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A detractor is a person who talks someone or something down — they point out faults, spread doubt, and try to make the good look smaller than it is. A critic can still be fair, and may even like the work; a detractor has already taken a side against it. Though actually, newspapers often use the two words as if they were the same. You meet it in fairly careful English: “her detractors say…”, “despite his detractors…”. It is not a playground word. The speaker is not always lying; they may believe the picture. What marks the word is the aim: to pull the person’s standing down, not just to describe.
唱衰的人、貶低者
組成de- (down, away) + tract (pull) + -or (the person who does it): someone who pulls a good name down. English took it from Middle English detractor / dectractour, from Anglo-Norman detractour, from Old French detractor.
同家族的字
- detractthe verb — to pull someone’s good name down
- detractionthe act of talking them down
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
detractornoun
- 1
A person who belittles the worth of another person or cause.
- Four polite Englishmen in their middle 20s, feigning like firewater drunks in a Eugene O'Neill play: it's exactly the stuff that makes their detractors groan.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。