| 词组 | nite |
| 释义 | nite Nite is a bit of a curiosity. Some people have thought it was associated with the spelling reform movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but it seems not to have been: in the few dictionaries of simplified spellings in our library, nite is conspicuously absent. It seems to have been poorly thought of even by the reformers, possibly because it had gained a bad reputation from its employment by the willfully misspelling 19th-century American humorists: • But the fack can't be no longer disgised that a Krysis is onto us, & I feel it's my dooty to accept your invite for one consecutive nite only —Artemus Ward: His Book, 1862 Nite is also attested in the works of Petroleum V. Nasby and could probably be found in the works of other humorists of that era. Although snubbed by the reformers, nite has made considerable headway in the 20th century. Mencken 1963 (abridged) associates nite with advertising writers. Our earliest 20th-century attestation is from a discussion of the spelling in the New York Times Magazine (26 Oct. 1930), in which the writer also associates nite with advertisers and makers of electric signs. It is clear from the evidence that much of the advertising using nite was for entertainment and show business: combinations such as nite club, nite life, and nite spot are common. A slightly later development finds nite as part of the name of an event: • The Tilbury Rotary Club will present a Holiday Festival Nite on Tuesday —Chatham (Ontario) Daily News, 26 June 1980 • Have this wish on Auction nite —Prime Time, April 1981 So nite is apparently an arbitrary respelling used by American humorists in the 19th century and by American advertisers from at least 1930. The OED Supplement shows it appearing in British English in the 1960s. It is probably older and more widespread than our evidence shows, but it does not seem to have made any inroads into standard written usage. • ... for at least the last forty years high school students have been substituting "nite" for "night" without affecting usage one iota —Paul Bixler, Antioch Rev., December 1956 Mr Bixler's comment still holds. Nite will continue to be used in advertising and in the names of events like "Las Vegas Nite," but it is not a spelling you will want to use in ordinary prose. |
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