| 词组 | lion's share |
| 释义 | lion's share A clutch of commentators, including Kilpatrick 1984, Bernstein 1965, and William Safire (N.Y. Times Mag., 16 Mar. 1986) complain that lion's share is frequently misused. Bernstein's criticism is typical: • The lion's share, as conceived by Aesop, is all or almost all, not merely a majority or the larger part. The dependency of these commentators on the fable of Aesop may in part be the fault—as much as we hate to admit it—of Merriam-Webster dictionaries. Lion's share was entered in Webster 1864 with the definition "the larger part" and an explanatory note identifying Aesop's fable as the source of the phrase. The 1890 editor had apparently read Aesop too, and he interpreted Aesop as Bernstein would later. He put a new definition "all, or nearly all" in front of the 1864 definition, now elaborated into "the best or largest part." Editors of Webster 1909 and Webster's Second left the 1890 version untouched. The trouble with the 1890 treatment was that the second part described English usage all right, but the first part, the part that Bernstein and the rest fixed on, represented only Aesop. And Aesop spoke no English, of course. The OED was not fooled by Aesop; the definition there reads "the largest or principal portion." The examples given, starting with Edmund Burke in 1790, illustrate the stated definition, not "all, or nearly all." Nor, in fact, do any of the citations that were in our files before 1934 unmistakably illustrate "all, or nearly all" as a separate sense. Our citations show that it is often practically impossible to tell whether "most" or "nearly all" is intended but that when it is possible, the meaning is always the one criticized by the commentators, but recorded by modern dictionaries. Here are a few examples, beginning with some of our earliest: • ... partly from my own fault in assigning perhaps rather a lion's share to myself —Oliver Wendell Holmes d. 1935, letter, 1 Dec. 1899 • To old Esayoo I am glad to give the lion's share of the credit —Walter Elmer Ekblaw, Four Years in the White North, 1918 • ... President Wilson's visit and the daily conferences of leading European statesmen have attracted the lion's share of public interest —N. Y. Times, 27 Dec. 1918 • Did she know the terror and the remorse that followed on the heels of it when one slyly sneaked the lion's share of buttered toast at tea? —Jean Stafford, Children Are Bored on Sunday, 1953 • The central Government collects and spends the lion's share of the citizens' tax dollar —Cabell Phillips, N.Y. Times, 1 Dec. 1957 • ... a company that captured the lion's share of the deodorant and antiperspirant market —Forbes, 15 July 1971 • It was his life, rather than his art, that commanded the lion's share of attention —Hilton Kramer, N Y. Times Book Rev., 10 Aug. 1975 • ... an elite that enjoys the lion's share of power and prosperity —Luther Spoehr, Saturday Rev., 2 Feb. 1980 The moral of this tale is that usage commentators and lexicographers have to look at English usage to understand how English speakers use a term, no matter what source it comes from. |
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