| 词组 | provided, providing |
| 释义 | provided, providing Both provided and providing are in standard use as conjunctions, either alone or in combination with that. Both have been in use for about the same amount of time: provided that in the OED dates from 1460, providing that from 1423; provided alone from 1600, providing from 1632. You can use whichever sounds better to you. Our evidence shows that provided is used more often than providing and that provided has the greater literary backing. It is possible that the lead that provided has always had over providing has been increased by the dispute over providing that made its debut with Ayres 1881. Ayres decided—on his own, apparently—that providing was vulgar. Long 1888 prescribes provided. Vizetelly 1906 does the same, but he offers a reason, declaring that providing is not a conjunction. Of course providing has been a conjunction for about as long as provided, but facts sometimes seem hardly to matter in these disputes. The notion that providing is an error has entered the mainstream of American usage lore and in particular the world of pedagogy; Bernstein 1971 says that generations of schoolteachers have insisted on provided and proscribed providing. And commentators from Josephine Turck Baker 1927 and Lurie 1927 down to Follett 1966 and Freeman 1983 have also insisted. Defenders of providing began to speak up fairly early. MacCracken & Sandison 1917 looked in the OED and found providing acceptable, though less frequent; Krapp 1927 also finds providing acceptable. Partridge 1942 says that "a certain writer errs" in saying that providing is misused for provided. The preponderance of recent opinion finds both words acceptable, and so do dictionaries. Such evenhanded treatment has caused culture shock: • When I really succumbed to unprofessorial language was the day I found in a recent dictionary that provided and providing may be used interchangeably! What is left to teach? —Calvin T. Ryan, letter to the editor, Word Study, December 1955 The issue in British usage arose on different grounds. Fowler 1907, 1926, 1965 objects to provided used where if would do; no notice is taken of providing. Eventually cross-fertilization takes place, with Treble & Vallins 1937 picking up the American objection to providing and numerous American commentators picking up Fowler's objection to use of provided where if would do. The point they make is that provided (or providing) is the narrower, more precise word and that if should be used where the notion of stipulation or provision is not needed. Here are a handful of examples, if will fit idiomatically into any of them, but it will not always leave the meaning the same or seem an improvement. • He would have offered better material for Dickens than Leigh Hunt or Landor, providing Dickens stuck to the text and curbed the spirit of caricature — Times Literary Supp., 14 July 1950 • Already he was formulating the way he would let the news out, providing he decided not to keep it a secret —J. F. Powers, Accent, Winter 1946 • ... the spring shall see me there—provided I neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval —Lord Byron, journal, 14 Nov. 1813 • ... there would be no reason to continue to hold him provided sensible arrangements for his care could be made —Archibald MacLeish, letter, 16 Oct. 1957 • "... I have nothing against mediocre people, provided I don't have to teach them anything." —John Updike, Couples, 1968 |
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