| 词组 | chronic |
| 释义 | chronic Copperud 1970, 1980 warns against misuse of chronic to mean "severe." This is a puzzling adjuration on the surface; we can find no evidence in our files of such use in edited prose. Two British sources, Phy-thian 1979 and Chambers 1985, mention a sense "bad, very bad, deplorable, intense, severe" that they describe as slangy or informal. This sense, it appears, is primarily British oral usage. Webster's Third describes it as British slang and the OED Supplement as "used colloq[uially] as a vague expression of disapproval." The evidence in the OED Supplement suggests that even this use is not especially common in written sources; its most common use seems to be in the generally adverbial combination something chronic: • It's made my eyes water something chronic —H. G. Wells, Mr. Polly, 1910 (OED Supplement) • So she started howling, and carrying on there something chronic —Richard Llewellyn, None But the Lonely Heart, 1943 • But that blasted curvilinear geometry of theirs, it stirred you up something chronic —Donald Jack, That's Me in the Middle, 1973 The only American use in our files remotely approaching this is the following one from O. Henry: • "Bill," says I, "there isn't any heart disease in your family, is there?" • "No," says Bill, "nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?"—"The Ransom of Red Chief," 1907 And even O. Henry is not markedly astray from the usual senses of the word. If there really is a usage problem here, it appears to be British. |
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