英语词汇puffery的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

puffery. In his play The Critic (1779) English dramatist Rich- ard Sheridan created a cast of characters including the bogus, verbose critic and author Mr. Puff. Sheridan named Mr. Puff after the English word puff, meaning inflated, which is sugges- tive of the sound made by puffing wind from the mouth and was commonly applied to exaggerated newspaper ads at the time. But Mr. Puff added a new dimension to the word in Sheridan’s satire of the malignant literary criticism of the day. Puff talks with the spiteful critics Dangle and Sneer about the absurd, bombastic “tragedy” he has written called The Spanish Armada, pushing his play all the while, for he has reduced the art of puffery to a science. At one time he even catalogs the puff: “Yes, the puff preliminary, the puff collateral, the puff col- lusive and the puff oblique, or puff by implication. These all as- sume, as circumstances require, the various forms of letter to the editor, occasional anecdote, impartial critique, observation from correspondent, or advertisement from the party.” So ab- surdly does Mr. Puff overpraise or blow up his work that his name entered the language in the form of puffery as a word for the kind of criticism produced by literary cliques, the mutual back-scratching or logrolling that is usually subtler, but still as common today among the Sneers and Smears of literature as it was in Sheridan’s time. Thanks to Mr. Puff we also have a syno- nym for a blurb.

词汇	puffery
词源	puffery. In his play The Critic (1779) English dramatist Rich- ard Sheridan created a cast of characters including the bogus, verbose critic and author Mr. Puff. Sheridan named Mr. Puff after the English word puff, meaning inflated, which is sugges- tive of the sound made by puffing wind from the mouth and was commonly applied to exaggerated newspaper ads at the time. But Mr. Puff added a new dimension to the word in Sheridan’s satire of the malignant literary criticism of the day. Puff talks with the spiteful critics Dangle and Sneer about the absurd, bombastic “tragedy” he has written called The Spanish Armada, pushing his play all the while, for he has reduced the art of puffery to a science. At one time he even catalogs the puff: “Yes, the puff preliminary, the puff collateral, the puff col- lusive and the puff oblique, or puff by implication. These all as- sume, as circumstances require, the various forms of letter to the editor, occasional anecdote, impartial critique, observation from correspondent, or advertisement from the party.” So ab- surdly does Mr. Puff overpraise or blow up his work that his name entered the language in the form of puffery as a word for the kind of criticism produced by literary cliques, the mutual back-scratching or logrolling that is usually subtler, but still as common today among the Sneers and Smears of literature as it was in Sheridan’s time. Thanks to Mr. Puff we also have a syno- nym for a blurb.
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