| 词组 | pristine |
| 释义 | pristine Pristine is a 16th-century word meaning "belonging to the earliest state or period; original." In this sense it can be applied to what is not desirable as easily as to what is: • ... our friend, the Collector, had lost a great deal of his pristine timidity, and was now, especially when fortified with liquor, as talkative as might be —W. M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, 1848 • ... we have given up a lot of freedom: to knock our neighbor over the head, for instance; or more recently, to raise our children in pristine ignorance —Robert Hatch, New Republic, 1 Aug. 1949 • ... what might be called a pristine vulgarity is largely outlawed —Louis Kronenberger, American Scholar, Winter 1951-1952 But it has long been a tendency of civilized people to admire a simpler and unsullied past. The supposition is that when things were in their oldest or original state, they were better: • If a picture had darkened into an indistinct shadow through time and neglect, ... she seemed to possess the faculty of seeing it in its pristine glory —Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, 1860 • It seems that once upon a time the universe was all tidy, with everything in its proper place, and that ever since it has been growing more and more disorderly, until nothing but a drastic spring-cleaning can restore it to its pristine order —Bertrand Russell, The Scientific Outlook, 1931 • ... he gives his themes the pristine quality they must have had when they were the living substance of the cultures that produced them —Anthony West, New Yorker, 5 Dec. 1953 • ... a heritage of pristine virtues to be restored and defended against modern sophistications —Times Literary Supp., 4 May 1967 It is then but a small step to uses in which the notion of "unspoiled, uncorrupted, unpolluted" is primary and the notion of "original, earliest" is secondary: • ... in so far as men attain this emotional union they are merely reverting to a pristine felicity —Irving Babbitt, The New Laokoon, 1910 • The region was still naturally pristine, essentially unspoiled —Hervey Allen, Bedford Village, 1944 • Polynesian life was nicely pristine before the rush of European adventurers and missionaries —Newsweek, 1 May 1956 • No one could possibly have believed that ... Niagara Falls could lose its pristine clearness and fume like brown smoke —Lord Ritchie-Calder, Center Mag., May 1969 • ... a number of pristine white communities accepted some token black residents —Gerald D. Suttles, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, December 1981 • Again, the Nishis of 1944 are introduced as pristine tribals "unaffected by any contact...." —Nicholas J. Allen, Times Literary Supp., 11 Feb. 1983 What is unspoiled or uncontaminated may connote the freshness and cleanness of something that has just been made: • The pristine light and the loud singing reminded her of some ideal—some simple way of life —John Cheever, New Yorker, 16 Apr. 1955 • ... the pristine freshness that the night air on Broadway has when one leaves the auditorium —Winthrop Sargeant, New Yorker, 25 Dec. 1955 • ... the snow which is pristine powder —Holiday, February 1957 • The books had never been read. It was likely, from their stiff pristine condition, that they had not been opened since leaving the hands of the bookbinder — Ellery Queen, Origin of Evil, 1951 • One of the grubbiest little gardening books in my bookshelves is a first edition of Simple Propagation.... Now a pristine, enlarged third edition stands beside it —Tony Venison, Country Life, 8 Apr. 1976 • The architecture and the landscape work superbly here: the entire environment is so crisp and pristine it feels as if it could be within a computer —Paul Goldberger, NY. Times, 1 May 1980 The two extended senses have come under some critical fire, mostly from British commentators, ostensibly on the grounds of etymology. The OED Supplement, however, shows the extensions to have been of 20th-century American origin (our files contain no contradictory evidence), and it is quite likely the American origin that primarily disturbs the British commentators. Our most recent evidence shows that the original sense and both its extensions are in current standard use on both sides of the Atlantic. |
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