| 词组 | podium |
| 释义 | podium The definition of lectern in Webster's Second reads like this: 1. A choir desk, or reading desk, in some churches, from which the lections, or Scripture Lessons, are chanted or read. 2. A reading or writing desk; an escritoire. Chiefly Scot. This definition seems to have prompted several letters enquiring about the correct term for whatever it was that an ordinary lay lecturer placed his or her notes on before addressing an audience. Slips in our files show that for Webster's Third the editor who worked on lectern was instructed in no uncertain terms to define it in such a way as to reflect actual usage of the word. We do not know if newspaper writers baffled by the churchly definition of lectern were the first to use podium for the lectern of the ordinary lecturer or not. But they might have been. At any rate some newspaper writers did begin using podium in that sense (and so did some lecturers), and the Webster's Third definer of podium, finding journalistic evidence, included a definition of podium meaning "lectern." For this attention to duty, Webster's Third has been rebuked by a usage commentator or two. One wonders whether they have ever looked up lectern in Webster's Second, their favorite large dictionary. The "lectern" sense of podium is a favorite bugbear of the journalistic commentators—Copperud 1964, 1970, 1980, Bernstein 1962, Kilpatrick 1984, and Harper 1985, for instance. Several make jokes about a New York Times example reading • President Ayub, wearing a gray summer suit, white shirt and gray necktie, gripped the podium tightly as he answered questions —18 July 1961 by suggesting that the poor man must have been on hands and knees, or flat on his face. What goes unmentioned by the commentators, however, is that the average reader has not been put off or misled one bit. When the article says that President Ayub gripped the podium, the reader instantly gets the correct picture without having to work past a vision of the man messing up his gray suit crawling around on the platform. So what we have here is not really a usage problem at all—no one is confused or misled—but a usage writer's in-joke. You can laugh along with them or ignore the matter. Our citations for the "lectern" sense of podium are not especially numerous—we have fewer genuine examples of use than we have of commentators expounding upon the subject—so the usage may be in large part oral. We do have some evidence that the usage is known to those who appear behind the thing: • He stood at a big redwood lectern (he called it a podium) —Alastair Cooke, Manchester Guardian Weekly, 10 Mar. 1955 • Pounding the podium and talking loudly, Rover accused the judge —Judge Luther W. Youngdahl, New Republic, 1 Nov. 1954 The use is standard, though you may certainly prefer to use lectern (now with an appropriate definition in Webster's Third and its abridgments), especially if you fear your writing may otherwise become the object of someone's merriment. |
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