| 释义 |
fossil, a. and n.|ˈfɒsɪl|
Also 6 focille, 7–8 fossile, (7 -ill, 8 fosile, fossel).
[a. F. fossile, ad. L. fossil-is dug up, f. fodĕre to dig.]
A. adj.
1. a. Obtained by digging; found buried in the earth.
[1563W. Fulke Meteors (1640) 1 Those bodies, that are generated in the earth called Fossilia.] 1654Vilvain Epit. Ess. iii. lxx, Seven unmixt fossil Metals are forecited. 1669Worlidge Syst. Agric. (1681) 25 Lime, Chalk, Marle, or any cold fossile Soils, are an extraordinary Improvement to dry, sandy, hot Lands. 1673Ray Journ. Low C. 101 Fossile Dice, which they say they dig out of the Earth. 1732Arbuthnot Rules of Diet 269 All fossil Salts, as Sea-Salt, Rock-Salt, etc. 1816J. Smith Panorama Sc. & Art II. 354 Fossil coal, and..bitumen, contain a large quantity of carbon.
†b. fossil fishes: fishes anciently supposed to live in water underground. Obs.
1661Lovell Hist. Anim. & Min. Introd. [ a1661Fuller Worthies Lancashire ii. (1662) 107 These Pisces Fossiles or Subterranean Fishes must needs be unwholesome.]
c. fossil fuel: combustible material obtained from below ground and formed during the geological past; now esp. contrasted with sources of nuclear energy. Also attrib.
1835[J. Holland] (title) The history and description of fossil fuel, the collieries and coal trade of Great Britain. 1854Ronalds & Richardson Chem. Technol. (ed. 2) I. 54 The oldest of all kinds of fossil fuel, the anthracite. 1921Sci. Amer. 14 May 292/3 The early exhaustion of our fossil fuels will require the use of such other sources of power as water, wind, and sun. 1949Science 4 Feb. 107/2 In view of the eventual exhaustion of fossil fuels, it is of interest to know to what extent water power can be depended upon to replace them. 1952Ayres & Scarlott Energy Sources i. 4 The combustion of fossil fuels or the accelerated nuclear fission of elements. 1955Times 9 Aug. 8/2 This would exhaust the known reserves of coal, oil and natural gas (the so-called fossil fuels) within less than a century. 1969R. B. Fuller Operating Man. Spaceship Earth viii. 122 Physical energy..is ever increasingly deposited as a fossil-fuel savings account aboard our Spaceship Earth through photosynthesis and..topsoil fossilization.
2. a. Now applied in narrower sense to the remains of animals and plants, belonging to past (usually prehistoric) ages, and found embedded in the strata of the earth. (Commonly apprehended as an attrib. use of the n.)
fossil ivory, ivory furnished by the tusks of mammoths preserved in Siberian ice; fossil screws (see quot. 1882).
1665Phil. Trans. I. 111 Of Fossile wood and Coals. c1680Enquiries 2/1 Is there any..Amianthus, Fossile teeth, or any kind of Ore unknown to you? 1695Woodward Nat. Hist. Earth vi. (1702) 251 The fossil Shells are many of them of the same kinds with those that now appear upon the neighbouring Shores. 1753Chambers Cycl. Suppl. s.v. Ivory, Fossile Ivory. 1754Phil. Trans. XLVIII. 801 It is..considerably lighter than any fossile petrifaction. 1758Fothergill ibid. L. 688 The fossill Bones of an Alligator found..near Whitby. 1802Playfair Illustr. Hutton. Th. 196 This is true likewise of the fossil-pitch of Coal-Brookdale. 1850Lyell 2nd Visit U.S. II. xxx. 177 A fossil forest. 1875W. Maskell Ivories 2 Another kind of real ivory—the fossil ivory. 1880Haughton Phys. Geog. vi. 264 Its fossil eggs are estimated at twenty-four pounds weight each. 1882Cassell, Fossil-screws, a popular name for the casts in the rock left by spiral shells, or for those of encrinites when their impressions are horizontally furrowed.
fig.1841–4Emerson Ess., Poet Wks. (Bohn) I. 162 Language is fossil poetry. 1849Robertson Serm. Ser. i. xii. (1866) 206 Words are fossil thoughts. 1877Conder Basis Faith i. 34 The fossil impression of a dead faith.
b. Used in names of certain mineral substances fancifully considered to resemble organic products, as fossil copal, fossil cork, fossil farina: see the ns.; fossil flax, fossil paper, fossil wood, fossil wool, varieties of asbestos; fossil flour, fossil meal, ? = fossil farina.
1859Page Handbk. Geol. Terms, Fossil-Paper, Fossil-Wool. 1882Cassell, Fossil-flour. Ibid., Fossil-wood. 1882Ogilvie, Fossil-flax. 1883Cassell's Fam. Mag. Dec. 62/2 ‘Fossil meal’ is the name given to a composition..used for coating steam pipes and boilers.
3. Applied contemptuously to persons, ideas, etc.: Belonging to the past, out of date; ‘petrified’, incapable of growth or progress.
1859T. Parker in Weiss Life (1863) II. 103 The Pope is a fossil ruler, pre-mediæval. 1894Ld. Rosebery in Westm. Gaz. 22 Mar. 5/2 Those fossil politicians—for there is a fossil Radicalism as well as a fossil Toryism.
B. n.
†1.
a. In early use: Any rock, mineral, or mineral substance dug out of the earth. Obs.
1619H. Hutton Follie's Anat. (Percy Soc.) 23 So that he seemes as if black Vulcan's art Of diverse fossiles had compil'd each part. 1665–6Phil. Trans. I. 111 Of some Fossils as Sand, Gravel, Earths. 1744Berkeley Siris §23 Its being dug out of the earth shews it to be a fossil. 1799Scotl. Descr. (ed. 2) 15 An infinite diversity of minerals and other fossils. 1807J. Headrick View Min. etc. Arran 58, I could not find any solid rock of that fossil [pitchstone]. 1814tr. Klaproth's Trav. 382 The chief mass of this porphyry seems..to be a distinct fossil from basalt.
†b. A fossil fish: see A. 1 b. Obs.
1569E. Fenton Secr. Nat. 50 b, The auncient Philosophers affirme, that there haue bene founde fishes vnder the earth, who (for that cause) they called Focilles.
c. humorously. Something dug out of the earth.
1855Lady Holland Mem. Syd. Smith I. 376 You always detect a little of the Irish fossil, the potato, peeping out in an Irishman.
2. Now only in restricted sense: Anything found in the strata of the earth, which is recognizable as the remains of a plant or animal of a former geological period, or as showing vestiges of the animal or vegetable life of such a period.
[1707Curios. in Husb. & Gard. 296 When a Plant petrifies, it degenerates by degrading it self to the Rank of Fossiles.] 1736P. Collinson in Darlington's Mem. (1849) 73 What are called fossils—being stones..that have either the impressions, or else the regular form of shells, leaves, fishes, fungi [etc.]. 1774Goldsm. Nat. Hist. (1776) I. 26 These shells and extraneous fossils are not productions of the earth. 1831Brewster Newton (1855) II. xvi. 100 He regarded fossils as the real remains of plants and animals which had been buried in the strata.
3. fig. Something ‘petrified’, that has lost its vitality or capacity for growth or progress. Also, contemptuously applied to a person of antiquated notions or habits.
1844Emerson Lect., Yng. Amer. Wks. (Bohn) II. 300 Government has been a fossil; it should be a plant. 1857C. Brontë Professor iv, When a man endures what ought to be unendurable he is a fossil.
4. attrib. and Comb., attributive or similative, as fossil-like adj.; objective, as fossil-bearing adj.; parasynthetic, as fossil-fuelled adj.; fossil-botanist, one skilled in fossil-botany, the study of fossil plants; fossil-ore (see quot.).
1886A. Winchell Walks & Talks Geol. Field 195 These lowest *fossil-bearing strata.
1850H. Miller Footpr. Creat. x. (1874) 183 The *fossil botanist who devoted him⁓self chiefly to the study of microscopic structure.
1882Cassell, *Fossil-botany.
1964J. B. McClure in Trans. World Power Conf. (Lausanne) Ia. 326 The early application of higher efficiency in *fossil fueled processes is limited by declining fuel costs..and high capital costs. 1967Technology Week 23 Jan. 34/2 The nuclear power plants currently being constructed will be competitive with fossil-fueled plants. 1970Times 10 Apr. 31/5 The bugbear of short range with existing battery electric systems could be overcome in the short term..by offering a small fossil-fuelled engine alternator.
1874Sayce Compar. Philol. i. 61 Long-forgotten strata of society which our *fossil-like records reveal to us.
1881Raymond Mining Gloss., *Fossil ore, fossiliferous red hematite.
Hence † ˈfossilry, ? a collection of fossils.
1755Gentl. Mag. XXV. 567 Verses occasion'd by seeing the Fossilry at Tenderves in Cornwall.
Add:[B.] [3.] b. Linguistics. A word or other linguistic form preserved only in isolated regions or in set phrases, idioms, or collocations (as hue in hue and cry).
[1841–4: see sense 2 a fig. of the adj.] 1931G. O. Curme Syntax xxiii. 456 The simple infinitive survives as a fossil in various categories. 1948Mencken Amer. Lang. Suppl. ii. 118 There is a rising doubt that the linguistic fossils he discovered in large numbers are really inherited..from Elizabethan England. 1978Lang. & Lang. Behavior Abstr. XII. Suppl. i. 1173/1 Historical aspects of morphology are indispensable in all descriptions because historical fossils appear in each lang. 1983TESOL Newslet. (U.S.) Oct. 3/1 Interaction-based interlanguage..is characterized by an array of fossils, incorrect or..non-standard forms which have resisted formal correction.
▸ fossil record n. Palaeontol. a series or sequence of fossils which, dated in correlation with the strata in which they are found, provide material evidence of evolutionary or geological history, esp. that of a particular group of organisms, a region, etc. (in quot. 1863, with the general sense of ‘fossil evidence’, and not a fixed collocation).
[1863Continental Monthly Jan. 80/1 The earliest fossil record of animal life is witness to the simplicity of organic structure.] 1877N.Y. Times 29 Sept. 3/3 He [sc. Joseph Leconte] requires the admission of a more rapid rate of evolution of life on the globe during critical periods, in order to account for the breaks that occur in the *fossil record of life at certain points of the grand chain. 1879Science 18 Sept. 141/1 The sea-urchins,..with a comparatively complete fossil record, offer a tempting field for speculation. 1927J. B. S. Haldane & J. S. Huxley Animal Biol. xiii. 306 Thus in the fossil record a succession of types is really visible, and the succession is definitely one of lower by higher types. 2000C. Tudge Variety of Life ii. iii. 151 Many [red seaweeds] acquire a coating of calcium carbonate (which is one reason why their fossil record is so good). |
