| 词组 | cement, concrete |
| 释义 | cement, concrete Some time around the year 1300, according to the OED, a writer described a certain kind of clay as being strong as iron, stone, or cement. This writer was not sent a corrective letter pointing out that he must have meant concrete, since cement is only one ingredient of concrete—because the word concrete had not yet entered the language. Modern writers are not so lucky. Let a writer in the Wall Street Journal mention dragging a carton "across the cement floor," and someone will send a letter to the editor, giving the information above and (odds are) adding a recipe for concrete into the bargain. The first thing to realize here is that if confusion exists, it lies solely in the realm of words, not things. The contractor who laid the floor had no difficulty in distinguishing the material cement from the material concrete. And once the floor is laid, what you call it is of little consequence. You can call it "cement," as our ancestors did, or "concrete," as the letter writer does; the floor remains unaffected. As a term for a mixture of ingredients that sets hard when combined with water, cement is a term some 500 years older than concrete. Concrete began as an adjective, and was not used as a noun of the building material until the 19th century. Concrete is a more frequently used word than cement. In general, as distinguished from technical, writing, both are most common in figurative uses: • ... the social cement that held the Fore hamlets together —E. Richard Sorenson, Smithsonian, May 1977 • There were boys and young men all over the halls, lounging, smoking, spitting, talking loudly in the concrete accents of the New York streets —Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions, 1948 • On this symbolic issue, he declared, his feet were set in cement —Richard J. Whalen, N.Y. Times Mag., 22 Feb. 1976 • ... a mythology is being slowly, steadily, set in concrete —Eric Sevareid, Saturday Rev., 2 Oct. 1976 • Property having been the cement of their marriage —Sonya O'Sullivan, Cosmopolitan, April 1976 • ... they limit our vision and persuade us that we can exercise choice over that which is set in the concrete of the present —Harper's, December 1971 In reference to the building material, we find concrete currently more frequent than cement, quite possibly because of the increased use of concrete as a building material. Both words are still used of some familiar things: • The cement floors and sheetrock walls ring with industry and joy —Judson Jerome, Change, September 1971 • ... ochre-stained concrete floors —Southern Living, November 1971 • Tap ... tap ... tap. Heels on the cement walk—John Rechy, Evergreen, December 1967 • ... garden apartments situated on a hilly mound, with a pond and concrete paths —John Coyne & Thomas Herbert, Change, Winter 1971-1972 But in some combinations only concrete is found: • The white beams crossing white beams, all of pre-stressed concrete —Horace Sutton, Saturday Rev., December 1978 Conclusion: the use of cement to refer to various building materials now mostly known as concrete has been around for some 600 years. Objection to its use, in other than technical contexts, in such combinations as "cement floors" or "cement walks" is pedantic. However, more people are using concrete than cement to describe such things these days, and there is certainly nothing wrong either with maintaining the technical distinction in general writing. |
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