| 释义 |
ˈpepper-box
1. a. A small box, usually cylindrical, with a perforated lid, used for sprinkling powdered pepper.
1546Inventories (Surtees, No. 97) 86 A peper box, weying vj oz. iij quarters. 1598Shakes. Merry W. iii. v. 149 Hee cannot creepe into a halfe-penny purse, nor into a Pepper-Boxe. a1782R. Graves Fable in Dodsley Coll. Poems (1782) V. 70 The pepper-box..upon the table. 1865[see pepper v. 1].
b. In allusive expressions. (Cf. pepper n. 4, v. 5.)
1821Sporting Mag. VII. 273 Both now began to slash away, and the pepper box was handed from one to another. 1901Daily News 25 Feb. 6/2 The swarm of nonentities upon whom..the pepper-box of titles is shaken.
2. transf.
a. Applied contemptuously to a small cylindrical turret or cupola.
1821Scott Kenilw. xii, The monotonous stone pepper-boxes which, in modern Gothic architecture, are employed. 1855Thackeray Newcomes xxii, There are a score [of pictures] under the old pepper-boxes in Trafalgar Square as fine as the best here.
b. The name given to an early type of revolver in which five or six barrels revolve round a central axis; freq. attrib.
1861Richmond (Va.) Examiner 7 Dec. 3/2 The pistol is one of the old-fashioned pepper-box sort—self-cocking, and..is regarded as dangerous at either end. 1872‘Mark Twain’ Roughing It ii. 4 An old original ‘Allen’ revolver, such as irreverent people called a ‘pepper-box’. 1887[see coffee-mill s.v. coffee n. 5 b]. 1901W. Churchill Crisis ii. xviii. 280 Out of his pocket hung the curved butt of a big pepper-box revolver. 1915W. B. Yeats Reveries (1916) 48 An old pepper-box revolver. 1920C. W. Sawyer Our Rifles 65 The rifle was made about 1855, when pepper-box pistols were in everyday use. 1969Canad. Antiques Collector Feb. 29/1 An early (1851) English ‘Improved Revolver’ which is part revolver and part pepperbox.
3. At the Eton game of fives: see quot. 1902.
1865Etoniana Anc. & Mod. 178. 1889 Skrine Mem. E. Thring 17 Then, when the loose ball came, clapping it into the pepper-box, dead. 1902C. R. Stone Eton Gloss. 25 Pepper-box.—One of the great differences between Eton fives and Rugby fives is the pepper-box, the irregular buttress sticking into the court..imitated from the original fives court in the side of Upper Chapel... Originally pepper-box was the name applied only to the Dead Man's Hole, but now generally to the whole buttress.
4. fig. A hot-tempered person.
1867H. Kingsley Silcote of Silcotes xiii. (1876) 77 Make love to Dora, if the young pepper-box will let you.
5. attrib.
1771T. Pennant Tour in Scotl. 1769 203 A slender square tower with a pepper-box top. 1825in Hone Every-day Bk. I. 949 The pepper-box towers remind the spectator more of pigeon-houses than church steeples. 1836Mrs. Sherwood Nun i. 5 The pepper-box turret on each side of the gateway. 1948J. R. Firth in E. P. Hamp et al. Readings in Linguistics II (1966) 178 The Romans and the English managed to dispense with those written signs called ‘accents’ and avoided pepperbox spelling. |
