| 词组 | casket, coffin |
| 释义 | casket, coffin It is perhaps a bit surprising to see comment on the use of the all-American euphemism casket still being published in the 1980s. But it is there in Harper 1985 (as also in the 1975 edition) and Bremner 1980. The earliest citation in print is Nathaniel Hawthorne's disapproving notice of 1863: "a vile modern phrase" (OED Supplement). The usages that incurred Hawthorne's disapproval have so far escaped lexicographers. The OED Supplement reproduces an earlier citation (1849) from a letter written by a woman in North Carolina. Her use, however, is clearly metaphorical (the bracketed gloss was supplied by Norman Elia-son, the editor of the book, Tarheel Talk, 1956, where the letter is cited): • ... casket, which held this jewel [her dead friend], was worthy of it. Eliason notes that aside from this single casket, the term used was coffin (p. 189); it is unlikely this single metaphor is the origin of the use to which Hawthorne objected. That must have come in around the time of the Civil War; Mencken 1936 notes that case competed with casket at this time, ultimately losing out. An 1869 commentator (Bache, Vulgarisms) thought the use of casket to be "trifling with a serious thing." The term was put on William Cullen Bryant's Index Expurgatorius (published in 1877 but compiled earlier) as a euphemism and carried from there into the style rules of various newspapers. It was still being disapproved at the New York Times by Theodore Bernstein in 1958 (Watch Your Language). From around the turn of the century, the adoption of casket in preference to coffin was being urged by the undertaking trade, along with various other changes in terminology. Although usage commentators disparaged the term, and although the suspicion that a casket was more expensive than a coffin received public expression, the term nevertheless seems to have reached acceptance. There is no evidence that it raises an eyebrow anymore. Several sources—a trade source cited by Mencken, and Jessica Mitford, cited by the OED Supplement—point out that in the U.S. a casket is of rectangular design, while a coffin has the traditional tapered shape. Coffin is the standard term in British English. |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。