| 词组 | place |
| 释义 | place 1. Copperud 1970, 1980 notes that Fowler 1965 considers the expression going places questionable, while Bernstein 1965 and Evans 1957 consider it idiomatic. In American English going places has had two distinct uses. In one, places is either literal or nearly so; the sense is either to go to some unspecified place, or to go out on the town to some unspecified place or places. This use is often extended into go places and do things. We see little of this idiom in print these days, so it may be a bit passé. Perry Mason knew it, though: • Mason took the list, nodded and said, "Come on, we're going places." He snapped on the ignition, slammed the car into gear, and started driving at high speed back towards Los Angeles —Erie Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Stuttering Bishop, 1936 The second going places means "to be on the way to success." This idiom is labeled slang in those dictionaries that look to older dictionaries or settled opinion for guidance. It seems to have been popular among the up-and-coming business community at one time, and was perhaps stigmatized as some sort of Babbitry. It may never have really been slang. It too is not so frequently met as it used to be, but it seems a bit more common than the literal sense. Some examples: • ... a strong Malenkov man, destined to go places with his patron —Edmund Stevens, This Is Russia, 1950 • Keep your eye on Senator Kefauver; he's going places —Bennett Cerf, Saturday Rev., 7 Apr. 1951 • But even that wasn't the beginning of the end for us. That happened when I started going places. He couldn't take it and I finally had to concentrate on my own good thing —Bette Davis, quoted in Women's Wear Daily, 5 Oct. 1976 2. The place in going places is a noun in adverbial function. Such idiomatic uses—which may be more common in American English than in British—have long troubled commentators. Vizetelly 1906, for instance, objects to go places, go any place, go some place, and I can't find it any place. Many others worry about anyplace, someplace, noplace. Bolinger 1980 observes that place is one of a small number of nouns that are idiomatically drawn into adverbial function. He lists way, reason, and time as three others; they are nouns closely associated with the adverbial questions where, how, why, and when. He constructs a frame, "That was the he did it," in which the adverbially oriented nouns place, way, reason, and time will fit idiomatically, but such quasi-synonyms as location, manner, motive, and occasion will not. Here are a couple of other adverbial uses of place: • ... middle-income people trapped with no place to go —Ruth Mooney, Harper's, April 1972 • "... one of the places this could go " —Carol Bly, Letters from the Country, 1981 And presumably place is adverbial in this casually idiomatic replacement of everywhere: • ... lots of sales, enthusiastic reviews all over the place —Newgate Callendar, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 19 Dec. 1982 These uses are solidly established in American English. There never has been a reason to avoid them in general writing. See also anyplace; everyplace; noplace; someplace. |
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