| 词组 | demean |
| 释义 | demean Demean is two verbs. The first, related to demeanor, dates from the 14th century. The second, formed from the prefix de- and the adjective mean, apparently on the model of debase, dates from the 17th century. Some 18th-century pundits—Baker 1770 and Campbell 1776—disapproved of the second verb on the grounds that it was a misuse of the first. Baker for instance says it "is used by all the lower People, as well as by great Numbers of their Betters, to signify Debase or Lessen. It is also found in the same Sense in bad Writers." Among the bad writers Baker numbers Richardson, whose novel Pamela he calls "emetic." He supposes that occurrence of the second demean in Swift and Bolingbroke was due to "oversight." The mistaken opinions of 18th-century commentators often have long lives. This one continued through the 19th century: we find it in Gould 1870 and Ayres 1881, and it seems to have been discussed at length by Fitzedward Hall in an 1891 magazine article (Hall produced many examples but didn't like the usage). The topic persisted into the 20th century with Vizetelly 1906, Bierce 1909, MacCracken & Sandison 1917, John O'London's 1925 Is It Good English?, and a great many other commentators of the 1920s. Fowler 1926 recognized that there were two verbs, but he disapproved of the second one. Still later we find Partridge 1942 and Follett 1966 registering disapproval. Defenders of the second demean came late into the field. Hall 1917 added citations from Dickens, Thackeray, and Emerson to the authors Fitzedward Hall and others had mentioned; Bernstein 1965, 1971 and Evans 1957 called it standard. In the meantime it had appeared in dictionaries. Samuel Johnson seems to have been the first lexicographer to recognize it (it is not in Nathan Bailey's earlier dictionary); he included it as a second sense under the first demean. If Richardson and Goldsmith had used the meaning, Johnson was probably familiar with it. But he illustrated it with a passage from Shakespeare in which the first demean was probably intended but the context permitted either interpretation: • Now, out of doubt, Antipholus is mad; Else he would never so demean himself—The Comedy of Errors, 1593 Webster picked it up from Johnson, and Worcester from Webster, and the OED notes it without censure, giving a 1601 citation as the earliest. Partridge found the second demean to be growing obsolescent in the 1940's, but quite the opposite is the case today: the second demean is almost the only one in current use; the first demean has become rare. Here are some examples of the first demean: • ... it shall be my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her Ladyship — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813 • ... he might have been observed to demean himself as a person with nothing to do —Henry James, The Wings of the Dove, 1902 • Might not your paper demean itself with more attention to the niceties of diction? —letter to the editor, Washington Post & Times Herald, 21 Oct. 1954 And a few of the second: • ... expected the same services from me as he would from another, while I thought he demeaned me too much in some he required of me, who from a brother expected more indulgence —Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1771 • A narrow life in Budmouth might have completely demeaned her —Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native, 1878 • No statistical description can either explain or demean a poem —R. P. Blackmur, in American Literary Criticism 1900-1950, by Charles I. Glicksberg, 1951 • ... I don't think it demeans her elegant classical style in the least —Arlene Croce, Harper's, April 1971 The first demean is used reflexively, usually with a phrase specifying how one demeans oneself; the second demean may be used reflexively or not. The first demean is now a rather bookish word, and since the equally bookish comport is available as a replacement (not to mention the plainer conduct and behave), its continuing in vigorous use appears somewhat unlikely. The second demean has the field practically to itself. The most recent usage books in our collection fail even to mention the issue. |
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