1. 1

    Otiose is a rather word for not needed. If a remark, a rule, or a piece of writing does no useful job — if you could take it away and nothing would change — it is otiose. Lawyers, , and people writing carefully like it. Friends almost never say it; they say unnecessary or pointless instead. It can also mean idle, doing nothing, which sits closer to the Latin: ōtiōsus meant idle, from ōtium, ease, spare time, not having to work. So an otiose argument is one you could skip; in older writing, an otiose person is one sitting on their hands. It feels formal, a little cold, and a little showing-off if you drop it into chat. Use it when you mean “this extra bit is doing no work,” not when you only mean “I don’t like it.”

    多餘的、無謂的(偏書面)

    例句逐字對照、搭配詞、易混淆字

    這一義的完整解析還沒打開。訂閱後可以看到例句怎麼拆、常跟哪些字一起出現, 以及容易跟它搞混的字。

    看看訂閱內容

組成From Latin ōtiōsus (idle), from ōtium (ease, spare time).

原始詞典資料5 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。

otioseadj/ˈəʊ.ʃi.əʊs/

  • 1

    Having no effect.

    • The most eminent jurists have not even yet decided on a satisfactory definition of piracy. […] One school holds that it is any felony committed on the High Seas. But that does little except render a separate term otiose. Moreover, it is not accepted by other schools of thought.
  • 2

    Done in a careless or perfunctory manner.

    • It may seem otiose thus to have re-examined the elements of a distant controversy. I have sought only to indicate that there are several perfectly respectable reasons why British opinion should have been so utterly bewildered between 1793 and 1783. Such an examination, even if it manages not to cause offense, is bound itself to become confused and to reflect the cloudy muddle of the period. It is preferable therefore to elucidate the conflict by describing its changing effects on a single individual.
  • 3

    Reluctant to work or to exert oneself.

    • Pemulis, w/ aid of 150mg. of time-release Tenuate Dospan, almost danced a little post-transaction jig on his way up the steps of the otiose Cambridge bus.
  • 4

    Of a person, possessing a bored indolence.

  • 5

    Having no reason for being (raison d’être); having no point, reason, or purpose.

    • On Friday morning, I had to be at my house affairs before seven; and they kept me in Apia till past ten, disputing, and consulting about brick and stone and native and hydraulic lime, and cement and sand, and all sorts of otiose details about the chimney – just what I fled from in my father’s office twenty years ago;
    • Neither the fact that the debates can become otiose, nor their zeal in so often simply echoing the points made in the past, need, however, lead one to suppose that the proper cure is silence.

資料來源:英文維基詞典 English WiktionaryCC BY-SA 4.0)。 原文照列,未經改寫。