单词 | 不严谨 |
释义 | 〔periodic〕Periodic has long been used loosely to mean "occasional, intermittent,” but this usage may be confusing for readers who are accustomed to using the word only in its narrower sense of "at regular or predictable intervals.”Thus the writer who saidParker's losses at the track were not covered by his periodic winners invited the (most likely unintended) inference that Parker had a system that enabled him to pick winners at regular intervals. Substitution ofoccasional in this context would have resolved the ambiguity. Periodic 长时间以来不严谨地用于指“时常的,偶而的”, 但这个用法常常使那些习惯于将这个词用于“在有规律或可预测的间歇内”这个狭窄词义的读者迷惑。因此写帕克在赛跑中的失败不如他的胜利多 这句话的作者(主要是无意中)造成帕克有在定期赢得比赛的方法的推论。 在上下文中用occasional 代替应该能解决这种模棱两可的问题 〔inexact〕Not rigorous or meticulous:不严谨的:不严格的或不仔细的:〔loose〕Lacking a sense of restraint or responsibility; idle:不严谨的,无意义的:缺少拘束感或责任感的;散漫的:〔Whig〕A 19th-century American political party formed to oppose the Democratic Party and favoring high tariffs and a loose interpretation of the Constitution.辉格党:19世纪为反对民主党而形成的一个美国的政党,奉行高关税政策,对宪法的阐释也较松散且不严谨〔equal〕It has been argued thatequal is an absolute term— two quantities either are or are not equal—and hence cannot be qualified as to degree.Therefore one cannot logically speak ofa more equal allocation of resources among the departments. However, this usage was accepted by 71 percent of the Usage Panel in an earlier survey.What is more, objection to the usage betrays a widespread but questionable assumptionthat it is in mathematics and logic that we find the model of accuracy most appropriate to the everyday use of language,a supposition that also underlies traditional grammatical discussions of words such asunique, parallel, and center. According to this account,the "precise" or "literal" meaning ofequal is realized in the use of the equal sign in an arithmetic expression such as 5 + 2 = 7; and the ordinary-language uses of the term,though they may be permissible,represent "loose" or "imprecise" extensions of that sense.But in fact the mathematical concept of equality is a poor model for using the wordequal to describe relations between things in the world. As applied to such things,statements of equality are always relative to an implicit standard of tolerance.When someone saysThe two boards are of equal length, we assume that the equality is reckoned to some order of approximation determined by the context;if we did not,we would be required always to usenearly equal when speaking of the dimensions of physical objects. What is more,we often want to predicate equality of things that do not admit of quantitative measurement,as when we sayThe college draft was introduced in an effort to make the teams in the National Football League as equal as possible, orThe candidates for the job should all be given equal consideration. In all such cases,equality is naturally a gradient notionand so is amenable to modification in degree.This much is evident from the existence of the wordunequal. The prefixun- attaches only to gradient adjectives: we sayunmanly but not unmale; and the worduneven can be applied to a surface (whose evenness may be a matter of degree) but not to a number (whose evenness is an either-or affair). ·The adverbequally is generally regarded as redundant when used in combination with as, and the following examples employingequally as were termed unacceptable by 63 percent of the Usage Panel in an earlier survey: 单词equal 一向被认为是一个很绝对的词语—— 两个数量要么相同要么不同——这样就不能有程度上的差别。所以,如果有人说在各部门间对资源更公平的分配 ,那么就不合逻辑了。 但是这种用法在早先的用法调查中被百分之七十一用法使用小组的人接受。而且,对这种用法的反对体现出了一种很流行但却值得怀疑的假设,那就是我们从数学和逻辑中得出适用于日常语言准确性的实例,而这种假设也可从我们对一些词,如unique,parallel 和 center 传统的语法讨论中体现出来。 根据这个解释,equal “准确”或“书面”的意思则是由在算术表达式,如5+2=7中所运用的相同的符号而表达清楚的; 而该词在日常语言中的用法,虽然被允许,但却代表了其含意“松散”或“不严谨”的引申。但是实际上用数学概念上的相等来运用equal 这个词描述世上各种事物之间的关系是一个很差劲的例子。 当该词应用于生活中的事物时,相等的观念往往与暗含的容忍相关联。当有人说两块木板同样长 时, 我们会认为由于上下文的关系,相等可以被看作大约近似;如果我们不这样想,那么当我们谈到物体的尺寸时,就要经常使用nearly equal 。 另外,我们常常会预测和数量无关的事物的相同性,比如我们会说,引入大学的要求是为了使全国足球联合会中的各队尽可能平等 , 或者应给予该项工作的应征者同等的考虑 。 在所有这些例子中,相等是个可变化的概念,所以可在程度有所不同。Unequal 这个词的存在就是很好的证明。 un- 这个前缀只附加于有程序变化的形容词, 我们说unmanly 但不说 unmale ; 而uneven 这个词只能用于某物的表面(其平坦可有程度上的差别), 而不能用于数目(数目只能说相等或不相等)。Equally 这一副词在与 as 连用时通常被认为是多余的, 在早先的用法调查中,以下这些使用equally as 的句子遭到百分之六十三使用小组的人反对: 〔peruse〕Peruse has long meant "to read thoroughly" and is often used loosely when one could use the wordread instead. The worst that can be said about the latter use is that it is excessively literary or precious.However, common misuse of the word in the sense "to glance over, skim,” as inI only had a moment to peruse the manual quickly, was unacceptable to 66 percent of the Usage Panel. Peruse 很久一直意指“详尽地阅读”, 经常在能用read 这个词时不严谨地用来取代它。 能够提及的后一种用法中最差的一种便是极端文学或过分矫揉造作的。然而,对于百分之六十六的惯用法研究小组成员来说,意为“浏览或略读”的该词的通常错误用法是不能接受的,如在句我只有一会儿时间来迅速浏览这本手册 中 〔blatant〕 Certain contexts may admit either word depending on what is meant:a violation of international law might be eitherblatant or flagrant. But writers who refer tothe blatant torturing of animals or the flagrant liberal bias of the media have implied something other than what they presumably intended. In the first case, the writer is probably more troubled by the enormity of the mistreatment of animals than by the failure to conceal it,so thatflagrant would have been the better choice. In the second case, by contrast, the writer probably wants to draw attention to a moral failing in the media's unapologetic refusal to hide its bias,rather than to the iniquity of the bias itself,an implication that would have been conveyed more successfully byblatant. Blatant should not be used to mean simply "obvious,”as inthe blatant danger of such an approach. 某些语境下两个词都可以用,但意思不同:对国际法律的违反既可能是blatant(公然的) 也可能是 flagrant(无耻的)。 但是提到the blatant torturing of animals(肆无忌惮地虐待动物) 或者 the flagrant liberal bias of the media(媒体公然的、不严谨的偏见) 的作者已经暗示了他们本来意图以外的意思。 在第一种情况下,作者可能对大量虐待动物的行为所困扰而不是为隐藏这种行为的失败而困扰,因此flagrant 应该是更好的选择。 相反地,在第二种情况下,作者可能是要着重指出新闻媒介对其偏见一概否认的这种道德上弱点,而不是针对偏见本身的不公正性,这种含义若由blatant来表达的话会更加正确。 Blatant 不应仅仅表示“明显的”,就象在the blatant danger of such an approach(这种方法明显的危险性)中。 〔slipshod〕Marked by carelessness; sloppy or slovenly.See Synonyms at sloppy 马虎的,不严谨的:以不细心为特征的;邋遢的或不修边幅的 参见 sloppy〔inexact〕an inexact mind; an inexact method.不严谨的思维;不严谨的方法 |
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