| 单词 | motley |
| 例句 | motley adjective •a motley collection of vintage fabrics:miscellaneous, disparate, diverse, assorted, varied, diversified, heterogeneous | informal ragtag, raggle-taggle. ANT homogeneous.WORD NOTE motley The word motley is on an unfortunate downward slide. For reasons to do with police officers and a rock band it has become irrevocably attached to the word crew and now conjures up visions of something shabby—varied in its shabbiness—but definitely shabby, unlikely-looking. When we hear in As You Like It, "O that I were a fool! I am ambitious for a motley coat,” we only wonder why. How exactly motley got its down-at-heel associations is unclear. It means simply "diversified in color, multicolored, variegated" and should be, by rights, as value-free as its synonyms. True, the noun has the secondary meaning "incongruous mixture" and true, motley is itself a synecdoche for a jester's incongruously colored coat—but shabby? Untrustworthy? Suspicious? Even dangerous? Motley needs rehabilitation. — ZSConversational, 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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