| 释义 |
-ful, suffix
originally identical with full a.
1. Forming adjs. In OE. the adj. full, like its equivalent in the other Teut. langs., was used in composition with a preceding n., forming adjs., the etymological sense of which (= ‘full of{ddd}’) is usually somewhat weakened, so that the words may be rendered ‘having’, ‘characterized by’ (the attribute denoted by the n.); the meaning of the suffix thus differs little from that of L. -ōsus, -ous. In ME. and in mod.E. many new formations of this type have arisen, some of them from Romanic ns., as beautiful, graceful; and the suffix is still to some extent productive. In the 14th c. a few new forms arose in which the suffix had the force of ‘possessing the qualities of’; e.g. masterful, manful. In OE. -full was not ordinarily appended to adjs.; an instance occurs in deorcfull, darkful, used to render L. tenebrosus, and prob. formed in imitation of it. In the 16th and 17th c. a few new words appear f. adjs. or L. adj. stems + -ful, e.g. direful, grateful, tristful, fierceful; prob. these were due to the analogy of older synonyms having this suffix, though it is possible that they may have been in part suggested by It. words like gratevole (gradevole), the ending of which has an accidental resemblance to the Eng. suffix. As the ns. to which -ful is appended are often nouns of action or state coincident in form with the stems of related vbs., it happens frequently that a word really f. a n. + -ful is associated in ordinary apprehension rather with the vb. than the n. (For this there are sometimes special causes; e.g. the n. thank being obsolete in the sing. while thank vb. is current, the adj. thankful is naturally viewed as a derivative of the latter.) Hence in mod.Eng. adjs. in -ful are sometimes formed directly on verb-stems, the sense of the suffix being ‘apt to’, ‘able or accustomed to’, as in assistful, distractful, crossful, mournful; an example of a passive sense (= -able) occurs in bashful.
2. Forming ns. In the Teut. langs. the form of expression in which a n. denoting a receptacle is followed by the adj. full in concord with it and governing a genitive (e.g. ‘a hand full of corn’) was used, not only in its proper sense, but in the transferred sense of ‘the quantity that fills or would fill’ (the receptacle): see full a. 1 b. The ambiguity thus arising is partly obviated by a differentiation of form; the n. and adj. are treated as independent words when they retain their proper sense, but as forming a compound when the sense is transferred. This differentiation has not been carried out to an equal extent in the various langs. In Ger., handvoll ‘handful’, mundvoll ‘mouthful’ are written as single words, but this makes no real difference in their syntactical value; the gender of the quasi-compound is determined by that of its first element, and there is no inflexion. In OE. the development had proceeded a step further in the case of handfull, which, although retaining the fem. gender of hand, was so completely one word as to be declinable (accus. -fulle, pl. -fulla, after the prevailing declension of feminines); in the 14th c. the pl. was handfullis. No other compound of this class is found in OE.; commonly the notion was expressed in the original Teut. manner by the adj. full in concord with the n. This continued also in ME.; but owing to the practice of using the sing. of a noun of quantity instead of the pl. after a numeral, there is seldom any evidence to show whether the ME. antecedent of a word like dishful is to be regarded as a syntactical combination or as a single word. In mod.Eng. -ful has become a suffix forming derivatives with the general sense ‘quantity that fills or would fill’ (something), and may be attached at pleasure to any n. denoting an object that can be regarded as holding or containing a more or less definite quantity of anything; thus we have not only bottleful, boxful, canful, spoonful, etc., but bookful, churchful, houseful, worldful, etc. The plural forms spoonsful, cupsful, etc., which are still sometimes heard, represent either a survival of, or (much more probably) a return to, the older grammatical view; but though they have thus some appearance of historical justification, they are contrary to good modern usage, and are objectionable on account of their ambiguity.
The ON. -fyllr (handfyllr handful, munnfyllr mouthful, etc.) is not identical with the Eng. suffix, but is the n. fyllr fem. = fill n.1, and the compounds are therefore all fem., whatever the gender of the first element. |