| 释义 |
tendency|ˈtɛndənsɪ|
[f. as tendence: see -ency.]
1. a. The fact or quality of tending to something; a constant disposition to move or act in some direction or toward some point, end, or purpose; leaning, inclination, bias, or bent toward some object, effect, or result.
1628T. Spencer Logick 53 If any inquire how tendency..can haue an actuall exercise vnto doing. 1671J. Flavel Fount. Life vii, He did not..do an Act..but it had some Tendency to promote the great Design of our Salvation. 1679C. Nesse Antid. agst. Popery Ded. 6 Gods prevalent actings, in tendency to our deliverance. a1680Butler Rem. (1759) II. 185 He seldom converses but with Men of his own Tendency. 1710J. Clarke Rohault's Nat. Phil. (1729) I. 80 A Body in Motion has always a Tendency to describe that Line, which it would describe if it were at liberty. 1778W. H. Marshall Minutes Agric. 13 Sept. an. 1774, Placed..with their points tending forward, the line of their tendency making an angle with the horizon of about 45°. 1806A. Hunter Culina (ed. 3) 104 Where there is a gouty tendency, this dish must seldom be indulged in. 1870Jevons Elem. Logic xxxi. 267 A tendency..is a cause which may or may not be counteracted. 1870J. H. Newman Gram. Assent ii. viii. 313 A regular polygon, inscribed [in a circle], its sides being continually diminished, tends to become that circle, as its limit; but..its tendency to be the circle, though ever nearer fulfilment, never in fact gets beyond a tendency.
†b. Movement or advance in the direction of something; a making toward something. Obs.
1654Z. Coke Logick A ij, As if the Donations of Heaven were opposed, subordinated in mans tendency to Bliss and Glory. 1661Blount Glossogr. (ed. 2), Tendency..a going forward, a making toward. 1721Bradley Philos. Acc. Wks. Nat. 1 Which time of their Tendency to Perfection I shall..call the Time of their Growth.
c. Drift, trend, or aim of a discourse; in recent use, conscious or designed purpose of a story, novel, or the like. (= Ger. tendenz.)
1732Berkeley Alciphr. ii. §21 Upon hearing this, and other lectures of the same tendency. 1751Johnson Rambler No. 153 ⁋2 My narrative has no other tendency than to illustrate and corroborate your own observations. 1791Burke App. Whigs Wks. VI. 132 Neither can they shew any thing in the general tendency and spirit of the whole work unfavourable to a rational and generous spirit of liberty. 1832H. Martineau Demerara i. 12 The tendency of all he said was to prove his own merits.
d. pl. in pregnant use, tendencies towards homosexuality. colloq.
1938J. Betjeman Oxf. Univ. Chest ii. 42 Someone who has ‘tendencies’ as an undergraduate, will in ten years time be settled down to married life. 1958L. Durrell Balthazar ii. 32 Now the Egyptians, they don't give a damn about a man if he has Tendencies.
e. Pol. [Infl. by F. tendance.] A political association within a larger party or movement, esp. a left-wing group within a socialist party.
1974J. White tr. Poulantzas's Fascism & Dictatorship iv. ii. 171 The communists of the Ruhr, a left tendency, went into combat in isolation in April. 1977Politics of Militant 1 The tendency grouped around the weekly paper ‘Militant’ has grown considerably in recent years. It absolutely dominates the Labour Party Young Socialists. 1980Times 14 Jan. 1/4 The ‘Militant Tendency’, a clandestine Trotskyist organization, with its own full-time staff, whose aims are to penetrate the Labour Party. 1981Daily Tel. 10 Dec. 32/5 The arguments of the tendency and other Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist and Trotskyist groups.
†2. A relation to, or bearing upon something.
1651Baxter Inf. Bapt. 195 They will say that all their obedience hath no other tendency to their salvation and finall Absolution, but as meer signs.
3. attrib. and Comb. tendency drama, tendency novel, tendency story, one composed with an unexpressed but definite purpose [after Ger. tendenz-drama, -roman, etc.]; tendency wit [after Ger. tendenzwitz].
1838De Morgan Ess. Probab. 23 They may all be referred either to that [assertion] just made, or to a tendency argument of the same character. 1889Jacobs æsop 206 The Fable..is a Moral Tendency-Beast-Droll. 1909Cent. Dict. Suppl., Tendency theory..the theory of the Tübingen school that the books of the New Testament..were put together for the purpose of upholding current opinions, and that they thus have a ‘tendency’. 1916A. A. Brill tr. Freud's Wit & its Relation to Unconscious iii. 138 By virtue of its purpose, the tendency-wit has at its disposal sources of pleasure to which harmless wit has no access. 1954D. Riesman Individualism Reconsidered (1955) xxii. 349 The id expresses its criticism by what Freud called tendency-wit, but then turns to its masters with a smile, saying, ‘After all,..it's only a joke.’ 1964M. Wohlgelernter Israel Zangwill vi. 87 A determination to self-criticism that Freud called ‘tendency-wit’. |