authority which a mode originally erroneous can derive from custom" (these words are partly from the 1755 edition and partly from a later one)—and then lumped lesser with badder, gooder, and worser. This sort of thing created a usage problem that sputtered through the 19th century and died out. Alford 1866 found lesser acceptable though irregular, and even Ayres 1881 gave it the nod of approval. Though its propriety was a 19th-century issue, lesser still appears in some handbooks, usually paired with less. The handbooks tend to hold that lesser is used to indicate a difference in value or importance. The observation is broadly correct: • ... would have turned any lesser man to madness or suicide —Robert Graves, New Republic, 21 Mar. 1955 • ... a virtuous woman, though she might be of lesser birth —Edith Sitwell, Fanfare for Elizabeth, 1946 • ... lesser conductors analyze music better than they used to —Virgil Thomson, The Musical Scene, 1947 • The discussion has been confined so far to the lesser ode, but most poets attempted the greater ode as well —John Butt, English Literature in the Mid-Eighteenth Century, edited & completed by Geoffrey Carnall, 1979 It is also used of numerical quantities in contexts where smaller or lower is more usual: • So $ 1 million a day would be taken out for each day they bargain. They would be bargaining for a lesser amount each day —Peter Ueberroth, quoted in Springfield (Mass.) Morning Union, 2 Aug. 1985 It is also used of size. Such use was more common in the past than it is now; most present-day use for size is confined to names of plants and animals like lesser celandine or lesser yellowlegs. • ... offered to share the booty, and having divided the money into two unequal heaps, and added a golden snuff-box to the lesser heap, he desired Mr. Wild to take his choice —Henry Fielding, Jonathan Wild, 1749 Perhaps degree rather than size is what is involved in an example like this one: • ... those for whom the gravity of the Rambler has a lesser appeal —John Butt, English Literature in the Mid-Eighteenth Century, edited & completed by Geoffrey Carnall, 1979 2. The adverb lesser raises an occasional question too. Shakespeare used it several times in his plays. In present-day use it is limited to modifying past participles— especially known—to which it may or may not be joined by a hyphen. • The lesser known is the epitaph on Ben Franklin's tombstone —Harper 1985 • ... the lesser-known places within America's National Park System —Horace Sutton, Saturday Rev., 14 Apr. 1979 • ... the lesser privileged group of Argentina's population —Current Biography 1949 |
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