| 单词 | blue-collar |
| 例句 | blue-collar adjective •blue-collar work:manual, wage, industrial, factory | informal lunchpail.WORD NOTE blue-collar When the literal meaning of a word disappears entirely into its figurative sense, it may become a dead metaphor or a journalistic cliché but may nevertheless be celebrated because it so aptly illustrates the way use ceaselessly modifies language. Such a word is blue-collar. It originated as a term for laborers who wore work shirts and no ties. They tended to work with their hands or at a trade; toiled at a factory or a construction site rather than in an office; were underpaid relative to the executive class; and enthusiastically embraced the macho ideal. All that is in blue-collar, but the word long ago outlived its literal image. White collars, pink collars, blue collars—you can no longer tell anything from the color of anyone's collar, but the words themselves say a lot about us. As pink is to feminine, blue is to masculine—which may help explain why blue-collar, detached from its original meaning, has acquired an extra layer of connotation. The word (or synonyms thereof) is now used often in the sports pages to describe a basketball or baseball team of millionaires who may make a few million dollars less than the elite teams of the sport. Game six of the 2003 American League Championship Series went in favor of Boston, and a beat writer wondered whether this meant that “the blue-collar Bosox finally stood up to the big, bad Yankees.” Another journalist, resisting such a formulation, opined that the “filthy rich” had defeated the “scruffy rich” when the Yankees prevailed. I have heard the Florida Marlins, the team that defeated the Yankees to win the World Series, described as having a “brown bag payroll.” That payroll consists of just under fifty million dollars divided, I believe, in twenty-five uneven ways. It's true that the Yankees outspend any other team, but has blue-collar become so relative a term that it can modify the status of an infielder with a two million dollar salary or a middle-innings relief pitcher earning what used to be called “a cool million”? Yes, if only because of the term's connotation. It connotes a tough work ethic, as if to say that, despite any temptation to loaf, these players work hard, practice, prepare, and are, to use another term of the moment, “focused.” When blue-collar was used regularly to describe the New York Knicks of Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley, and Anthony Mason, it was a euphemism for “physical,” itself a euphemism for playing basketball as if it were hand-to-hand combat under the basket. But it also left the lingering sense that, riches aside, these guys play tough and are unafraid to get hurt, for deep down they remain the kids who played with daring and amazing energy on a neighborhood playground. — DLConversational, opinionated, and idiomatic, these Word Notes are an opportunity to see a working writer's perspective on a particular word or usage. |
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