fairly,rather的区别

 　　两词都可作“相当地”，“颇有几分”讲。其主要区别如下：

①fairly主要与“令人有愉快感”的形容词或副词连用，如：good, bravely, well, nice等。而rather作此意解时，则用于“令人不愉快”的形容词或副词，如：bad, ugly等。如：Tom is rather lazy, but John is fairly diligent.汤姆很懒惰，而约翰却相当勤奋。

②如果一个单数名词有形容词修饰，不定冠词须放在fairly前面，而rather却是放前放后皆可。如：This is a fairly interesting book.这是一本很有趣的书。This book is rather an interesting one.(同前)

③有些词本身无所谓“令人愉快”或“不愉快”之意，如：fast, show, hot, cold等，说话人则可用fairly来表“赞许”，用rather来表示“不以为然”。

④fairly往往表示“恰到好处，恰当”，而rather含有“太过分，有过之”之意。试比较：This book is fairly easy for you to read.(正好合适你读。) This book is rather easy for you to read.(太简单以致不合适了)

⑤rather还可用在alike, like, similar, different等词和“有”前，此时含义是“有点儿”或“稍微”之意。如：The weather was rather worse than I had expected.这天气比我所预料的要糟糕些。