| 释义 |
White Russian, n. and a.
[f. white a. + Russian n. and a.; cf. Belorussian a. and n.]
A. n.
1. a. The East Slavonic language spoken in Belorussia, a district in the western part of Russia which is now one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union.
1850‘Talvi’ Hist. View Lang. & Lit. Slavic Nations ii. i. 51 The White-Russian is the dialect spoken in Lithuania and a portion of White Russia, especially Volhynia. 1932C. A. Phillips tr. H. von Eckardt's Russia vi. ii. 475 Up to the sixteenth century the Lithuanian Grand Princes and boyars regarded White Russian as their language. 1949Entwistle & Morison Russian & Slavonic Lang. i. 30 White Russian became a chancery language, not a literary tongue. 1960W. K. Matthews Russian Hist. Gram. i. ii. 34 There are seven groups of Slavonic languages, viz. the East Slavonic (Russian, White Russian, and Ukrainian) [etc.].
b. A native or inhabitant of Belorussia.
1886[see Russian n. 1 a]. 1912D. M. Wallace Russia xxxix. 726 [The first Duma] was composed of many nationalities clustering round the dominant race. The chief ethnographical groups were the Great-Russians (265), the Little-Russians (62), the White-Russians (12), the Poles (51), the Lithuanians (10),..and the Bashkirs (4). 1918R. Wilton Russia's Agony i. 9 The White Russians, a comparatively small section of the Northern Slav people, inhabiting Smolensk and the upper reaches of the Dnieper. 1960W. K. Matthews Russian Hist. Gram. iii. ii. 309 The grammatical treatises of the time..are mainly the work of non-Russian scholars—White Russians and Ukrainians.
2. = white n. 19 b.
1927Daily Tel. 29 Mar. 11/6 The White Russians in the Northern Army..were purely soldiers, while the Reds were carrying on propaganda. 1930Times 17 Mar. 12/6 Yesterday afternoon ‘White’ Russians, most of them women, made a demonstration at the offices of Amtorg Trading Corporation, the Soviet's American commercial agency. 1943tr. N. Basseches's Unknown Army iv. 59 If they were in the territory of the Soviets, they either broke through in time to join the White Russians or they were caught by the Red mobilization. 1973‘D. Halliday’ Dolly & Starry Bird xii. 184 Innes was sitting looking at the Director like a White Russian receiving word of Biological Ajax. 1976New Yorker 15 Nov. 39/1, I was surrounded by..some of those privileged White Russians who abandoned their first-adopted countries of Europe to come to the States at the onset of the Second World War.
B. adj.
1. Of or pertaining to Belorussia or its people.
1886Encycl. Brit. XXI. 71/1 In 1879 in European Russia,—exclusive of six Lithuanian and White Russian governments,—42,530 persons were tried before the courts. 1918Trofimov & Scott Handbk. Russian I. i. 4 The White Russian dialect covers the smallest area of all the Russian dialects. 1926L. H. Guest New Russia i. 21 The following are Independent Republics: The Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic..The White Russian Socialist Soviet Republic. 1944[see Belorussian a. and n.]. 1960W. K. Matthews Russian Hist. Gram. ii. xii. 276 In the latter part of the seventeenth century the influence of the White Russian and Ukrainian scholars and writers began to be felt.
2. Of or pertaining to the Whites in the Russian Civil War.
1929W. S. Churchill World Crisis V. xii. 247 We have seen them [sc. the Czechs] already in October 1918..exasperated by White Russian mismanagement. 1957P. Kemp Mine were of Trouble iii. 39 The Requetés were raising two squadrons in Seville, under a White Russian colonel named Alkon. 1964R. Perry World of Tiger ii. 24 The White Russian hunter Yankovsky. 1974Encycl. Brit. Macropædia XVI. 70/2 The Red Army..drove him [sc. Wrangel] and his army into exile. There remained only the Japanese and White Russian forces in eastern Siberia.
▸ A cocktail made with vodka, coffee liqueur, and cream or milk. Cf. Black Russian n. at black adj. Additions.
1965Oakland (Calif.) Tribune 21 Nov. (insert) White Russian. 1 oz. each Coffee Southern, vodka, cream. 1978Washington Post (Nexis) 17 Mar. b1 Two white Russians, a gin and tonic and a Schlitz. 2001P. Reizin Dumping Hilary (2002) viii. 258 We haven't gone out. Darkness has fallen and we've moved on from white wine to White Russians. |
