| 词组 | clandestine |
| 释义 | clandestine In a newspaper column in 1985 James J. Kilpatrick questioned the use of clandestine in a wire-service dispatch reporting the marriage of a rock star "in a clandestine ceremony." Kilpatrick says that clandestine is the wrong word here because it "implies something illicit." The problem with Kilpatrick's criticism is that it takes a narrower view of the application of clandestine than actual usage warrants. Clandestine is indeed used of things kept secret because they are unlawful: • ... to establish a control which would make the clandestine possession of bombs impossible —Sir George Thomson, New Republic, 14 Mar. 1955 • The actual number of clandestine abortions — Julienne Travers, Ms., April 1973 • ... the clandestine marketing of heroin in New York —Richard Grenier, Cosmopolitan, March 1972 Of course, sometimes the writer does not approve of those who make the activity unlawful, and then the term does not carry a connotation of evil: • Portugal's clandestine anti-Fascist Committee — Time, 4 Nov. 1946 • The editor of the Czecho-Slovak clandestine newspaper ... was executed —New Republic, 10 Aug. 1942 • The organized resistance, through the vital clandestine radio transmitters ... informs the people about what is really happening —Constantine C. Menges, Trans-Action, December 1968 • ... the determination and persistence of Tyndale's friends in their clandestine importing of his New Testaments into England —Ira M. Price, The Ancestry of Our English Bible, 1949 It is often used of covert government operations such as spying: • ... the co-operation of the British clandestine services —Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., /V. Y. Herald Tribune Book Rev., 24 Feb. 1946 • ... the scandalous clandestine involvement of the CIA in the affairs of the National Student Association —Edgar Z. Friedenberg, Change, Winter 1971 — 1972 • The Forty Committee under Kissinger approved another clandestine subsidy for Angola —Roger Morris, N.Y. Times Mag., 30 May 1976 Quite often the rule a clandestine action transgresses is vague or informal—sometimes it amounts to no more than the usual way society expects people to behave, or what is expected by peers, supervisors, or spouses: • ... they managed frequent clandestine meetings and kept up a constant exchange of letters —Nancy Wilson Ross, Saturday Rev., 15 Apr. 1972 • A girl who is excited by clandestine sex in a man's apartment —David R. Reuben, M.D., McCall's, March 1971 • A physician, for instance, may engage in clandestine fee splitting —Fortune, February 1954 • ... that clandestine interest in the macabre and morbid that is to be found throughout the course of nineteenth century literature —Bernard Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition, 1945 • ... in the spirit of a dipsomaniac hiding bottles for his clandestine use —Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis, Atlantic, February 1947 • She proposed a clandestine marriage, but he swore that when afterwards detected, it would cause his dismissal —Anthony Trollope, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, 1847 The common thread running through most of these uses, besides the denotation of secrecy, is the connotation of fear of discovery. In Trollope's use of clandestine about a marriage, the man fears for his job if the marriage is discovered: this is a mainstream use of clandestine. In the wire-service story at the beginning of this article, fear is not involved: the rock star may be shunning the news media, but he certainly does not fear them. And this is why the wire-service use strikes us, as well as James J. Kilpatrick, as a bit odd. |
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