| 词组 | childish, childlike |
| 释义 | childish, childlike The conventional wisdom holds that childlike has positive or neutral connotations while childish has negative connotations. As a general guideline (though not, we shall see, as a strict rule), this is true. Childlike usually connotes some good quality such as innocence, trustfulness, or ingenuousness; it is also used in neutral description. Childish usually implies a quality such as immaturity or lack of complexity; occasionally it refers to the mental deterioration of old age. • ... the simple, direct, childlike quality which all observers note in the Chinese themselves —Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923 • He was a devout man, with a childlike trust in God —Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall, Men Against the Sea, 1934 • Her brow and eyes and hair are beautiful and childlike —Mabel F. Hale, New-England Galaxy, Winter 1965 • ... an adult should be an adult, occasionally childlike perhaps, but never childish —John R. Silber, Center Mag., September/October 1971 • Every problem becomes very childish when once it is explained to you —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1904 • Nodding, for it would have been childish to cut him, I walked on quickly —W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919 • ... she was living a childish fantasy —Herman Wouk, Marjorie Morningstar, 1955 • ... shaking their fists and calling childish phrases — Katherine Anne Porter, The Never-Ending Wrong, 1977 • ... his parents.... they were both getting childish and needed care —Pearl Buck, The Long Love, 1949 Fowler 1926 says that childlike should always be used of adults or their qualities, and the evidence agrees. Childish, not childlike, is used as a neutral adjective to refer to children. In this way writers avoid saying that something is like-a. child's when it is a child's. • ... a light, airy, childish laugh, in which ... he recognized the tones of little Pearl —Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 1850 • ... the clear, childish accents of the little children — Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall, Pitcairn 's Island, 1934 When something other than children is being referred to, childish is sometimes used in a neutral or positive context, whereas childlike is only rarely used in a negative context. These are the uses for which you may find yourself criticized. • ... the simple and childish virtues of veracity and honesty —Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Illusions," 1860, in A Century of the Essay, ed. David Daiches, 1951 • ... those memories had indeed made this day poignantly perfect, childish in its brazen delight —William Styron, Lie Down in Darkness, 1951 • She is a woman of beauty, very small, with childish wrists and ankles —Joyce Carol Oates, Harper's, August 1971 • ... assumptions that workers are basically lazy, conniving and childlike —John R. Coleman, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 5 Oct. 1975 Chinaman Most dictionaries and usage commentators note that Chinaman meaning "a Chinese" is considered offensive. The term is originally an Americanism and dates from the middle of the 19th century when Chinese immigrants encountered the Gold Rush boom on the West Coast. From American English the term found its way into British English, where, according to our most recent sources, it is also considered offensive. Current usage is a bit hard to describe. Our American evidence shows some examples of the old naive use— as if the user had no notion anyone found the term offensive—but more of knowing use that is intended satirically or is intended to hark back to those days when the expression was common. We have also seen it applied to porcelain figures—whether punningly we cannot be certain. Recent British use is somewhat puzzling: the term is used in literary contexts of fictional figures and in humorous contexts in Punch, but it is hard for an American to understand the intent—if there is any—of such use. Chinaman has one entirely inoffensive use in British English—it is the name of a cricket bowling delivery whose rough equivalent in baseball would be a slow breaking pitch. It is often lowercase in this use: • "Not many of these blokes," I told myself, "can read my chinaman and googly." —Gary Sobers, The People, 18 June 1967 |
| 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。