| 词组 | dastardly |
| 释义 | dastardly In 1926 H. W. Fowler, with his eye fixed firmly on the 19th century, pronounced the opinion that dastardly must mean "cowardly" and that to apply it to acts that involved or persons who took any risk was to misuse it. This opinion was repeated by Evans 1957 and carried unchanged by Gowers into Fowler 1965; Heritage 1982 offers a slightly modified version. Now, you can in fact find such use if you look back far enough: • She now determined that a virtuous woman Should rather face and overcome temptation, That flight was base and dastardly—Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto i, 1819 • Choosing the safe side, however, appeared to me to be playing a rather dastardly part —George Borrow, The Romany Rye, 1857 But it is hard to find this sense applied to persons. In the following examples there is an element of cowardice, but it would not appear to be the dominant notion: • Sir, you are no brutal dastardly idiot like your brother I frightened to death: let us understand one another —Robert Browning, Pippa Passes, 1841 • ... he would have fought him to the death; but he had no such opportunity; the dastardly brute had trampled on him when he could not turn against him —Anthony Trollope, The Macdermots of Bally-cloran, 1847 • ... expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnapers —O. Henry, "The Ransom of Red Chief," 1907 Dastardly seems to emphasize something done behind another's back, underhandedly, sneakily, or treacherously—or a person who would do such things—rather than mere cowardice. Even Fowler noted this aspect of meaning—"acts... so carried out as not to give the victim a sporting chance"—in deprecating the use. But Flesch 1964 puts his finger on another characteristic that keeps dastardly—a fairly uncommon word in literary use—alive: "dastardly is a piece of oldfashioned rhetoric." And indeed it is. It is quite regularly used in the public denunciation of some reprehensible deed: • The horrible tragedy ... has been summarily avenged, and the last of the perpetrators and participants have made atonement with their lives for the dastardly crime —Tombstone Republican, 28 Mar. 1884, in Douglas D. Martin, Tombstone's Epitaph, 1951 • I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, a state of war has existed —Franklin D. Roosevelt, war message to Congress, 8 Dec. 1941, in Nothing to Fear, ed. B. D. Zevin, 1946 • But during late years oil money from outside has gone into the Fourth Texas District in a dastardly effort to defeat a man who had represented not only his district, but his state, with distinction —Harold L. Ickes, New Republic, 15 May 1950 It would appear to be the faint odor of the black-caped villains of 19th-century popular melodrama, twirling their mustaches and gloating evilly over their misdeeds, that clings to dastardly and keeps it in contemporary use: • ... when Dallas' dastardly J. R. Ewing reweds Sue Ellen on CBS this week —Sue Reilly, People, 6 Dec. 1982 • ... the worst the dastardly villain ... could think of in the torture line was briskly pummeling his victim with a truncheon —Robert Lekachman, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 19 Feb. 1984 • ... to help uncover the dastardly scheme hatched by Madame Bardoff —Caroline Seebohm, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 5 June 1977 • ... Peter Loire and Sidney Greenstreet clones out to commit dastardly acts of espionage and other malevolent mischief—Pat Sellers, US, 28 Sept. 1982 The rhetorical use has even spawned another use of dastardly that simply expresses disapproval: • ... when the stool-mouse Patrick discovers the dastardly truth and bravely reveals all —Times Literary Supp., 16 Apr. 1970 • What is this dastardly threat to pleasure at sundown ... ? —Donald J. Gonzales, "Crisis at the Cocktail Hour," Saturday Rev., 15 Nov. 1975 • But history had a dastardly trick in store for those helpful birds —Neil Dana Glukin, Early American Life, June 1977 In effect, the "cowardly" sense of dastardly has been fading out of use for a century or more and seems destined to join the original sense of "dull, stupid" in the obscurity of the historical dictionaries. During a period from around 1850 to around 1950, dastardly often connoted underhandedness and treachery. Since about 1950 the word has been kept in use by its overtones of rhetorical denunciation and the stage villain of melodrama, and it is now even weakening into use as a generalized term of disapproval. There is no point in looking backwards. |
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