| 词组 | center |
| 释义 | center The intransitive verb center is idiomatically used with the prepositions on, upon, around, round, about, in, and at: • I wanted the Heisman, but my whole life wasn't centered on it —Jim Plunkett, quoted in Sports Illustrated, 23 Jan. 1984 • ... the town was a close-built brick huddle centered on a black river —John Updike, Bech is Back, 1982 • By May her thoughts were centered on him —Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, 1985 • ... the play centers upon the death of an eight-year-old flute-playing shepherd boy —Current Biography, March 1967 • The attack, slanderous and vile, centered around her prison story —Iris Noble, "First Woman Reporter," in Dreams and Decisions, ed. Carl B. Smith et al., 1983 • The novel itself is centered around a Norwegian village hostelry —Maxwell Geismar, TV. Y. Herald Tribune Book Rev., 1 Apr. 1940 • One group of apparent ironies, we noted, centred round the deflation of emotional considerations by practical ones —Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, 1957 • His delusions centered about money —John Updike, Couples, 1968 • ... the automobile that the accident seemed to center about was a 1932 Ford V-8 operated by one James Thurberg —James Thurber, letter, August 1935 • ... every literary movement centers about a political program —George Orwell, New Republic, 14 July 1941 • ... over 70 per cent of our expanding population continuing to center in the nation's major metropolitan areas —Sylvia Porter, Springfield (Mass.) Daily News, 13 Aug. 1969 • ... the love interest centers in Henry's chronic courtship of Beatrix —John E. Tilford, Jr., PMLA, September 1952 • ... for any interval [—a,a] centered at the origin — School Mathematics Study Group, Calculus, Part II, 1965 • Then I is simply an interval in S centered at 0 — Casper Goffman, Mathematics Mag., January 1974 The OED evidence, from the 17th century to the 19th century, shows primarily center in but includes some citations with upon, on, and around. Current American usage favors on and around. About has strong literary backing but is not as frequent as around. Upon is occasional; round is British. In seems to be less used than it was in the past. At is primarily mathematical. Beginning sometime in the 1920s, center around and (by implication) center round and center about were attacked as illogical. Most of the critics merely assert the illogic of center around without explanation or demonstration, and some (mostly contemporary college handbooks) do not even assert; they simply tell us that "many" or "some people" or people "generally" consider it illogical. One who does elaborate a bit is Theodore Bernstein, for whom center around was a favorite subject (he dealt with it in Winners & Sinners from 1956 until at least 1969 and devoted an article to it in his 1965 book). But to make his argument he has to claim that intransitive center possesses only a single narrow meaning, "to be collected or gathered at a point," and that, because of the idea of point, such a meaning requires in or on or at. Neither Evans 1962 nor Barnard 1979 mentions Bernstein, but both discussions show how inadequate his definition is: many centers are not points in the mathematical or any other sense, nor does the meaning of the verb always involve gathering or collecting. Probably no definition much less broad than "to have a center" (picking up the varied meanings of center the noun) is really adequate to the actual intransitive use of the verb. And this definition will easily allow any of the prepositions illustrated above. Bremner 1980 rejects center around because "it is physically impossible to center around." His observation must be true, since citations for center around tend not to refer to anything physical. But it does not follow that one should therefore always use center on, as Bremner claims. As you can see, the logic of those who call center around illogical is itself open to some question. But questionable or sound, logic is simply not the point. Center around is a standard idiom, as commentators increasingly concede (for example, Harper 1975, 1985, Chambers 1985, Ebbitt & Ebbitt 1982), even when they prefer another combination. You can use it freely, if you want to. Center on, however, is more common in current American use and is also standard. In addition, revolve and similar verbs will combine satisfactorily with around in many contexts where center and a particle typically appear. There is no lack of alternatives here. |
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