- 1
To impugn someone is to raise serious doubts about them — their honesty, their courage, their skill, or why they did a thing. You are not only disagreeing with an idea; you are picking at the person (or the claim) behind it. It is a formal, almost courtroom verb. Lawyers, politicians, and newspapers use it. Ordinary conversation almost never does; people say question, attack, or “are you saying I’m lying?” It often takes the thing being doubted: impugn someone’s honesty, impugn what a witness said. You can impugn a person, but English more often impugns a quality or a statement. Though actually, the word can sound heavier than the speaker means. To impugn is to cast doubt, not always to prove the person is bad. It is not a punch, and it is not a casual insult. Insult throws dirt; impugn tries to make other people stop trusting.
質疑、抨擊(誠信、勇氣、能力等,偏書面)
組成Borrowed from Middle French impugner, from Latin impugnō, from im- + pugnō (“fight”), from pugnus (“fist”). The picture is “to fight against” someone’s good name.
同家族的字
- pugilismfighting with fists; same Latin pugnus, “fist”
- pugnaciousready to fight; same Latin “fight” root
原始詞典資料2 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。
impugnverb/ɪmˈpjuːn/
- 1
obsoleteTo assault, attack.
- 2
To verbally assault, especially to argue against an opinion, motive, or action; to question the truth or validity of; cast doubt on.
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:impugn.
- [The fact] that Americans’ trust in government is at historic lows […] makes it easier for politicians to impugn the system – courts, parties, and institutions.
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。