| 词组 | meaningful |
| 释义 | meaningful The history of meaningful shows how extremely popularity can, perversely, have a bad effect on a word's reputation. For about a hundred years after its first recorded use in 1852, meaningful existed quietly as an uncommon, unremarkable adjective. Even after it had become a fairly common word in the 1950s, it continued to pass unnoticed by the critics. But in the 1960s meaningful ceased to be ordinary. Its common use in such phrases as meaningful dialogue and meaningful relationship made it suddenly notorious, and it began to be criticized. E. B. White called it "a bankrupt adjective" in Strunk & White 1972, 1979, and the usage panel of Harper 1975 rejected it both in speech and in writing by a large majority. It was found to have various faults, but its chief failing was a simple one: it was overused. Hearing or reading the same word over and over can be like eating the same food day after day—no matter what its attractions, you tend to get sick of it. In the 1960s and 1970s, many people got sick of meaningful, and some have not yet recovered. In the meantime, meaningful has continued in common use. It serves essentially as an antonym of meaningless, for which purpose it is well suited: • "Mexico is under tremendous time pressure to get people meaningful jobs," says Clark Reynolds, a professor of economics at Stanford University —Lawrence Rout, Wall Street Jour., 25 Sept. 1981 • ... meaningful salary negotiations could take place only if the NFL were to shed its severe restrictions on free agency —Sports Illustrated, 11 Oct. 1982 Its notoriety is no longer great and will most likely continue to diminish as the years go by. Its use with relationship or dialogue, however, can still be counted on to draw a few groans. |
| 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。