| 词组 | luxuriant, luxurious |
| 释义 | luxuriant, luxurious Readers of other usage books are warned not to confuse these words, but uses of luxuriant to mean "of, relating to, or marked by luxury" or "of the finest or richest kind" have appeared periodically since 1671 and uses of luxurious to mean "fertile," "lush," or "prolific" have been around since 1644. • ... a luxuriant apartment —Susan E. Ferrier, The Inheritance, 1824 (OED) • ... in luxuriant restaurants —Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, 1900 • ... a dozen records with luxuriant gold and red seals —Walter Van Tilburg Clark, "The Portable Phonograph," 1941 • ... luxuriant suede, slate floors, crystal chandeliers —Margaret E. Morse, Southern Accents, September-October 1984 • ... a luxurious branch —Henry Vaughan, sermon, 1644 (OED) • ... some luxurious misty timber jutted into the prairie —Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849 • ... his luxurious whiskers —George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 1859 • A luxurious growth of plants —Industrial & Engineering Chemistry, 3 Mar. 1953 • ... a luxurious growth of wet moss and lichen — Nathaniel Nitkin, New-England Galaxy, Fall 1967 These uses appear to be standard and several examples are literary, but admittedly they are not nearly as common as the so-called "correct" ones. Whether they fall outside the pale is a matter of opinion. Merriam-Webster puts them inside: luxuriant as a synonym of luxurious is recorded without stigma in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, and luxurious as a synonym of luxuriant in Webster's Third. The OED straddles the fence: six citations are given at the cross-over sense of luxurious, which is labeled "Now rare"; three citations are given at the cross-over sense of luxuriant, with the comment that it is misused for luxurious. If the OED editors had had a few more citations for luxuriant, they might very well have arrived at a more liberal judgment. We doubt, however, that usage commentators would soften their strictures, even if the cross-over meanings became fairly common. The setup—two similar-sounding words horning in on each other's territory—is an ideal opportunity for a prescriptivist to take a stand and dig in his heels. |
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