| 词组 | meld |
| 释义 | meld As a verb meaning "to blend or merge," meld is a fairly new word, although not nearly as new as some people believe. We first encountered it in 1936: • ... apple, currant, and raisin all melded into one sweetly tart aroma —Delia Lutes, The Country Kitchen, 1936 By 1939, the editors of Webster's Second had seen enough evidence of this blend of melt and weld to be satisfied that it was established in standard use, and they added an entry for it to the "New Words Section" of that dictionary. It has been included in our dictionaries ever since. Because the new meld is now a common word, it has attracted some unfavorable attention. Complicating the picture is the existence of an older meld, used to mean "to declare or announce (a card or cards) for a score in a card game (as pinochle or gin rummy)." Those who regard the new meld as an unwelcome development tend to perceive it as a misuse of the cardplayers' word: • This word is frequently heard at meetings of businessmen or government officials when a difficulty arises which calls for uniting two diverse plans or proposals. The obvious cause of the misuse is the urge to say weld while suggesting a quiet and mild operation that will escape public notice. The fact is that meld, from the German melden, means to announce. It is a technical term of pinochle. To make it anything else is a MALAPROP —Follett 1966 But the new meld is in no sense a misuse of the older word. It is, instead, an entirely new coinage, and its popularity probably has far less to do with sneaky businessmen and politicians than with the way its sound so nicely reflects its meaning. Meld suggests a smooth and thorough blending of two or more things into a single, homogeneous whole. Connotations of smoothness are its most distinctive characteristic, and its sound reinforces those connotations. Safire 1984 recognizes the distinctive qualities of meld when he describes it as "a nice coinage," despite having received many letters complaining about his use of it. No other recent commentator mentions the word at all, but those letters to Safire make it clear that there are still some people who regard meld with strong disapproval. Even so, we do not think you should feel nervous about using meld. Dictionaries have long recognized it as a standard word, and its use in reputable writing has been common for years. • This concentrated melding of diverse viewpoints — John R. Silber, Center Mag., September/October 1971 • He melded the operation of five U.S. affiliates into a smoothly functioning division—Time, 18 Feb. 1974 • ... in which he melds the musical traditions of these countries —Hans Fantel, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 22 July 1979 • ... where Indian philosophy and custom met and melded with their Chinese counterparts —Gerri Trotta, Gourmet, May 1981 The verb has also given rise, by functional shift, to a related noun: • ... the choreographer's meld of classic and folk idiom —Anna Kisselgoff, N.Y. Times, 25 Feb. 1971 • ... this meld of the mundane and the poetic —Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Book Rev., 6 June 1976 |
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