| Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993. |
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| enjoy (v.) |
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| is a transitive verb meaning “take pleasure in, like”: I enjoy reading. It is also Standard with a reflexive pronoun: She always seems to enjoy herself. Enjoy is deliberately ambiguous in an expression such as He has enjoyed poor health for the past year, wherein a sense of enjoy meaning “has undergone or had the advantage or use of” suggests that the man takes pleasure in complaining about his health. Enjoy is sometimes labeled pretentious when it means simply “to undergo” and either the experience cannot really be felt as pleasurable, as in The building will enjoy considerable renovation this year, or, as with poor health, the experience promises to be quite the reverse of pleasant, as in She has already enjoyed her eighty-seventh birthday, which was her tenth in the nursing home. At the Casual and Impromptu levels, enjoy is also used in an elliptical transitive sense: Enjoy! meaning “Enjoy yourself; Have a good time.” | 1 |
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| | | The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Copyright © 1993 Columbia University Press. |
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