| 释义 |
okay, a., n., and v. colloq. (orig. U.S.).|əʊˈkeɪ|
Also okeh, okey.
[Repr. pronunc. of O.K. a., n., and v.]
A. adj.
a. = O.K. adj. a. Also as adv.
1919Mencken Amer. Lang. 161 Dr. Woodrow Wilson is said..to use okeh in endorsing government papers. 1929J. P. McEvoy Hollywood Girl ix. 147 Jimmy (dashing out door): I'll kill the son of a―Girl (going back to kitchenette): Okay, big boy. 1932Sunday Express 3 July 9/6, I had given my hand to the comedian and heard him say: ‘Hold on, baby... Hold on. It's okay. You're going to be fine.’ 1934N. Sainsbury Gridiron Grit xii. 142 Okay by me. 1936J. B. Priestley They walk in City viii. 237 The short one took the letter... He nodded. ‘Righty-o. Seems okay.’ 1939E. B. Wilson My Memoir 174 Approval was designated by ‘Okeh, W.W.’ on the margin of a paper. Someone asked why he [sc. Woodrow Wilson] did not use the ‘O.K.’ ‘Because it is wrong,’ Mr. Wilson said. He suggested that the inquirer look up ‘okeh’ in a dictionary. This he did, discovering that it is a Choctaw word meaning ‘It is so’. 1944‘N. Shute’ Pastoral i. 7 Okay. I'll tell the boys. 1945E. Waugh Brideshead Revisited 304 ‘Don't let on to anyone that we've made a nonsense of the morning.’ ‘Okey, Ryder.’ 1953J. Y. Cousteau Silent World 91 Tailliez came up and reported, ‘Everything okay. They're playing chess.’ 1966D. M. Thomas in Listener 17 Feb. 247/1 Okay, my starsick beauty!.. Where would you like to go? 1972Publishers Weekly 6 Mar. 31/2 He says most of that magazine's ex-staffers have done ‘okay’ in re-adjusting. 1974‘E. Lathen’ Sweet & Low xix. 185 He got through a third degree okay.
b. = O.K. adj. c.
1958Observer 7 Sept. 13/4 Being in fusion is the really okay thing now. 1966New Statesman 11 Mar. 348/1 The writer's ideas are rooted deep in the soil of experience and have not been processed into pet ideas and okay-words before they have ripened. 1970G. Greer Female Eunuch 159 His secretary had..moved out of Haight Ashbury when it ceased to be okay to live there. 1974Listener 16 May 642/1 The current psychiatric okay-word is the cautious and benign ‘disturbed’. 1976New Society 1 Jan. 5/1 In spite of the levelling effect of package holidays, skiing is still an okay sport. A survey..showed that British skiers were more likely to be upper middle class abs living in the prosperous southern counties.
B. n. = O.K. n. b.
1925Ade Let. 28 Mar. (1973) 104 If, while he was putting his okeh on this material, he privately disapproved of it and was sending word back east that the material was not what you wanted, of course he was putting me in a tough position. 1925Dollar Mag. Dec. 207 To find new and more vivid forms of expression..in the hope that they will, in time, receive the okeh of the reading public. 1931North Amer. Rev. Jan. 15/2 During the last two years Raskob has either put his okay on every major move that Jouett Shouse has made, or else suggested it himself in the first place. 1973Freedomways XIII. 18 Nothing goes down without his okay. 1974Columbia (S. Carolina) Record 25 Apr. 6-D/1 In the more than 14 years since the dam was first proposed, the estimated $75 million cost has more than doubled. Whether it will get an okay on environmental grounds has not been determined.
C. v. trans. = O.K. v.
1930Amer. Speech VI. 119 Parachute company stock sale okehed. 1938Times 18 Jan. 13/4 The proposal to call this haunt of pleasure the ‘Non-stop Journal Kino’ was taken to the Supreme Court before being—as the delighted proprietor probably put it—okayed. 1945H. I. Phillips Private Purkey's Private Peace vii. 40 When they okayed me at that abduction center ‘for the duration’ I thought it meant just for the duration of the war. 1947People 22 June 5/3 Micky and ex-light-weight champion Dave Crowley did the same fight 25 times before the final take was okayed. 1958S. Ellin Eighth Circle (1959) i. i. 18 Every place where you can okay it, you put down O.K. and your initials. 1968Listener 5 Dec. 771/1 Okayed by Western governments, the Prague festival enjoyed a substantial dollar bonus in the form of the Illinois State University Jazz Band. 1974Times 22 Feb. 19/4 Scripts Limited comes in after the screenwriter has been commissioned by a film company, has written his first draft and had it okayed. |