| 词组 | not too |
| 释义 | not too Too in the sense of "very," a sense in which it almost always occurs with not or some other negative, came to the attention of the American public shortly after World War II. Our earliest evidence is from a column in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1946; the columnist, Ted Robinson, noted that the idiom not too hot or not too good was being used in place of not so hot or not so good. He seems to have found the idiom less than acceptable. In 1948 Jacques Barzun initiated a series of letters discussing the construction in Word Study. Barzun termed it a "dreadful modern use" then and has implacably opposed it ever since: in Barzun 1985 it is called a "widespread illiteracy." Fowler 1926 had encountered the construction before the Americans. In a short list of illogical uses of too that he classified as "sturdy indefensibles," he had this example: "We need not attach too much importance to the differences between Liberal & Labour." So the two lines of opinion about the not too construction were born independently, with the Barzun line hostile and the Fowler line relatively tolerant. Except for Fowler all commentary has been American; the construction is apparently unnoticed in British English today. Barzun supposed the not too construction to have been a corruption of none too, which seems rather unlikely given that the example he originally objected to concerned a student who "didn't study too much." It would take a pretty determined corrupter to turn "studied none too much" into "didn't study too much." Copperud 1970, 1980 assumes not too to be a Briticism, since Fowler was tolerant of it. But the idea of British origin does not fit in with the earliest American complaint. The two words are simply too easy to put together for their combination to be ascribable to any particular origin. Many times not too is all but invisible: • He was up here not too long ago, playing his guitar and singing —James Thurber, letter, 30 Jan. 1951 • ... I find myself 21 years later, still the owner of one-half share. In case you are not too familiar with current Wall Street prices, an entire share can be purchased for $1.10 —Groucho Marx, letter, 18 Oct. 1951 • today, i was informed that midgets are scarce "all of the good midgets are working, etc." i am not going to be able to shake off too many of these crises — Fred Allen, letter, 13 Oct. 1950 • This first slope wasn't too bad although it was steep —Leslie A. Viereck, Dartmouth Alumni Mag., October 1954 Not too is most often a form of mild understatement: • ... academic appointments which leave him leisure for research are not too difficult to secure —Report: Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters & Sciences, 1949-1951 (Ottawa, Canada) • In southern Victoria the drainage-quality of some soils isn't too good —The Bulletin (Sydney, Australia), 24 Feb. 1954 • ... can be not too arbitrarily divided into three periods —Edgar S. Furniss, Jr., Yale Rev., Autumn 1954 • At its best a legislative investigation is not too satisfactory a place to be concerned with individual rights —Erwin N. Griswold, Harvard Law School Record, 21 Oct. 1954 • The great wars had not wrought too many changes in them —Saul Bellow, New Republic, 23 May 1955 • ... the Szechuanese dialect is not too far from pure Mandarin —John Hersey, A Single Pebble, 1956 • ... though they may differ on theoretical grounds, their end results are not too divergent —Albert H. Marckwardt, in The College Teaching of English, ed. John C. Gerber, 1965 • My God! Is decent diction itself to be consigned to rubble even before the next nuclear bomb is dropped? (As a former Secretary of the Army, I am not too surprised about the Air Force general.) — Elvis Stahr, Jr., in Harper 1985 A few instances are intended more ironically: • ... the truth is that Postmaster General Summerfield is privately not too happy with his lot in the Administration —Newsweek, 29 Nov. 1954 • There was plenty of applause to go around for everybody that night, but Henry was not any too friendly —Harry S. Truman, quoted in Merle Miller, Plain Speaking, 1973 The "very" sense of too is found occasionally with other negatives, like never: • It never was too easy to find a publisher for a scholarly book —R. D. Altick, The Scholar Adventurers, 1950 • The purpose for this change has never been too satisfactorily articulated —Calvin H. Plimpton, Amherst College Bulletin, November 1967 A repeated complaint of the commentators who do not like the construction is that not too "not very" can be confused with not too "not excessively." But although the latter combination is used, it is quite easy to distinguish from the "not very" construction: • Such a reaction should not too quickly be dismissed —Richard Poirier, A World Elsewhere, 1966 The commentators who, like Barzun, disapprove of not too include Cook 1985, Copperud 1970, 1980, the usage panels of Heritage 1969, 1982, Nickles 1974, Zinsser 1976, Follett 1966, and Bernstein 1958, 1965. Those who approve or are at least as tolerant as Fowler include the usage panels of Harper 1975, 1985, Evans 1962, and Thomas H. Middleton (Saturday Rev., 19 Oct. 1974). Shaw 1975, 1987 is ambivalent. So what is to be made of all this? If you look back at the examples, you will see no traces of illiteracy or of sloppy writing. Not too is simply one of the negative-construction forms of understatement (not all that is another; see all that) that have become popular since World War II and have drawn fire for just that reason. The examples are impeccably standard; so is the construction. |
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