| 释义 |
ˈhaywire, n. and a.
[f. hay n.1 + wire n.]
A. n. Wire for binding bales of hay, straw, etc. N. Amer.
1917Deb. House of Commons Canada 5351/2 But the ‘hay wire’ did not hold. 1921Outing (U.S.) Dec. 101/1 You can't run a logging camp without snuff and hay wire. 1936D. McCowan Anim. Canad. Rockies xii. 103 A thick mesh of hay wire. 1942E. Paul Narrow St. v. 41 The tenants bought kindling wood in little bundles... These neat little sticks had been dipped in resin at one end, and were bound with haywire.
B. adj.
1. Poorly equipped, roughly contrived, inefficient, esp. hay-wire outfit (from the practice of using hay-wire for makeshift repairs). orig. U.S.
1905Forestry Bureau Bull. (U.S.) 61 B, Hay wire outfit, a contemptuous term for loggers with poor logging equipment. 1931‘D. Stiff’ Milk & Honey Route 207 A haywire outfit is something that is all tied and patched together. 1934N. & Q. CLXVI. 13/1, I first heard ‘hay⁓wire’ in the summer of 1929, when I was living in northern New York State. There is also the expression ‘haywire outfit’, a job on which poor living accommodations are provided for the workers. Also an inefficient factory or shop. 1959Listener 26 Feb. 388/2 A haywire, unpredictable, one-man business. 1968R. D. Patterson Finlay's River 145 The..irritating, because man-made, chaos attendant on the intrusion of a haywire railroad into the ordered life of the frontier now lay behind them.
2. Of a person, circumstances, etc.: in an emotional state, tangled, involved, confused, crazy. colloq. (orig. U.S.).
1934J. O'Hara Appointment in Samarra vii. 226 A married man..and absolutely haywire on the subject of another woman. 1939W. Faulkner Wild Palms 223 Now you can eat something. Or do you think that will send you haywire again? 1942D. Powell Time to be Born (1943) xiv. 330 Everything seems so haywire, lately. 1955‘E. C. R. Lorac’ Ask Policeman viii. 89 The time element's all haywire.
b. spec. in phr. to go haywire, to go wrong; to become excited or distracted, to become mentally unbalanced. colloq. (orig. U.S.).
1929N.Y. Times 13 Oct., When some element in the recording system becomes defective it is said to have gone haywire. 1933Daily Express 16 Nov. 6/4 Haywire, epithet applied currently in U.S. to man of confused ideas... New York's newly elect mayor La Guardia is said by his enemies to have gone all haywire. 1936M. Allingham Flowers for Judge i. 15, I suppose some wives would have gone haywire by this time. 1940N. Marsh Surfeit of Lampreys (1941) vii. 103 Some nice homicidal maniac..going all haywire. 1942Tee Emm (Air Ministry) II. 88 If the Governor Unit should go haywire then you merely pull the little switch down to the fixed position and all is well. 1942E. Waugh Put out More Flags 42 ‘If anyone so much as mentions concentration camps again,’ said Ambrose Silk, ‘I shall go frankly haywire.’ 1945Times 28 May 2/1 The compasses acted normally, but over the magnetic pole, where the weather was more favourable, they ‘went haywire’. 1951M. Kennedy Lucy Carmichael iii. i. 149 They go haywire because they haven't had any love affair at all. 1962Cath. Herald 26 Oct. 1/5 Architecture has gone haywire. Music is without harmony. 1962A. Nisbett Technique Sound Studio xii. 214 Everything..going haywire at the same time. |
