| 词组 | promise |
| 释义 | promise Vizetelly 1906 objects to the verb promise in the sense of "assure." "A promise always implies futurity," he says. The same objection finds more recent voice in Shaw 1987 and Longman 1984. The sense of promise under criticism here is pretty old—the OED dates it back to 1469. Shakespeare used it: • I do not like thy look, I promise thee —Much Ado About Nothing, 1599 The OED also has quotations from Addison, Fielding, and Thackeray. After Thackeray in 1862 there seems to be nothing. The OED suspected the sense to be archaic; so did the editors of Webster's Third. But Vizetelly must have seen or heard it somewhere, and so must Shaw and the editors of Longman 1984. But where? The answer seems to be that the usage has receded into speech only. The OED examples are mostly of a colloquial nature—they represent speech, or are found in writing that has speechlike qualities. We have but a single modern example. It, too, is taken from speech, that of a small-town American school superintendent: • She has promised me that the father is not a student —in People, 17 Jan. 1983 It appears, then, that instead of being archaic, this use still exists to a certain extent in British and American speech. You can forget the notion that promise has to refer to the future. That consideration seems tö have been invented by Vizetelly, and it certainly never bothered Shakespeare or Addison or Fielding or Thackeray. But note that this sense of promise is not used in current ordinary discursive prose. |
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