| 词组 | poorly |
| 释义 | poorly Handbooks from MacCracken & Sandison 1917 to Macmillan 1982 have denigrated the adjective poorly used as a predicate adjective to indicate poor health; they call it provincial, colloquial, or dialectal. Since we cannot be sure what these folks mean by colloquial we pass over that label, but provincial or dialectal poorly is not. Reader's Digest 1983 calls it standard but not very formal, which is accurate. The statement in the Oxford American Dictionary that careful speakers say "feeling poor" is fiction. Poor used as a modifier of animate nouns to indicate health or physical condition is applied chiefly to domestic animals; it is applied to human beings chiefly in dialect. The OED speculates that the adjective poorly developed from the use of the adverb after verbs like look, which is now a linking verb and takes an adjective complement, but which in the 17th and 18th centuries was commonly followed by an adverb. The OED has a 16th-century example of adverbial poorly after look, followed by obvious predicate adjective uses from the mid-18th century on. Here are some examples: • ... poor little Cassy is grown extremely thin & looks poorly —Jane Austen, letter, 14 Oct. 1813 • She was still very poorly —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813 • ... I cannot invite him to come when he pleases, in my present state. It vexes me to be so unfriendly, but I am very poorly —Charles Lamb, letter, 29 June 1829 • She was rather poorly or troubled in mind, he thought —Norman Douglas, South Wind, 1917 • She is poorly and has been debating for several weeks whether she should take a dose of calomel — Flannery O'Connor, letter, 11 Oct. 1958 • He lost a stone in weight and became even more poorly after catching a chill —David Frith, The Sunday Times Mag. (London), 12 May 1974 The combination taken poorly seems to be British: • Elsie said quickly, "Well, Eddie ... see, Mrs. Manning's been taken poorly, so ..." —Nigel Balchin, A Way Through the Wood, 1951 • One of the nurses told me that Ma had been taken poorly —William Golding, Free Fall, 1959 |
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