■ convenient

通常是正面意义的“方便的”、“便利的”。但是有时候有负面意义，表示“只顾一时的”、“信口开河的”、“随心所欲的”（这个负面意义是一般词典上没有的）。

• We cannot make this minority a convenient excuse to turn our backs.我们不能拿这个未成年身份当作一个借口，不闻不问。
• Convenient guesses have at times been offered as fact. (The Washington Post, March 20, 2007)一些随心所欲的猜测，往往就拿出来当作事实。
• The timing seems convenient.时间看来是故意安排得这样凑巧的。

convenient 的这个负面的含义，并不是近年来才有的，早在 20 世纪初甚至 19 世纪美英两国的英文中都曾经出现。

• ... that convenient fallacy which has often served as a temporary shelter for educational practices which were once means to a useful end, but which, mistakenly treated as ends in themselves, grew entrenched before the blunder was clearly realized.(Yearbook, by Music Educators National Conference (US), 1916, p.96)…那个信口开河的谬论，常常充当了一道临时的屏障，保护了某些教育上的做法，这些做法，本来曾经是为了达到一个有用的目的而采取的手段，但是人们错误地把这些手段当做目的本身，从而谬误尚未明确认识，就已经积重难返。
• It is a very common and a very convenient fallacy, when abuses take place abroad, to assume that those who are at home have no adequate means of investigating them, and a bold claim to superior local information is frequently made the shield of distant enormities.(The Westminster Review, 1829, p.335)每当在国外干了坏事，十分常见而且随手拈来的一个谎言，就是说国内的人没有足够的条件，所以对这些坏事难以查明，而且，还常常大言不惭地声称当地的消息更为可靠，以此来掩盖远方的胡作非为。

convenient 的名词 convenience 用在 marriage of convenience，意思就是“利害婚姻”，也是用其贬义。