| 词组 | not about to |
| 释义 | not about to The idiom not about to has all the earmarks of being a relatively recent Americanism. It may have originally been regional, perhaps Southern and South Midland: the American Dialect Dictionary records it in West Virginia around 1942, and an article by Charles H. Hogan in American Speech (April 1945) identifies it with Texas. It was a feature of the speech of two American presidents (one from the Midland speech area and the other from close to the Southern): • Had I done so, I would have surrendered the civilian control of your government to the military, and I was not about to do that —Harry S. Truman (in Reader's Digest 1983) • Peace is the mission of the American people and we are not about to be deterred —Lyndon B. Johnson (in Harper 1975, 1985) It began to catch on popularly about 1960: • ... a lot of intelligent people weren't about to buy this argument —James A. Pike, Think, March 1960 • The thrifty Dutch are not about to spend their liquid gold recklessly —Time, 19 Oct. 1962 • ... but Miss Frutti, not about to miss anything, employed an ear trumpet —Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960 • ... is not about to back brother Bob in anti-Johnson rebellion —Robert D. Novak & Rowland Evans, Jr., Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 29 July 1964 • ... was not about to allow the rally to be turned into a fountain of... venom —TV. Y. Times, 26 June 1966 • ... Cardinal Mclntyre, who was not about to be named anyway —John Leo, Commonweal, 2 Dec. 1966 • ... he is not about to throw away any assets —Stewart Alsop, Newsweek, 21 Jan. 1969 • But Daley was not about to let the convention leave his city —Norman Mailer, Harper's, November 1968 The idiom did not come to the attention of critics until 1968, when Theodore Bernstein noticed it in the New York Times and decided it must be "substandard" ( Winners & Sinners, 8 Aug. 1968). He found it again a year later, upgrading it (if that is the word) to "colloquial" ( Winners & Sinners, 15 May 1969). The basis for most objections seems to be the possibility of ambiguity, since the phrase might be interpreted as the simple negative of about to, i.e., as meaning "not on the verge of." There is in fact no basis for this concern, because it simply is not used for that purpose and the context discourages such a reading; it is always used to express intention or determination. There is one difficulty with our story so far. Nothing about the words not about to bars them from having been used to express intention before the middle of the 20th century. The words are, in fact, so unspectacularly ordinary that they might have been used in that way sporadically for quite a long time without being noticed: • By the by, I expect Hanson to remit regularly; for I am not about to stay in this province for ever —Lord Byron, letter, 12 Nov. 1809 Byron is pretty clearly expressing intention here, but perhaps not determination. His use suggests that the expression may have been lurking unnoticed in the background all along; if there is anything peculiarly American about the idiom it may be the note of determination that is frequent in American use, and the frequency with which the phrase is now used. Reader's Digest 1983 says that it was "at first regarded as informal, suitable only for spoken use" but that it is "now acceptable in formal writing also." The expression has gained wide currency in American English and is no longer regionally restricted, if it ever was. It is used in speech and in edited prose, especially that of newspapers and magazines. It does not seem to have much in the way of literary use, but it is still in evidence in political circles: • Phil Gramm of Texas, my House supply-side ally, and I were not about to see the Reagan Revolution defeated by accounting gimmickry —David A. Stockman, Newsweek, 28 Apr. 1986 |
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