| 词组 | pretty |
| 释义 | pretty The adverb pretty, used as a down-toning qualifier like somewhat or rather, has been used in literary English since 1565. And, at the same time, it has been used in speech and informal writing such as letters. Why it is a subject of discussion in more than twenty of our usage sources is something of a mystery. The fuss seems to start with Vizetelly 1906, who finds that it "lacks elegance and definitiveness." Later criticism adds nothing more substantial to this original criticism; time and time again we are told that pretty is established but it is overworked or it is colloquial or it is informal, etc. But such remarks might equally be made of cat or dog or take or set. Pretty is, in fact, widely used on all levels of discourse. The following examples will make our point. First some from informal sources: • ... his lady—a fine young Scotch lady, pretty handsome —Samuel Pepys, diary, 3 Oct. 1665 • ... which, thank my Stars, I can pretty well bear — Thomas Gray, letter, 15 July 1736 • We supt with the Clarksons one night—Mrs. Clark-son pretty well. Mr. C. somewhat fidgety —Charles Lamb, letter, 26 June 1806 • Have you seen it in any of the papers? ... It is a pretty good one —William Hazlitt, letter, January 1807 • ... a "northeast storm"—a little north of east, in case you are pretty definite —Emily Dickinson, letter, 8 June 1851 • I feel pretty sure —Lewis Carroll, letter, 27 May 1879 • ... I am a pretty shrewd old boy for a countryman —Robert Frost, letter, 11 Oct. 1929 • Mother, however, looks pretty well —E. B. White, letter, 17 Oct. 1935 • I'm pretty sure you won't want to read all this — Archibald MacLeish, letter, 10 July 1956 • ... he did pretty well as a writer —William Faulkner, 20 May 1957, in Faulkner in the University, 1959 • I'm watching this pretty carefully —Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, quoted in The Economist, 29 Mar. 1975 Some from literature of several kinds and from literary journalism: • ... the contents were pretty plain, I thought — George Farquhar, The Constant Couple, 1699 • ... served them pretty tolerably for a Devil —Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, 1710 • ... her inclination and strength for more were pretty well at an end —Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814 • "... I suppose you know Paris pretty correctly...." —Henry James, The American, 1877 • I must have felt pretty weird by that time —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925 • Pretty soon the lawn begins to take heart —Frank Sullivan, The Night the Old Nostalgia Burned Down, 1953 • My mother considered herself pretty well prepared in her kitchen and pantry for any emergency — Eudora Welty, in The Contemporary Essay, ed. Donald Hall, 1984 • ... I'm being responsible in a pretty reckless way — William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl, 1978 • ... even though their religious knowledge is often pretty exiguous —David Martin, Times Literary Supp., 11 Dec. 1981 • ... seven more children, who were added pretty straight off the reel —Mollie Panter-Downes, New Yorker, 4 Nov. 1985 • ... I could pretty much go wherever I felt a story led —Roy Blount, Jr., N.Y. Times Book Rev., 9 Mar. 1986 And some from miscellaneous other writings: • These colours were faint and dilute, unless the light was trajected obliquely; for by that means they became pretty vivid —Sir Isaac Newton, Optics, 1704 (in Johnson 1755) • The unification of these two forces ... is now pretty well accepted in the scientific community —James S. Trefil, Science 81, September 1981 • It has been pretty regularly shunned —Lounsbury 1908 • The word wed in all its forms as a substitute for marry, is pretty hard to bear —Bierce 1909 • The first round of the battle was fought over standards of usage and was pretty well finished by the late thirties —James Sledd, A Short Introduction to English Grammar, 1959 • ... regards most of us as pretty irrevocably plunged in illusion —Iris Murdoch, The Fire and the Sun, 1977 The adverb pretty was entered in Johnson's 1755 Dictionary with eight quotations from the learned, pious, and elegant writers of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It was acceptable to Samuel Johnson and it is acceptable today. |
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