| 词组 | victual |
| 释义 | victual This word, which is pronounced \\\\'vit-ǝl\\\\, provides a good example of the confusion that can result from artificial tampering with the language. It was originally borrowed from Middle French in the 14th century as vitaille (with many variant spellings). The present spelling resulted from the efforts of 16th-century grammarians to restore the word to a form more closely resembling its Latin ancestor, victualia. They succeeded in establishing the new spelling, but the old pronunciation remained unchanged. The result was yet another English word whose spelling and pronunciation have little in common—just what the language did not need. The noun victual is almost always used in the plural. It is now widely regarded as a rustic or homely synonym for food: • ... encourage the ... townspeople and their mountain neighbors to swap victuals for tickets —Jerry H. Simpson, Jr., Southern Living, July 1972 • ... I was putting away a heaping plate of down-home victuals —Tom Wicker, TV. Y. Times, 24 Dec. 1976 • The clamor of soup being slurped testified ... to the enjoyment of the victuals —George Feifer, Cosmopolitan, February 1972 The variant vittles also occurs in such contexts. It is standard, and it is admirably consistent with the word's pronunciation, but it is less common than victuals: • ... "Ma, are ye goin' to let all the vittles get cold?" —Ruth Suckow, "A Rural Community," in Mid Country, ed. Lowry C. Wimberly, 1945 • "Well, I'll declare," Martha put in "I don't see how you city folks live on such scanty vittles." — Southern Literary Messenger, September 1940 Vittles seems to occur most often in representations or transcriptions of rustic speech, where the Latinate victuals appears out of place. Victual is also used as a verb, usually meaning either "to supply with food" or "to lay in provisions." The verb does not have the rustic connotations of the noun: • ... his cart and two horses lost in the king's service while victualling the castle —article from Irish Echo, reprinted in Irish Digest, November 1953 • ... American whalers who victualled at the port — Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1966 |
| 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。