| 释义 |
‖ simoom, n.|sɪˈmuːm|
Also αsam-oom, samum, semoom, simúm. βsamoon, samun, semoun, simoon, -oun.
[a. Arab. semūm, f. the root samm to poison. With the form simoon cf. F. semoun, simoun.]
a. A hot, dry, suffocating sand-wind which sweeps across the African and Asiatic deserts at intervals during the spring and summer.
α1790Bruce Trav. IV. 559 The simoom..still continued to blow, so as to exhaust us entirely. 1799W. Taylor in Monthly Mag. VII. 139, I should have caught an ague on these sands, Did not a simoom cheer me now and then. 1817Byron Manfred iii. i. 128 The red-hot breath of the most lone simoom, Which dwells but in the desert. 1832Semoum [see samiel]. 1849E. B. Eastwick Dry Leaves 131 This place is sometimes visited with a furious tornado, or simúm, from the desert. 1865Fortn. Rev. I. 461 The samoom, which is so rare a phenomenon in the Egyptian desert. 1865W. G. Palgrave Arabia I. 18 The semoom was fairly upon us. 1870Emerson Soc. & Sol., Courage, Wks. (Bohn) III. 108 The hunter is not alarmed by bears..nor an Arab by the simoom. 1947M. A. Garbell Tropical & Equatorial Meteorol. xiii. 200/2 Algerian and Syrian samum.
attrib.1854J. S. C. Abbott Napoleon (1855) I. xiv. 239 Every passion..had swept with simoom blast over the cities and villages of France.
β1847Webster, Simoon. 1860Mrs. Harvey Cruise Claymore vi. 129 Two days after their departure an unusually violent simoon came on, and every soul was buried in the sand. 1878H. S. Wilson Alpine Ascents ii. 58 A simoon of impalpable fine cloud dust sweeps by. 1926W. N. Shaw Man. Metereol. I. ii. 28 The principal of these are..the bora of the Adriatic, the scirocco of Southern Italy, the samun of Algeria which is also called scirocco. 1931A. A. Miller Climatol. xiv. 253 Similar winds to the foehn occur in all mountain districts, where cyclonic storms occur... The Chinook..is exactly similar, so are the Samun of Persia, descending from the mountains of Kurdistan,..and many others. 1968G. R. Rumney Climatol. xiii. 254/1 The sirocco is known as the khamsin in Egypt, leveche in southeastern Spain, where it is usually quite dry, garbi in the Aegean, samoon in Algeria, sahat in Morocco, and ghibli in Libya.
b. transf. and fig.
1839Carlyle Chartism v, Force itself..has doubtless a composing effect;—against inanimate Simooms. 1847Bushnell Chr. Nurture ii. ii. (1861) 264 It is as if there were a simoon of piety blowing through the house. 1885Pall Mall G. 25 Feb. 1/1 All the force and fury of Mr. Gladstone's oratorical simoom.
Hence siˈmoom v., to exterminate as by a simoom.
1821Blackw. Mag. VIII. 532 They are simoom'd—blasted—annihilated. |
