| 词组 | phony, phoney |
| 释义 | phony, phoney 1. Phony is an Americanism of obscure origin first attested in print in 1900. H. L. Mencken in The American Language, Supplement II ( 1948) suggests that phony is a legacy of the pitchmen who used to congregate around fairs and carnivals, but the earliest citation so far found is from More Fables, the sequel volume to the breezy Fables in Slang ( 1899) of the humorist George Ade. The word was entered in Webster 1909 as slang and so continued in Webster's Second 1934. It has proved very popular, and has appeared more and more often in contexts that are not slangy. Such an appearance brought it to the notice of Bernstein 1965. He looked in Webster's Second, saw the slang label, and pronounced phony inappropriate in the context of the newspaper article he was reading. But Harper 1975, 1985 thinks it so widespread it must be considered acceptable at least in informal contexts, and Copperud 1970, 1980 opines that its "progress to standard seems to be beyond doubt." The difference between the early status of phony and its status today can be shown by these examples, old and more recent. • Now, this lawyer party must get away to-night or these grafters will hitch the horses to him on some phony charge —R. E. Beach, The Spoilers, 1906 • It is giving "phoney" advice to a base runner — Christy Mathewson, Pitching in a Pinch, 1912 • The tout's stock devices—the "bank-roll" game, the "phoney" ticket, the "jockey's cousin" —Henry M. Blossom, Jr., Checkers, before 1909 • ... he has a talent for exposing phonies which cannot but pacify the spirit of the late H. L. Mencken — Paul Fussell, Los Angeles Times Book Rev., 25 Apr. 1971 • The idolatry of science in our age has insured that this phony knowledge be taken seriously —Sigmund Koch, Psychology Today, September 1969 • Vouchers issued in the United States for flights home often were found to be phony —Barbara Johnson, Saturday Rev., 4 Mar. 1972 • A Night Full of Rain, in short, seems to me silly, boring, and phony. There is some nice pastel cinematography —Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Saturday Rev., 1 Apr. 1978 • ... his character is a ludicrous phoney —John Simon, in The Film, 1968 • ... as the years make ever more prominent its phoney operatics —Times Literary Supp., 4 Jan. 1968 • ... who has amassed over 40 phoney degrees himself in five years of investigations —The Economist, 6 Sept. 1985 • ... the damage the Victorians had done in imposing a phoney tradition of gentility on the heroes —Ronald Hayman, The Set-Up, 1973 You will have noticed some British examples here. There seems to have been little fuss over the establishment of this Americanism in British English, although Foster 1968 does quote a disgruntled letter writer of 1955. Gowers in Fowler 1965 says that phony became widely known in the autumn of 1939 with the advent of the "Phoney War." The new OED Supplement has a British citation from 1935. Commentators like Bernstein appear to have been a bit behindhand in their acceptance of phony. It looks standard to us. 2. Copperud 1980, who is primarily concerned with American use, says that while Fowler 1965 and the dictionaries recognize the spelling phoney, it is not used. This statement is not accurate. Phoney is the first attested spelling; it is the one George Ade used. But phony was not far behind; our files contain a 1906 citation for the spelling and the old OED Supplement (1933) has one from 1904. Webster 1909 put the definition under phony and entered phoney as a variant; Webster's Second 1934 followed suit. American use has pretty much followed the Merriam-Webster entries. Here is how the spellings stack up today. Phoney is the usual spelling in British English; phony is seldom found there (though we do have Australian evidence for it). Both phony and phoney are found in American English, but phony is the predominant form by quite a wide margin. |
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