| 词组 | masterful, masterly |
| 释义 | masterful, masterly The usage books, including Safire 1984, Bremner 1980, Shaw 1970, 1975, 1987, Simon 1980, Copperud 1960, 1964, 1970, 1980, Bernstein 1958, 1965, 1977, Phythian 1979, Sellers 1975, Harper 1975, 1985, Chambers 1985, Einstein 1985, just about uniformly insist that masterful must mean "domineering" and masterly "skillful, expert" and that it is a misuse of masterful to use it in the sense given for masterly. The two adjectives are thus distinct, and each— especially masterful—is to be kept in its proper place. This distinction, however neat and convenient, is entirely factitious, the invention of H. W. Fowler in 1926. Fowler knew, as anyone who looks at the OED can, and said that the two words were for a long time interchangeable. Each of them had a "domineering" sense and a "skillful, expert" sense. The "domineering" sense of masterly dropped into disuse around the end of the 18th century. Fowler seems to have thought the world of English usage would be a tidier place if masterful too were limited to one sense. He therefore declared the differentiation between the two words to be complete, and followed with a number of examples that effectively showed it was not, but that he declared to be misuses. From then until now, usage writers have followed Fowler, condemning as misuse all the evidence that proved Fowler's opinion was only wishful thinking in the first place. Here are some examples that show that the "obsolescent" (Partridge 1942) sense of masterful is as alive and well as it was in Fowler's day: • Lafe is a masterful letter writer, a practised hand, as it were —Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, 1945 • ... the tradition of masterful treatment of medical problems in books for the general reader —Edgar Z. Friedenberg, N. Y. Rev. of Books, 30 Dec. 1971 • ... director Herbert Ross has done a masterful job of making his people act like humans —Arthur Knight, Saturday Rev., 6 Nov. 1971 • ... sole ballottine blessed with a frame of masterful brioche —Gael Greene, New York, 3 Mar. 1975 • It was once again a masterful performance —Dean Acheson, quoted in Merle Miller, Plain Speaking, 1973 • A masterful place hitter and bunter, Keeler ... bridged the gap between ancient and modern baseball —David Nemec, in The Ultimate Baseball Book, ed. Daniel Okrent & Harris Lewine, 1984 • ... all were tied together in masterful television addresses —Douglas Hallett, Wall Street Jour., 19 Aug. 1980 • ... Chaucer's masterful uses of the Song of Solomon —Edward Craney Jacobs, Chaucer Rev., Fall 1980 • ... won the AFC Central title with a masterful game plan that shut down Cincinnati —Springfield (Mass.) Morning Union (AP), 19 Dec. 1986 • ... his dance criticism was masterful —Lois Drae-gin, Harper's, February 1984 Some writers use both masterful and masterly together: • He had a masterly sense of English and was a masterful copy-editor—the best, I am told by friends, they ever knew —Mary McCarthy, Occasional Prose, 1985 So the "skillful, expert" sense of masterful flourishes in standard prose. Its use has not diminished, as far as we can tell from our evidence, either the use of masterly or the use of the "domineering" sense of masterful: • ... artists in their own right—several of them masterly ones —William Styron, This Quiet Dust and Other Writings, 1982 • This is a masterly poem —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 30 Nov. 1957 • They were masterly statesmen, not masterful supermen —David Thomson, Europe Since Napoleon, 2d ed., rev., 1962 • "But then you don't seem powerless to me, either. Quite masterful, the way you run your TV crew." — John Updike, Bech Is Back, 1982 There are a few dissenters from the Fowler tradition, notably Bryson 1984 and Flesch 1983. Their dissent is based chiefly on the problem of adverbial use, which is also considered a bit of a problem by some of the commentators who follow Fowler. For an adverb counterpart, masterful has the readily available masterfully, but the choice is not so simple for masterly. Masterly is itself used as an adverb, but using the same form for both adjective and adverb may be a bit uncomfortable—at least for some—as is suggested by this circumlocution: • As Sir William Temple says of a great general, it is necessary not only that his designs be formed in a masterly manner, but ... —Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791 The alternative form masterlily is mentioned by a few writers, but no one seems to have actually used it. Dissatisfaction with masterly as an adverb and with the apparently unused masterlily leaves the Fowler-followers no solution to the adverb problem other than the Johnsonian circumlocution or rewriting in some other way. Bryson and Flesch recommend using masterfully. And at least one user of masterly as an adjective has done so: • ... it so masterfully crystallized ... the sinister issues —William Styron, This Quiet Dust and Other Writings, 1982 There is some degree of differentiation between masterful and masterly used in the "skillful" sense. Our backing suggests that masterly is stronger in literary use; masterful in general use—in reviews, in sportswriting, in speech, and in other areas where high formality is not the order of the day. Both words are entirely standard and in quite respectable use. The recommended distinction is easy to observe, and you may prefer to do so, but you are in good company if you choose to ignore it. |
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