| 词组 | cohort |
| 释义 | cohort About 1950 people began to notice a new sense of cohort, one meaning "companion, colleague, follower." There was brief mention of it in Word Study in 1950 and by John W. Clark in British and American English Since 1900 (1951); it received longer treatment in American Speech in 1953. Jacques Barzun listed it with other usages he disliked in an article in 1957, and Bernstein 1958 included it. From there it spread into a great number of other usage books, many of which assert that cohort does not mean "companion, colleague, follower" but means rather some subdivision of a Roman legion or "band, company." How the new sense developed is a bit mysterious. Everybody agrees that it happened in America. Here is one idea of how the development may have occurred. First the word referred to a Roman military force—one tenth of a Roman legion: • When the cohort superseded the maniple, the Signum of the first maniple in each cohort was used as the standard of the cohort —The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1949 • There even were German cohorts in some of the Roman legions —W. Nelson Francis, The English Language, 1965 Then it developed a sense meaning any body of troops: • The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold —Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Sennacherib," 1815 Then the word was extended to any group or band: • ... to the dining room, where a cohort of brown-habited monks were already engaged in an orgy of swallowing ices —Osbert Sitwell, Noble Essences, 1950 • When the day came for Rabbi Silver to be inducted, Harry, with a loyal cohort of adherents, forcibly barred his entrance —S. N. Behrman, New Yorker, 1 May 1954 This "band, group" sense was also used in the plural: • If the Wood cohorts captured the Ohio delegation for their man, it would follow that Wood's adherents in the state would take over the party machinery — Samuel Hopkins Adams, Incredible Era, 1939 The problem with plural use is that it could be understood either as "groups"—as presumably the writer intended—or as "followers, colleagues"—understood as referring to a number of individuals forming one group rather than to a number of groups. Consider this example: • Twenty-one months ago Dr. Mossadegh and his cohorts nationalized the British-owned oil concession in southern Iran —TV. Y. Times, 25 Jan. 1953 The cohorts there could refer to followers or to groups, but there seems to be a tendency—particularly on the part of those not versed in the traditions of the Roman military—to interpret such a cohorts as referring to individuals. The earliest example of uncertain interpretation in our files dates from 1929: • Meanwhile Mart Strong had taken advantage of the momentary respite to close and lock his doors, and as Carry Nation and her cohorts swarmed forward and pounded the panels with fists and stones he could be heard frantically dragging furniture across the room and piling it into a barricade —Herbert Asbury, Carry Nation, 1929 The author uses the word here in a context describing a mob scene involving five hundred or more persons, not all of whom were supporters of Carry Nation—some were in opposition to her, and many were simply curious onlookers. Some pages later he uses the word again: • When Carry Nation led her embattled cohorts against the drug store O. L. Day had already applied for a permit to sell liquor for medicinal purposes Here the "embattled cohorts" demonstrates the appeal of the military metaphor, but the body of troops actually referred to were the members of the Medicine Lodge, Kansas, chapter of W.C.T.U. in 1899. Clearly Asbury was envisioning this troop of women as a Roman army marching into battle, but there is no comparison from the standpoint of numbers—probably no more than two or three dozen women were involved. The use of cohorts here is undoubtedly based on the similarity of the crusading women to soldiers marching into battle, and the matter of numbers probably never entered the author's mind. Still it is very easy for the reader to interpret the word as "friends, collaborators," or something similar. And it is probably from a number of similar figurative uses similarly interpreted that the new sense developed. The Byron quotation for the "group of soldiers" sense was chosen on purpose. At least two commentators, Gilbert Highet (quoted in Harper 1985) and Howard 1983, speculate that the popularity of the Byron poem fixed the word in the American consciousness, perhaps through the medium of 19th-century American school-books, and thus led to the new sense. The theory is interesting but unprovable. At any rate the sense was establishing itself by the 1940s. It is too firmly established in American English to be eradicated by commentators demonstrating their knowledge of Roman military organization. Here is a selection of examples from the 1940s to the present: • This convention ... formulated a second constitution which virtually restricted the suffrage to the freedmen and their white cohorts —Dictionary of American History, 1940 • With Dickinson and his cohorts perusing it in the meanwhile with critical eyes, it is not difficult to imagine the suffering of the too sensitive author — Claude G. Bowers, The Young Jefferson 1743-1789, 1945 • He also enlisted in the café cohorts of Pablo Picasso — Time, 4 Apr. 1949 • It was on the night of Jan. 16, 1938, that Benny Goodman and his now-illustrious cohorts took over Carnegie Hall —Newsweek, 18 Dec. 1950 • ... the rarer acknowledgment that the performers have also achieved what they were working for can be made about Miss Thompson and her cohorts — New Yorker, 20 Oct. 1951 • He was on the phone, talking to Henry Cabot Lodge or Tex McCrary or some such cohort —New Yorker, 5 Apr. 1952 • ... such cohorts as Trumpeter Buck Clayton, Vibra-phonist Red Norvo —Time, 28 Apr. 1952 • The old poet had left, accompanied by two of his cohorts —Mary McCarthy, The Groves of Academe, 1952 • ... brought in such cohorts as Senator Ferguson ... and Senator Knowland —Richard H. Rovere, New Yorker, 31 Jan. 1953 • ... and my special, only technically unassigned cohort grinned up at me —J. D. Salinger, New Yorker, 19 Nov. 1955 • ... Bishop Lowth and his cohorts introduced a smug this-is-correct attitude into the study of English — John Nist, A Structural History of English, 1966 • It is also the time to ask yourself how he cuts it in the A.M.—as a man, beyond being a sexual cohort — Jacqueline Brandwynne, Cosmopolitan, July 1975 • Nixon and his cohorts remain targets, not subjects —Max Lerner, Saturday Rev., 29 May 1976 • ... considering the appreciable evolutionary gap between us and our simian cohorts —John Pfeiffer, Smithsonian, June 1980 • After the death of Mao Zedong and the downfall of his widow and her cohorts —John Hersey, New Yorker, 10 May 1982 • ... centralizing the power in the hands of Stalin and his cohorts —Richard Lowenthal, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 3 Feb. 1985 It would appear that the New Yorker may have been influential in establishing this sense in sophisticated writing. The use seems to have spread even to British English (the OED Supplement has another example more recent than this): • It is more the pity then that he should use the new American vulgarism of "cohort" meaning "partner" — Times Literary Supp., 25 Nov. 1965 The "new American vulgarism" has firmly established itself in standard use in the past thirty or so years. Is it all Byron's doing? We'll probably never know. |
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