| 词组 | prophecy, prophesy |
| 释义 | prophecy, prophesy A surprising amount of ink has been used in a surprising number of handbooks to inform everyone that prophecy is a noun and prophesy is a verb—the very information carried in every dictionary. The common assertion is that the two words are confused—an assertion our files cannot confirm, even though we have a 1980 prophecied from the Saturday Review. The particular objection seems to be to the use of prophesy as a noun. The OED shows that historically both spellings have been used for both functions. Webster's Second recognizes -cy for the verb and -sy for the noun as infrequent variants, and so does Webster's Third. Copperud 1970, 1980 reads this recognition as our considering the terms interchangeable, but that is not the case. The variants are clearly marked as to their secondary status. Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary omits the -cy variant of the verb as too rare to warrant inclusion, but the -sy variant of the noun is still there in its secondary status. At this writing we have had no examples of the -sy noun since 1967; it may well be omissible from future desk dictionaries, although the unabridged will still have to take account of it on historical grounds. Most writers, then, follow the mainstream and use prophecy as a noun, and prophesy as a verb. |
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