| 词组 | minus |
| 释义 | minus Minus does not compare with plus (which see) as a generator of controversy, but its use as a preposition more or less equivalent to without has attracted occasional disapproval for many decades. Such usage dates back to the 19th century: • We [arrived]... about six in the evening, minus one horse —J. B. Fraser, Travels in Koordistan, 1840 (OED) This use of minus was labeled colloquial by the OED in 1907, and it was discouraged in several handbooks on writing in the early 20th century. More recently, a few critics have stressed what they regard as its facetious quality; Bernstein 1965, for example, describes it as "a jocular casualism." Our evidence shows that it does sometimes occur in writing that has a playful tone: • ... a reissue of the bearded representative who refused to sponsor an antiwar resolution We find him about the same but minus the chin spinach — Julian Moynahan, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 17 Oct. 1982 But minus is also commonly used in serious, if not highly solemn, writing: • ... a condition for dealing with the Saigon regime minus Thieu —I. F. Stone, N. Y. Rev. of Books, 9 Mar. 1972 • The property is now a state farm, the castle, minus most of its looted furnishings, a museum —Eleanor Perenyi, Green Thoughts, 1983 • ... much of the National Democrats' vicious and intolerant nationalism—minus, of course, their Catholicism—was integrated into the official ideology of the Polish People's Republic —Norman Da-vies, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 2 Sept. 1984 The full sense of minus in such contexts is usually "deprived of or "having lost" rather than simply "without." The word still retains something of an informal quality, but that does not make it inappropriate in most current writing. |
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