英语阅读：Come to the fore
Reader question:In this headline – New young poets have come to the fore – what does "come
to the fore" mean?
My comments:
New young poets have become visible. They have made their presence felt.
They are perhaps coming into their own. In short, they are gaining deserved
recognition. If they keep getting better, they'll perhaps become a force to be
reckoned with in poetic circles.
Fore means front, as in forefront, foreground. For someone to come to the
fore means for them to step up to the front. When you come to the front, say,
stepping up to the podium and making a speech, you become visible as you are
distinguished from the crowd. In other words, you are prominent,
influential.
"Come to the fore" may have come from the game of golf. In teeing up, the
golfer steps up, comes to the fore to hit the first shot. When he comes to the
fore, he separates himself from the rest of the group waiting for their turn –
hence the metaphorical implication of prominence.
It's not always a good thing to come to the fore, though. Everything, good
or bad, may come to the fore. And when bad things come to the fore, you've got a
crisis on your hand. If abortion, for example, comes to the fore in the
presidential race in America, this troublesome issue may be a problem for some
candidates – they can no longer avoid dealing with the issue.
You can best learn about terms like "come to the fore", their hints, shades
and nuances, through context via actual examples. Here are a few culled from the
media.
1. Hillary Clinton adopted a sharper tone as she came face-to-face with
Barack Obama in a bid to revive her ailing campaign for the Democratic Party's
presidential nomination, but never achieved a "knockout blow", US political
pundits said today.
...
Within minutes of the start, negative campaigning came to the fore as the
two rivals politely but firmly accused each other of spreading misinformation
about the other's policies.
Mrs Clinton said the Obama campaign's fliers had been "very disturbing to
me" while Mr Obama replied that her campaign had "constantly sent out negative
attacks on us...We haven't whined about it because I understand that's the
nature of these campaigns."
- Neither Clinton nor Obama score 'knockout' (Ireland On-line, February 27,
2008)
2. In the 2002 elections, Islamists here rode a wave of anti-American
sentiment over the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. But by the time this vote
rolled around, discontent over joblessness, crumbling infrastructure and
corruption had come to the fore in the only province the Islamists governed.
- Islamists' loss in Pakistan isn't a US win (Los Angeles Times, February
26, 2008)
3. "The fuel may be free, but all the money in the world won't buy you more
of it," says Kenneth Westrick, 3TIER's founder and chief executive and an
atmospheric scientist.
Wind power's limitations came to the fore during last week's Texas
brownouts, caused by a sudden cold front that killed the wind. That puts a
premium on siting for wind farms. By building sophisticated models of a given
area's wind potential at different times, and with a host of climactic
variables, Mr. Westrick hopes to be able to give wind farm developers more bang
for their buck (and make some of his own.)
- Mapping the Wind (blogs.wsj.com, March 3, 2008)
4. Zi Yan, hailing from the country's rural province of Sichuan, took up
the sport to stay fit. Yan was introduced to tennis at six, when a friend's
father taught her the rudiments of the game...
Her talent came to the fore a few years after she had passed out of
school.
"The coach thought I moved fast. He said I could be a professional player,"
says the world No.55.
- Yan, the new face of Chinese tennis (in.news.yahoo.com/hindustantimes,
March 7, 2008).
页:
[1]