| 词组 | apropos, apropos of, apropos to |
| 释义 | apropos, apropos of, apropos to Apropos is a word taken into English from the French phrase à propos in the second half of the 17th century. It has functioned variously as an adjective, adverb, noun, and preposition. No one would have given it a second thought, perhaps, had not Fowler 1926 written apropos is so clearly marked by its pronunciation as French, & the French construction is, owing to à propos de bottes, so familiar, that it is better always to use of rather than to after it.... Fowler gives no further elucidation, but presumably he felt of to be better because it translates the French de of the longer phrase. At any rate, such later commentators as Copperud 1970, 1980 and Bernstein 1965 take Fowler's recommendation to be a virtual commandment to use of and not to use to. Apropos of functions in English as a compound preposition; it has been functioning as a compound preposition in English since the middle of the 18th century. Some dictionaries—for instance, Webster's Ninth New Collegiate—recognize it as such. Some examples follow: • ... tell you a story apropos of two noble instances of fidelity and generosity —Horace Walpole, letter, 1750 (in Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1892) • It was such an odd expression, coming apropos of nothing, that it quite startled me —Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897 • ... apropos of the election of 1900, when McKinley ran against Bryan —Edmund Wilson, New Yorker, 20 Oct. 1951 • Apropos of the Congressional vote to terminate action in Cambodia ... he writes —Barbara W. Tuchman, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 11 Nov. 1979 Early in the 20th century it began to be used without of as a preposition having the same meaning: • ... remarked the other day, apropos the formal ending of the censorship —Dorothy Thompson, Saturday Rev., 20 May 1939 • One of Oscar Wilde's characters made, apropos another character, the famous remark, "He always behaves like a gentleman—a thing no gentleman ever does" —Joseph Wood Krutch, Saturday Rev., 30 Jan. 1954 • "The subject is unpleasant to dwell on," he writes primly, apropos the "life-denying nihilism" in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" —Dwight Macdonald, New Yorker, 13 Oct. 1956 • A propos the exclusively female consciousness — John Bayley, Times Literary Supp., 22 Aug. 1980 The use of to with apropos is not so much wrong (even Fowler did not call it wrong) as rare. The combination is used in two ways. First, we find to used when apropos is a predicate adjective meaning "appropriate": • ... the remark was particularly apropos to the large wisdom of the stranger's tone and air —Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Notebooks, 1838 (in Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1892) • This indicates that Nuclear Science Abstracts source documents are more apropos to this particular group than Science Citation Index source documents —C. R. Sage, American Documentation, October 1966 • Mudrick quotes a fan letter apropos of the Life, and apropos to his argument —D. J. Enright, Times Literary Supp., January 1980 The combination is also used, though less often, as a preposition equivalent to apropos of: • ... it was, I think, apropos to some zoological discussion —John Gibson Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, 1838 • Apropos to this, you ask me what my plans are — Henry Adams, letter, 3 Nov. 1858 • ... the excellent and uplifted of all lands would write me, apropos to each new piece of broad-minded folly —Rudyard Kipling, excerpt from his Autobiography, reprinted in N. Y. Times, 10 Feb. 1937 As prepositions, apropos of and apropos are usual. Apropos to is in occasional use; it is rare but not wrong. |
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