释义 |
-hood, suffix|hʊd| [ME. -hod (-hode):—OE. -hád = OS. -hêd, OHG. -heit.] Orig. a distinct n., meaning ‘person, personality, sex, condition, quality, rank’ (see had n.), which being freely combined with nouns, as in OE. cild-hád child-condition, mæᵹð-hád virgin state, pápan hád papal dignity, ceased at length to be used as a separate word, and survived as a mere suffix, and is thus noteworthy as a late example of the process by which suffixes arose. The ME. form was regularly -hôd with open ô, as still in Chaucer; but in the 15th c. it had become close ō (riming in Bokenham's Seyntys with gōd ‘good’), and this duly gave mod.Eng. hood. A parallel suffix, from same root and in same sense, is -head, ME. -hed, -hede, Sc. -heid. A considerable number of derivatives in -hood go back to OE. -hád, e.g. bishophood, childhood, priesthood; many are of later origin, either with -hood substituted for the cognate -hede, -head, e.g. falsehood, lustihood, or as analogical formations, in some of which -hood has displaced earlier suffixes. Being a living suffix, -hood can be affixed at will to almost any word denoting a person or concrete thing, and to many adjectives, to express condition or state, so that the number of these derivatives is indefinite. Nonce-formations are numerous:
1599Nashe Lenten Stuffe 46 Their heauenly hoods in theyr synode thus decreede. a1639W. Whately Prototypes i. iv. (1640) 45 It is not man-hood, it is dog-hood, or I may terme it beare-hood. 1662Sparrow tr. Behme's Rem. Wks., Apol. conc. Perf. 117 Man in his self-hood and I-hood. 1876W. Bathgate Deep Things of God ii. 19 Acquainted with the great reality of their Soulhood. 1883Daily News 3 Oct. 2/2 Believing in the white Aylesburys..as the final expression of duckhood. |