| 词组 | quite |
| 释义 | quite A number of recent commentators notice that quite is used in two almost antithetical senses, one approximately "fully, altogether, entirely" and the other approximately "to a considerable extent, moderately." In this respect, quite operates much like rather (see rather 2). There are actually three uses of quite, according to the OED and dictionaries that follow the OED analysis. The first use is a completive one originally used with verbs and participles to emphasize that an action is complete. • ... an endeavour to recapture the treasure, which they were quite satisfied was hopeless —James Stephens, The Crock of Gold, 1912 • He felt that the world he had loved had quite gone —Edmund Wilson, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 20 July 1986 When used this way with adjectives and adverbs, quite emphasizes the fullest degree of the adjective or adverb. It functions as an intensive, emphasizing the meaning without changing it. • To-morrow I bury her, and then I shall be quite alone —Charles Lamb, letter, 12 May 1800 • If you are quite sure you would have no use of them, I may as well destroy them —Lewis Carroll, letter, 21 June 1881 • ... bragged falsely of having made conquests of quite other girls —Renata Adler, Pitch Dark, 1983 From the intensive use a weaker, subtractive sense developed, a sense used not to intensify but to tone down. In the words of Fitzedward Hall 1873, it occupies "a place intermediate between 'altogether' and 'somewhat.'" • As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path —Henry David Thoreau, Waiden, 1854 Thoreau's quite is exemplary: it brings the adjective up just short of its full power. By all accounts the subtractive sense is the prevalent one in 20th-century English, but in many particular instances it is hard to be certain that the subtractive sense rather than the intensive sense is intended: • Her uncovered ears were quite white and very small —Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves, 1925 • ... and the weather in the main has been quite good —E. B. White, letter, 3 Mar. 1965 You would think that the coexistence of these two uses would lead to problems of ambiguity and confusion, but in practice this seems not often to be the case. For although the lexicographer must try to determine the exact meaning of each occurrence of a word, the reader is under no such constraint. The distinction between the two senses is not always crucial to a general understanding of the sentence; when it is, the reader has the larger context for help. And the writer can always use a negative with quite when he or she wants to emphasize a falling just short: • In my opinion, my work ... ain't quite good enough —William Faulkner, 13 May 1957, in Faulkner in the University, 1959 • He does not quite say that a propitious environment would create a population composed entirely of geniuses —John Butt, English Literature in the Mid-Eighteenth Century, edited & completed by Geoffrey Carnall, 1979 In the middle of the 19th century there was some reprehension of the use of quite before a and a noun— Bache 1869, Richard Grant White 1870, and Ayres 1881 all objected, for instance. There were two bases for objection: the commentators noticed that quite was not an intensive in the expressions, and they did not believe an adverb should modify a noun. Fitzedward Hall 1873 ignored the theoretical grammatical questions and was content to produce evidence that the idiom had been in use at least since the middle of the 18th century: • Quite a rake —Samuel Richardson, Pamela, 1740 (in Fitzedward Hall) • We decided, though, that he would be quite a swell guy sober —James Thurber, letter, April 1936 • Irene Franey, a little older than I, was quite a beauty —John O'Hara, letter, 30 Dec. 1963 We have some British examples in which this quite a has a clearly intensive function: • ... the crow that must have been shot quite a month before —Doreen Tovey, Cats in the Belfry, 1958 • There are quite a dozen significant regional languages —W. B. Lockwood, A Panorama of Indo-European Languages, 1972 In these two examples quite means something like "every bit of, fully." Quite is also used before the: • "He was quite the picture of a middle-aged businessman," recalls William O. Bourke —Faye Rice, Fortune, 24 Nov. 1986 • I am quite the wrong person to write this foreword —Philip Larkin, Required Writing, 1983 These are established idioms, beyond cavil. |
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