| 词组 | around |
| 释义 | around 1. Around, about. The propriety of using around in senses it shares with about seems first to have been questioned by M. Scheie De Vere in his Americanisms of 1872. He modestly defers to John Russell Bartlett, whose 1859 edition of his Dictionary of Americanisms gave a couple of examples, but Bartlett merely listed the examples rather than censuring them. Bardeen 1883 notes only Scheie De Vere's stricture and the fact that the sense is recorded in Webster 1864 with this quotation: • I was standing around when the fight took place — N. Y. Police Gazette Such a source in the dictionary seems to surprise Bardeen, but it was a well-traveled quotation, having first appeared in Bartlett and having been used by Scheie De Vere too. Bardeen describes the use as "in dispute." Other usage writers of the time ignored the issue, althought it did surface upon occasion in the newspapers: • How regularly "around" is used and abused when "about" is the right word! Thus: "I guess we will be able to go around Noo York with you this afternoon." —letter to editor, Springfield (Mass.) Republican, 18 Dec. 1902 Ambrose Bierce picked the subject up in 1909, objecting to "The débris of battle lay around them" and "The huckster went around, crying his wares." Bierce brought something new to the subject—a reason for objecting: "Around carries the concept of circularity." From Bierce on, the subject becomes a regular feature of usage books and handbooks. An interesting aspect of the around-about issue is its ability to migrate from sense to sense of around and from one construction to another, as if the commentators were not quite sure of what they should be advising people to avoid. Bierce added a prepositional use to the adverb criticized by Scheie De Vere; Jensen 1935 criticizes adverbial uses, which also figure in Watt 1967 and Prentice-Hall 1978. Somewhere along the line the sense of around meaning "approximately" or "near" is picked up, and for Bernstein 1965, Shaw 1970, Nickles 1974, and Janis 1984 it has become the chief focus of criticism. This sense had not even been recorded when Scheie De Vere made the original comment. And there is another aspect of the use of around to consider: the difference between British and American usage. All of the various usages criticized by American commentators are predominantly American in use and some are American in origin. Why American commentators are so persistently diffident about our native usages is somewhat of a mystery. Recent British commentators (Longman 1984, Burchfield 1981 ) do not disparage the "approximately" use, for instance; they merely say it is more usual in the U.S. than in Britain; Chambers 1985 even finds it in informal British use. Since the "approximately" or "near" sense of around is at present the one most often objected to, we will give here some examples of its use by American authors: • ... looking forty instead of what she was, around twenty-two —American Mercury, March 1928 • The idea of becoming a composer seems gradually to have dawned upon me some time around 1916 — Aaron Copland, Our New Music, 1941 • Around ten o'clock the little five-piece band got tired of messing around with a rhumba —Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder, 1950 • It was around two bells. The starboard watch had just gone below —Captain Harry Allen Chippendale, Sails and Whales, 1951 • He was a bullet-headed man of around sixty —John Cheever, The Reporter, 29 Dec. 1955 • ... overhung the rim of the bench at an angle of around thirty degrees —John Updike, New Yorker, 3 Dec. 1955 • Around six thousand years ago —Lewis Mumford, New Yorker, 3 Mar. 1956 • My father, for around half a century, was the leading Liberal of the community —John Kenneth Gal-braith, The Scotch, 1964 • Around the turn of the century, grammarians adjured writers not to use people for persons individually —Bernstein 1971 • ... a word that would have been unprintable until around 1960 —John Gross, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 15 July 1984 Although the OED marks this sense U.S., other British commentators recognize its existence in British English; everybody agrees that about is much more common. Here are a few samples from writers of British English: • ... a rate of natural increase for Quebec of around 17 per thousand —B. K. Sandwell, The Canadian Peoples, 1941 • If the land be in need of lime, this should be applied around November —Henry Wynmalen, Horse Breeding and Stud Management, 1950 • Leopoldina Terminal debentures were also better at 86 and the ordinary units changed hands around 1 s. 6d. —Railway Gazette, 15 Dec. 1950 • ... at around the same price —The Bulletin (Sydney, Australia), 10 Feb. 1954 • ... around and before the beginning of the Christian era —Stuart Piggot, London Calling, 10 June 1954 • Around fourteen per cent, of students —Sir James Mountford, British Universities, 1966 • ... around that time, many of the halls built for dancing came to be converted into skating-rinks — Frances Rust, Dance in Society, 1969 In sum, you can use around in senses it shares with about without apologizing or feeling diffident—especially if you are an American. A handful of surveys made back around 1954 showed about more common than around even in American use; nothing seems to have been done recently to estimate relative frequency. See also about. 2.Around, round. Everybody knows that around is more common in American English and round more common in British English. "More common" does not imply exclusiveness, however; both words are in use on both sides of the Atlantic and have been for a good while— even though the OED notes that around was rare before 1600. A number of commentators say, and evidence in the OED Supplement shows, that some originally American uses of around have become established to some extent in British English. In addition to the "about, approximately" sense documented above, there is the phrase have been around: • I'd been around long enough to find out that... — Len Deighton, Spy Story, 1974 • ... was a friend of some of the really big wheels south of the border Moar had been around —Ronald A. Keith, Bush Pilot With a Briefcase, 1972 These next examples show the perhaps unexpected cross-national use of around and round: • ... he has not got around to this conundrum —John V. Kelleher, Irish Digest, December 1954 • ... destined to be finally extinguished when we got around to it —Manchester Guardian Weekly, 10 Nov. 1944 • ... all explanations must accommodate to them, not the other way round —William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl, 1978 In these examples we have British evidence for both words in similar constructions: • A look around Krefeld —Manchester Guardian Weekly, 9 Mar. 1945 • An English friend whom he took round California — Foster 1968 • It was Wood who should have gone to Australia, and Luckhurst to India, not the other way around — Tony Lewis, Cricketer International, August 1976 • ... these days it is usually the other way round — Times Literary Supp., 22 Oct. 1971 • "... Actually, I shall be in all evening, if you would like to call around" —Michael Ryan, Irish Digest, December 1955 • "... I just got your letter and came straight round ..." —Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat, 1970 • It was visiting day and there were a lot of women around to see their husbands —Graham Greene, Travels with my Aunt, 1969 Sometimes the same writer will even use both: • ... the old steam-engines that used to chug around Edinburgh —David Daiches, The Listener, 13 Dec. 1973 • ... railway line that ran right round the city —David Daiches, The Listener, 13 Dec. 1973 And these are American examples of both round and around in the same expression: • So I worked on him a bit, you know, telling him how he owes me and he starts to come around and then he says "... I'll see what I can do." —Philadelphia bar patron, quoted in Michael J. Bell, The World from Brown's Lounge, 1983 • A great obstacle to nuptials would seem to be O'Neal's ... children ... but apparently they have now come round —Kristin McMurran, People, 11 May 1981 Clearly you can use whichever word you feel is most natural for you, whether you are British or American. |
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