| 词组 | predominate, predominately |
| 释义 | predominate, predominately Copperud 1964 sounded the clarion: "Predominately is not necessarily an error, for it has found its way into the dictionary. Nonetheless, it is a rare bird, and you can lay ten to one the writer was aiming at predominantly.... Predominate as an adjective ... is an error for predominant." You may wonder what dictionaries Mr. Copperud looked at for the adjective he thought an error. Not Webster's Third, nor Webster's Second, nor Webster 1909, nor the OED, for predominate as an adjective can be found in all of them. Copperud 1970 still finds himself alone in objecting to predominate as an adjective, but his call would soon be heeded; Harper 1975, Bernstein 1977, Bremner 1980, and Johnson 1982 all denounce the use. Bremner and Johnson insist that predominate is only a verb. Bernstein adds that even though it appears in a couple of dictionaries as an adjective, it is not fully established. A few college handbooks comment too. Bander 1978, Mac-millan 1982, and Guth 1985 all say predominate is only a verb. Two other books, Watt 1967 and Perrin & Ebbitt 1972, recognize predominate as an adjective of some rarity, and recommend predominant. We have only a couple of critics before Copperud 1964. John W. Clark, in British & American English (1951), called predominate(ly) illiterate and said it was partly the fault of second-rate newspapers. Before that MacCracken & Sandison 1917 called predominate "an apparently mistaken and rare form of predominant." An editor of Webster's Second wrote "bosh" on the slip bearing that remark. Here is what the dictionaries know that most of the usage writers do not. Predominate has been an adjective in English since the end of the 16th century; it antedates the verb by a few years. It is first attested, according to the OED, in 1591 in the writings of Thomas Nashe, Elizabethan man of letters and controversialist. Predominant is slightly older, first attested in 1576; it was used in 1592 by William Shakespeare, a better-known and more influential Elizabethan man of letters. Most subsequent literary and general use has followed Shakespeare's lead rather than Nashe's. The OED marked predominate and predominately "Rare," and so did Webster 1909 and Webster's Second. The editors of Webster's Second had a little bit of 20th-century evidence, so they moved both words from the pearl section—the small type at the foot of the page— where they had been in 1909 to the main word list. Between Webster's Second and Webster's Third more evidence accumulated, primarily from technical sources. • Of predominate interest in chlorophylls are the locations of hydrogens which may be active in photore-duction —Botanical Rev., December 1950 • ... the predominate gonadal sex in cases of true hermaphroditism —JAMA, 9 Feb. 1952 • Throughout our analysis we attempt to conform to the predominate tendencies in the language — Eugene A. Nida, Morphology, 1946 Occasionally it could be found in general sources as well: • His strong belief that patriotism should be one of the predominate principles of religion —American Guide Series: Minnesota, 1938 • Rieve's predominate strength is in New England — New Republic, 26 May 1952 The evidence for predominately from this period tended to be more general than technical: • ... the population is predominately native-born white —American Guide Series: Texas, 1940 • The poem gives a predominately creative expression —K. E. Cameron, The Young Shelley, 1950 • Blue light, which stimulates the rods predominately —Charles H. Best & Norman B. Taylor, The Physiological Basis of Medical Practice, 5th ed., 1950 Our most recent evidence shows that predominately is being used somewhat more frequently than predominate but that neither is likely to threaten the preeminent position of predominant and predominantly. So the adjective predominate and its derivative predominately are in the 20th century what they were in the 17th, 18th, and 19th—less frequently used alternatives. Literary use has all along preferred the -ant form. But being less frequent does not make the -ate form wrong. |
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