| 词组 | deprecating, deprecatory, depreciatory |
| 释义 | deprecating, deprecatory, depreciatory These three adjectives have been introduced into the discussion of deprecate and depreciate by some commentators. Such introduction tends to be irrelevant to an understanding of the verbs, for only deprecating is derived from the verb and the adjectives have led their own separate existence. The oldest of the set is deprecatory. The OED shows that it was originally used of prayer—this is the connection to deprecation that deprecatory shares with deprecate. Swift in 1704 took the adjective into the secular world, where it has been used in the sense "seeking to avert disapproval, apologetic" ever since. • "Why did you not wait for me, sir, to escort me downstairs?" she said, giving a little toss of her head and a most sarcastic curtsey. • "I couldn't stand up in the passage," he answered with a comical deprecatory look —W. M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, 1848 • Why, we ourselves, the official advocates of study, generally feel constrained to express our admiration of it in deprecatory terms —C. H. Grandgent, Old and New, 1920 • ... made a politely deprecatory little speech. "We may not be as good as you remember us," she said — Time, 18 Sept. 1950 Krapp 1927 understood this sense, but not Bernstein 1958, who, misled by H. W. Fowler's discussion of the verb, confused it with depreciatory. Deprecatory later—probably under the influence of the verb—developed its second sense of "disapproving": • ... quotation marks are not normally employed with words of common usage, except in a deprecatory or ironic sense —Rosemary Neiswender, Library Jour., 15 Mar. 1966 In some examples of this sense, disparagement is clearly mixed with or is perhaps more important than disapproval: • If it were true that [Henry] Adams's deprecatory estimate of what education did for him was applicable to everybody, we should be obliged to be more than a little appalled —Mark Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 1927 • ... some deprecatory title such as "the moron course" —Educational Research Bulletin, 19 Jan. 1949 • ... the modernized disciplines have become academic again in the old, deprecatory sense of the term —Steven Marcus, Times Literary Supp., 27 Aug. 1976 In such use the word is hard to distinguish from depreciatory. Depreciatory is a 19th-century word that regularly means "disparaging": • ... a depreciatory term conveying the notion of a shallow critic or trifling virtuoso —Everyday Phrases Explained, 1913 • ... as little is not often used with depreciatory adjectives —Jespersen 1917 • ... nonart (the word is not to be taken as depreciatory) —Wayne Shumaker, Elements of Critical Theory, 1952 We have but a single example of depreciatory used by mistake for the first sense of deprecatory. Perhaps, to borrow a notion from Flesch 1964, the writer was scared into it by some usage commentator: • Santayana laughed his gentle, depreciatory laugh — George Biddle, The Reporter, 28 Apr. 1953 Deprecating, from the present participle of the verb, is another 19th-century word. It is used like deprecatory, but it is hard to be quite certain whether its sense development is exactly parallel to that of deprecatory or not, as the OED Supplement does not discriminate meanings. The citations in our files suggest that the net semantic result has been about the same, in any case: • "He wants to take to ballooning. It seems he's been up once." • Constance made a deprecating noise with her lips —Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale, 1908 • Matthew Arnold had been wandering among us with many deprecating gestures of those superangelic hands of his —Van Wyck Brooks, The Ordeal of Mark Twain, 1920 • Mrs. Shane became falsely deprecating of Lily's charms. "She is a good girl," she said. "But hardly as charming as all that...." —Louis Bromfield, The Green Bay Tree, 1924 • They will turn off with a deprecating laugh any too portentous remark —Bertrand Russell, The Scientific Outlook, 1931 • ... the sort of physical possession ruled out by his deprecating comments on age and a gal's fancy — Richard Poirier, A World Elsewhere, 1966 • Allagash tells you, with a deprecating roll of his eyes, that Vicky is studying Philosophy at Princeton —Jay Mclnerney, Bright Lights, Big City, 1984 • For me the word has a slightly humorous, slightly deprecating quality. I would use it only in joking — Peter S. Prescott, in Harper 1985 Do not be misled by the occasional failure of a critic to understand the older of the two modern senses of deprecatory. Our present evidence shows that the use of deprecating is increasing slightly while that of deprecatory and depreciatory is not. See also deprecate, depreciate; self-deprecating, self-deprecatory. |
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