| 词组 | well |
| 释义 | well 1. There are those who will criticize your "do good" and your "feel badly," but you are safe no matter how you use well. Well has been both an adjective and an adverb since the time of King Alfred the Great, and you can use it with impunity after a linking verb: • ... I imagined it might be well to publish the articles —Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1788 • It is not well to say "the fact affords a reasonable presumption" —Bierce 1909 • We had a very neat chaise from Devises; it looked almost as well as a gentleman's —Jane Austen, letter, 5 May 1801 • ... if I couldn't think well of Clara, I'd turn my mind from her —E. L. Doctorow, Loon Lake, 1979 • ... it is well to preserve a distinction —Harper 1985 See also good; feel bad, feel badly. 2. Well, what about that prefatory well that so many of us put in front of sentences? It must have been given some unfriendly attention in the mid-19th century, for Alford 1866 discusses what he calls "prefatory particles," and after examination decides that they are "by no means to be proscribed." He thinks they are all right in conversation, that is; he does not recommend their use in writing. Woolley & Scott 1926 calls this well "a colloquialism, not proper in a formal context." That is essentially what Dean Alford was saying. Phythian 1979 would have us eschew prefatory well altogether. This well also goes back to the time of King Alfred the Great. The OED's evidence shows well used in conversation and in various not especially formal writings. We find it being used often by American literati in their letters: • The large things in the book—well I won't name them —Robert Frost, letter, 7 Dec. 1916 • Well, I have been living at the front with the infantry —Alexander Woollcott, letter, 6 July 1918 • Well, anyway, we got to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras —Ring Lardner, letter, 23 Feb. 1926 • Well, what happened was this —Archibald Mac-Leish, letter, 11 Mar. 1929 • Well good evening Mr. G. —Ernest Hemingway, letter, 15 July 1934 • Well, I love my country and I like to live free —E. B. White, letter, 4 Feb. 1942 • Well, I took out my jimmy pipe and my Persian slipper —John O'Hara, letter, 1 Dec. 1948 • Well, I didn't expect you to like it much —Conrad Aiken, letter, 13 Aug. 1969 And we find it occasionally in general prose that is cast in a casual style: • I was very, well, conscientious about this mission — Alan Coren, Punch, 18 May 1976 • Well, this reader would have liked to know more — J. Max Bond, Jr., Natural History, October 1981 • Well, for one thing, oil prices ... have started rising again —Lindley H. Clark, Jr., Wall Street Jour., 26 Jan. 1987 |
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