| 词汇 | half-wit |
| 词源 | half-wit. Humorists take note that half-wit was first used in English to mean an ineffectual writer of humor, “a dealer in poor witicisms,” someone who wasn’t funny half the time. Wrote John Dryden in All For Love (1678), the first recorded use of the term: “Halfwits are fleas;/ so little and so light,/ We scarce could know they live,/ but that they bite.” It wasn’t until nearly a century had passed (1755) that half-wit was applied to anyone who hasn’t all his wits. |
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