| 词组 | nary |
| 释义 | nary Nary started out as a dialect word and, when not followed by a or an, it still is. • ... nary whiskey under any circumstances —Walt Whitman, letter, 15 Apr. 1863 • ... they don't have nary constables now —Albert Potter (a deputy sheriff in Kentucky), quoted in N Y. Times, 5 Dec. 1976 Nary a/an, on the other hand, is now also used in mainstream English. • Nary a mention of it in the current summary —Sol M. Linowitz, Saturday Rev., 24 Mar. 1956 • They are so phrase-oriented that nary a single one passes without gentle sculpting at their hands —Lester Trimble, Stereo Rev., October 1971 • ... old-fashioned Christmas displays with nary a neon tree —Mary Ellen Slate, Antiques World, November 1981 • ... nary an officer could be seen —David Freed, Los Angeles Times, 8 Sept. 1984 Flesch 1964 calls this use "archaic English," but that it clearly is not. Bremner 1980 says it "sounds phony and studiedly quaint except on provincial lips." You can test that view against the examples just given. Nary is, in any case, a word that gets used deliberately for effect; we doubt that it is used unself-consciously except by those who acquired it as part of their native dialect. |
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