词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Adjectives

Broadcast: February 26, 2004

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- telling less, and showing more.

RS: Adjectives are words that modify or describe nouns. But here's how a lot of writers and writing teachers describe adjectives: in a word, overused. Back in the seventeen hundreds, the French writer Voltaire called adjectives "the enemy of the noun."

AA: So notes University of Delaware English Professor Ben Yagoda. He wrote an essay about adjectives in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education.

YAGODA: "It would be impossible to communicate without them, although people like Hemingway seemed to have tried. There's a certain class of adjectives, which are absolutely necessary. So if someone says which hat do you want -- you say, well, I want that red one. The word red is the way you indicate which one you want. So no one would ever suggest that adjectives should be abolished.

"I guess the problem comes in for people like Voltaire -- and also Mark Twain had a famous quote that said 'when you catch an adjective, kill it.' William Zinsser, an authority on writing said that 'most adjectives are unnecessary.' But I think the main problem that comes up is that people use adjectives sometimes -- especially beginning writers -- to do the work of nouns and verbs."

RS: Ben Yagoda says it's better to let details speak for themselves.

"If you're describing someone and say that she is a 'beautiful woman,' that word beautiful is the adjective. It's a hackneyed, tired word, almost on the level of a cliche¹, and if I had a student in my class who wrote that in a sentence, I would say no, you have to do better than that. Tell me that when she walked in the room, the jaw² of every man in the room dropped -- the idea being to show, not tell."

AA: "Well, you just took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say that my wife is a schoolteacher, and she always talks about how she teaches her students, or tries to get them to 鈥榮how, not tell.鈥? What are some tips or some ideas for the appropriate use of adjectives?"

YAGODA: "I would say, number one, would be to be sparing. The analogy, I would say, is with cooking and spices. You could say that the nouns and the verbs are the meat or the stew³, and the adjectives and adverbs are the seasoning⁴. So without them the stew would be very bland⁵ and dull indeed.

But if you use too many spices, too much spice, they drown each other out. So just the right two or three words in the course of, you know, a passage of several paragraphs that are really well-chosen and not hackneyed and tired words like beautiful."

RS: At the other extreme, some writers choose adjectives that send readers to their dictionary. Professor Ben Yagoda says obscure words have a place in good writing, but not always.

"Use one of those words if there's no other word that can express that meaning. In other words, if you think something is funny, write the word 'funny,' not the word risible⁶ -- R-I-S-I-B-L-E, which basically means funny. And it doesn't add anything to it except the sense that the writer is trying to show off and show how smart they are.

"Sometimes a word is the right word to choose maybe not only because of its meaning but because of the sound. One of the examples of great use of adjectives is one of the most famous quotations⁷ of all time, from Thomas Hobbes, the political philosopher, from his book 'Leviathan'. And he referred to life of man in the state of nature, and he called it 'solitary⁸, poor, nasty, brutish and short.'

"All of those words are very plain words but they are not cliches like beautiful. They are words that are well-chosen, they're simple, and the rhythm of that sentence has a certain inevitability⁹ to it in terms of the number of syllables¹⁰ and the sound of the words that really makes it one of the great quotations of all time."

AA: "So use adjectives carefully, use them sparingly, don't shoot for obscure ones unless you really know what you're doing. These sound like some of the tips you're giving."

YAGODA: "I think those, those -- yeah, now that you've paraphrased¹¹ them, I think I'm a smarter guy than I thought I was before. Those sound like good tips."

RS: And Ben Yagoda has one more piece of advice. Read, he says. Reading not only increases vocabulary, but also gives the reader a better sense of words and what they can do.

AA: His book "The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing" is coming out in June.

RS: And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is [email protected].

AA: And you'll find all of our segments at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 cliche   

n./a.陈词滥调(的)；老生常谈(的)；陈腐的

参考例句：

• You should always try to avoid the use of cliche. 你应该尽量避免使用陈词滥调。
• The old cliche is certainly true:the bigger car do mean bigger profits.有句老话倒的确说得不假:车大利大。

2 jaw   

n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训

参考例句：

• He delivered a right hook to his opponent's jaw.他给了对方下巴一记右钩拳。
• A strong square jaw is a sign of firm character.强健的方下巴是刚毅性格的标志。

3 stew   

n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑

参考例句：

• The stew must be boiled up before serving.炖肉必须煮熟才能上桌。
• There's no need to get in a stew.没有必要烦恼。

4 seasoning   

n.调味；调味料；增添趣味之物

参考例句：

• Salt is the most common seasoning.盐是最常用的调味品。
• This sauce uses mushroom as its seasoning.这酱油用蘑菇作调料。

5 bland   

adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的

参考例句：

• He eats bland food because of his stomach trouble.他因胃病而吃清淡的食物。
• This soup is too bland for me.这汤我喝起来偏淡。

6 risible   

adj.能笑的；可笑的

参考例句：

• The entire proposal is risible.这个建议完全是荒唐可笑的。
• He drew a risible picture on the wall.他在墙上画了一张滑稽的画。

7 quotations   

n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价

参考例句：

• The insurance company requires three quotations for repairs to the car. 保险公司要修理这辆汽车的三家修理厂的报价单。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• These quotations cannot readily be traced to their sources. 这些引语很难查出出自何处。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

8 solitary   

adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士

参考例句：

• I am rather fond of a solitary stroll in the country.我颇喜欢在乡间独自徜徉。
• The castle rises in solitary splendour on the fringe of the desert.这座城堡巍然耸立在沙漠的边际，显得十分壮美。

9 inevitability   

n.必然性

参考例句：

• Evolutionism is normally associated with a belief in the inevitability of progress. 进化主义通常和一种相信进步不可避免的看法相联系。
• It is the tide of the times, an inevitability of history. 这是时代的潮流，历史的必然。

10 syllables   

n.音节( syllable的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a word with two syllables 双音节单词
• 'No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables.' “想不起。不过我可以发誓，它有两个音节。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记

11 paraphrased   

v.释义，意译( paraphrase的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Baxter paraphrased the contents of the press release. 巴克斯特解释了新闻稿的内容。 来自辞典例句
• It is paraphrased from the original. 它是由原文改述的。 来自辞典例句