| 词组 | comic, comical |
| 释义 | comic, comical A number of commentators hasten to distinguish between these words, generally on the grounds that comic applies to what is intentionally funny and comical to what is unintentionally funny. Most of these commentators also note some inter-changeability of the two; Chambers 1985, for instance, notes some usurping of comicats territory by comic. Copperud 1970 notes that dictionaries do no make the same distinction. The dictionaries are closer to reality than the commentators, whose analysis fails in two points. First, comic is a much more common word than comical. Being more familiar, comic tends to be used in places where comical might have been chosen. And second, the distinction the commentators draw is somewhat off base. Such distinction as there is rests on the fact that while comic can be used of anything that is funny, comical tends to be used of what is funny by reason of being unexpected or startling. Comic is the all-purpose adjective for comedy; comical is not used in that way. Comic may stress thoughtful amusement; comical spontaneous, unrestrained hilarity. Here are examples of each: • ... with but the smallest twist, Gladstone's words and actions can be transformed from Victorian gold into comic lead —Sheldon Rothblatt, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 5 Aug. 1984 • ... a constant sad and funny picture too. It is the knight that goes out to defend somebody who don't want to be defended It is comical and a little sad—William Faulkner, 13 May 1957, in Faulkner in the University, 1959 • These aren't cheerful tales, though they're often sharp and grotesquely comic —Times Literary Supp., 23 Apr. 1970 • ... he looked so comical that some of the natives laughed —Boy's Life, June 1953 • The police appear as comic figures who have no intention of arresting anybody —Lewis H. Lapham, Harper's, November 1971 • ... arrayed in clothes so shapeless and ill fitting that they gave his figure a comical air of having been loosely and inaccurately strung together from a selection of stuffed bags of cloth —Leslie Charteris, The Happy Highwayman, 1935 • We are dealing with a comic perspective —Norman Mailer, Harper's, March 1971 |
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