| 词组 | palpable |
| 释义 | palpable Fowler 1926 considers palpable a dead metaphor that can be brought to "angry life" by extended use. Krapp 1927 cautions that the word must be handled carefully, a sentiment echoed by Copperud 1970, 1980; Flesch 1964 thinks the word is bookish; Evans 1957 thinks palpable lie is no longer fresh. All of this cautionary exhortation seems belied by the fact that published writers who use the word—there seem to be plenty of them—have no particular difficulty with it. The primary meaning is "capable of being touched or felt," a sense that is common in medical use: • The liver span was 18 cm, and the edge was palpable 8 cm below the right costal margin —Howard Wilson, M.D., et al., JAMA, 23 Feb. 1979 By the 15th century, palpable was being used figuratively, applied to what could be perceived by senses other than touch: • ... Madame saw her smile at Lion. Hilda thought the smile was secret, but it was completely palpable to Madame —Rumer Godden, A Candle for St. Jude, 1948 • As palpable and constant as the smell in the house —Jean Stafford, New Yorker, 7 Apr. 1951 • ... the sharp drafts of autumn are palpable in the cool air flowing down the mountain —Stephen Goodwin, Prose, Fall 1972 Further extension, from the physical senses to mental perception, took place in the 16th century: • This vulgar notion is, indeed, a palpable error — Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, First Series, 1865 • That, I tell him, is palpable nonsense —David Brud-noy, National Rev., 17 Dec. 1971 • ... a modest but palpable good time —John Simon, New York, 26 Mar. 1973 • ... has sued directors for a "palpable break of fiduciary duty" in a class action suit —Maria Shao, Wall Street Jour., 8 June 1981 • ... I had dashed off my own offering on "the jury system." It was a palpable plagiarism from Mark Twain —The Autobiography of William Allen White, 1946 • No slander was too gross, no lie too palpable —Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, 1930 Figurative use is the predominant use in present-day English. Some writers signal the original sense of the word by overtly marking the figurative nature of their use: • "... you seem to be able to touch beauty as though it were a palpable thing ..." —W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919 • In the expiring, diffused twilight ... it was the immensity of space made visible—almost palpable —Joseph Conrad, Chance, 1913 • ... the strong constant smell of the pines was coming down on them with no wind behind it yet firm and hard as a hand almost, palpable against the moving body as water would have been —William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust, 1948 • ... a profligate alcoholic whose hatred of his father is so fierce it is almost palpable —Edith Oliver, New Yorker, 1 May 1971 • The moonlight seems palpable, a dense pure matrix in which is embedded curbstone and building alike —Walker Percy, The Moviegoer, 1961 There are, then, two ways to use palpable figuratively—with an overt signal, such as seem or almost, or without it, as most writers apparently prefer to do. If you use the word in ways like those of the writers quoted here, you are unlikely to go wrong. |
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