| 释义 |
doughnut|ˈdəʊnʌt|
Also donut.
1. A small spongy cake made of dough (usually sweetened and spiced), and fried or boiled in lard. Freq. made in the shape of a thick ring.
1809W. Irving Knickerb. (1861) 90 An enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks. 1847Thoreau in Atlantic Monthly June (1892) 757 The window was..the size of an oblong doughnut, and about as opaque. 1861R. F. Burton City of Saints 104 note, The Dough-nut is properly speaking, a small roundish cake made of flour, eggs, and sugar, moistened with milk and boiled in lard. 1870Hazlitt Brand's Pop. Antiq. I. 48 At Baldock, Herts, the children call..[Shrove Tuesday] Dough-nut Day, from the small cakes fried in brass skillets over the fire with hog's lard.
2. a. colloq. or slang. Applied to various objects with a shape resembling the toroidal shape of a doughnut, as a motor-car or aeroplane tyre or a ring-shaped float (see quots.). In Math., a torus.
1925Fraser & Gibbons Soldier & Sailor Words 82 Dough nuts, a Navy name for the ‘Carley Floats’, life-saving rafts of circular shape, carried on board ships of war. 1930Amer. Mercury Dec. 455/2 Doughnut, an automobile tire. ‘We clout ten doughnuts an' call it a day.’ 1931Flight 13 Feb. 145/1 The ‘doughnut’ wheels with which the Airwork School machines are being equipped. 1936M. Allis Eng. Prelude xxviii. 202 An occasional stone doughnut of a sheepfold tells of solitary shepherd vigils. 1955Times 31 Aug. 9/4 The Air Ministry are also interested in quickly inflatable ‘doughnut’ buoyancy bags, which fit round the wheels like a horizontal lifebelt and can be inflated to about three times the size of a motor car tire. 1959M. Gardner in Sci. Amer. Mar. 148/2 107 We..then stretch and bend the cylinder into a torus... Every pair of antipodes on this diabolic doughnut will total 17.
b. Nuclear Engin. A toroidal vacuum chamber placed between the magnet poles of a betatron or synchrotron, in which electrons or protons are accelerated; applied also to similarly shaped vessels in other devices (see quot. 1958).
1941Physical Rev. LX. 51/1 The central 7 cm. hole of the doughnut was formed by pushing the centers of the dished faces together and picking out the glass. 1942Ibid. LXI. 94 To cut down bombardment of the inside of the vacuum doughnut..electrons are injected at 15 or 20 kilovolts for only a brief interval. 1942Electronics Sept. 84/2 Prof. Kerst, inventor and designer, is shown preparing to place the doughnut vacuum tube between poles of the electro-magnet. 1949Times 12 Aug. 2/3 The essential function of the synchrotron..is achieved by firing a burst of electrons..into an evacuated ‘donut’. 1958New Statesman 6 Sept. 266/3 In Zeta, the heavy hydrogen particles, forming a ‘plasma’, are contracted into a beam which travelling round in the ‘doughnut’ or ‘torus’ (like a giant motor-tyre) is ‘pinched’.
3. Comb., as doughnut-shaped adj.
1941[see betatron]. 1962Sci. Survey VII. 108 The effect..may be produced by toroidal (or doughnut-shaped) magnetic fields encircling the sun.
▸ slang (orig. U.S.). A manoeuvre in which a car or other vehicle is (usually quickly) turned in a complete circle.
1960Guide to Drag Racing (Fremont Drag Strip) 11 Spin a doughnut, make a tight turn. 1985Los Angeles Times (Electronic ed.) 6 Jan. Two men..were in a truck in a parking area near Marineland ‘doing doughnuts’, spinning their wheels and driving around in circles, when ‘they just lost their bearings’ and plunged to their deaths below. 1999N.Y. Times Mag. 22 Aug. 36 A freckled friend of Sex Machine's loops around him on his bicycle, lazily doing doughnuts. |
