| 词组 | proportion |
| 释义 | proportion There are two issues involving proportion. The first of these is an American newspaper tradition that seems to have begun with Bierce 1909, and is carried on by Bernstein 1958, 1965, Bremner 1980, and Paul Fussell in the New Republic in 1979. This is an objection to proportion used in the sense of "size, dimension." It is often plural in this sense. The reason for the objection is said to be that proportion expresses a relationship and has nothing to do with size. The argument may seem logical, but it is controverted by usage. The word has been used in the disputed sense at least since the 17th century and in the 19th century was used in this sense by none other than the language precisian Walter Savage Landor. The sense is, however, considered acceptable by several commentators and the usage panel of Heritage 1969; Bremner and Fussell are holdouts quite in the tradition of Bierce. The sense has been standard all along, but it does not make up a very large part of our evidence for proportion. Here are some examples: • He was fired as a security risk The anonymity of his discharge gave it oracular proportions —John Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicle, 1957 • ... if there had not been a civil rights movement, or at least not a movement of any proportion —Paul Potter, Johns Hopkins Mag., October 1965 • Three communicable diseases, the CDC declared, posed an unexpected ... threat of reaching epidemic proportions —Dodi Schultz, Ladies' Home Jour., August 1971 • ... it is a symbol of considerable proportions both in the United States and in China —Stanley Kar-now, Saturday Rev., 11 Dec. 1976 • ... hired ... to disport her generous proportions around swimming pools —James Brady, Saturday Rev., 30 Sept. 1978 The second issue was originally raised by Fowler 1926. He offers a long criticism of proportion in a sense meaning "share, part, portion"; his argument is based, apparently, on the same premise as Bierce's objection to the "size" sense—namely, that proportion properly expresses a relationship, a ratio. The reasoning is somewhat undermined by the OED, which shows the criticized meaning as the earliest sense in English. Later commentators—Partridge 1942, Flesch 1964, Copperud 1964, 1970, 1980—have repeated Fowler's objection while omitting his reasoning. This sense of the word has slightly more literary use than the first sense objected to. • ... traditionally gave their time and a good proportion of their possessions as a matter of course to those dependent upon them —Vita Sackville-West, The Edwardians, 1930 • About half the population of Port Anne, and a much higher proportion from the villages disappeared entirely —John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes, 1953 • ... the greater proportion of these terms have never been taken up by the literary language —John Gei-pel, The Viking Legacy, 1971 • ... a far smaller proportion were willing to emigrate —Samuel Eliot Morison, Oxford History of the American People, 1965 • At the stroke of any midnight in the year a far larger proportion of the population is awake in the United States than in any other place on earth —John Lear, Saturday Rev., 15 Apr. 1972 Both of these uses are entirely standard. |
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