| 释义 |
disappear, v.|dɪsəˈpɪə(r)|
Forms: 6 disapere, 7 disappeer, -appeare, 7– disappear.
[f. dis- 6 + appear v., after F. disparaître, disparaiss-, of which the earlier direct reprs. were disparish and dispear, q.v.
(In Palsgr., but app. not in common use before 17th c. Not in Shakes., nor in Bible of 1611.)]
1. a. intr. To cease to appear or be visible; to vanish from sight. The reverse of appear. Also with advb. expressions introduced by prepositions.
1530Palsgr. 517/1 The vysion disapered incontynent. 1623Cockeram, Disappeare, to vanish out of sight. 1647Clarendon Hist. Reb. I. (1843) 17/2 There appeared to him, on the side of his bed, a man..after this discourse he disappeared. 1665Sir T. Herbert Trav. (1677) 388 When the Sun is deprest and disappearing. 1667Milton P.L. viii. 478 She disappeerd, and left me dark, I wak'd To find her, or for ever to deplore Her loss. a1704Locke (J.), The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours, and, if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear. 1726Adv. Capt. R. Boyle 271 The Cloud upon my Wife's Face began to disappear by degrees. 1837E. Howard Old Commodore I. iv. 111 Richard Stubbs..disappeared down the Jacob's ladder. 1842Lever J. Hinton lii, A mounted party..entering one of the gates of the city, disappeared from our sight. 1860Tyndall Glac. i. xxvii. 212, I saw the leader sink and suddenly disappear. 1881Mrs. J. H. Riddell Senior Partner xxii, The boy disappeared into the retirement of the back room. 1888Mrs. H. Ward R. Elsmere v, Almost every year he disappeared to France. Ibid. x, Rose caught a gray dress disappearing up the little stairs. 1922Joyce Ulysses 427 He disappears into Olhousen's the pork butcher's.
b. Of a line or thing extended in space, which ends by gradually ceasing to be distinguishable, or ‘dies away’ by blending with something else; to be traceable no farther.
1753Hogarth Anal. Beauty 9 Its opposite thread is lost, and disappears on the other. 1860Tyndall Glac. i. ix. 63 A moraine..disappearing at the summit of the cascade. Mod. (Entomol.) A species of moth with a particular line disappearing at the subcostal vein.
2. a. To cease to be present, to depart; to pass from existence, pass away, be lost.
1665Hooke Microgr. 98 If..the surface has been long expos'd..these small caverns are fill'd with dust, and disappear. 1784Cowper Task iii. 814 As duly as the swallows disappear. 1874Morley Compromise (1886) 235 A species of plant or animal disappears in face of a better adapted species. 1884Gustafson Found. Death i. (ed. 3) 13 The works of the few writers of antiquity who ventured to treat of these mysteries..have tracelessly disappeared.
b. of things immaterial.
a1700Dryden (J.), When the night and winter disappear, The purple morning rising with the year, Salutes the Spring. 1809–10Coleridge Friend (1865) 38 Effects will not, indeed, immediately disappear with their causes. 1862H. Spencer First Princ. iv. §26 (1875) 91 Our conception of the Relative itself disappears, if our conception of the Absolute is a pure negation. 1893Weekly Notes 83/2 The distinction between meritorious and non-meritorious creditors had disappeared.
3. trans. To cause to disappear.
1897Chem. News 19 Mar. 143 We progressively disappear the faces of the dodecahedron. 1949Amer. Speech XXIV. 41 The magician may speak of disappearing or vanishing a card.
▸ a. intr. Of a person: to go missing in suspicious circumstances; spec. (euphem.) to undergo abduction or arrest, esp. for political reasons, and subsequently to be detained or killed, without one's fate being made known.
1941W. Williams Riddle of Reich iv. 36 There have been arrests recently and there are rumors that some people have disappeared, people who told about the destruction which the British have inflicted on northwestern and western Germany. 1969C. Belfrage tr. E. Galeano Guatemala 68 There are never any witnesses of a killing... The families of many who disappear prefer not to take the matter to the authorities. 1977Washington Post (Nexis) 10 Mar. a2 Yesterday's petition, which had more than 2,000 signatures, asked the court to..work to clear up the fate of 501 persons listed as having disappeared in the past 3½ years after being arrested by security police. 1985London Mag. Oct. 22 The other journalist, a friend of mine, ‘disappeared’ at the end of 1976 and is presumed murdered by the military who seized government in March that year. 1999S. L. Kasfir Contemp. Afr. Art v. 151 As more and more Ugandans including the University's own vice chancellor ‘disappeared’ into Makindye or Luzira prison never to be seen again.
b. trans. euphem. To abduct or arrest (a person), esp. for political reasons, and subsequently to kill or detain as a prisoner, without making his or her fate known.
Freq. with reference to Latin America; cf. American Spanish desaparecido desaparecido n. (lit. ‘those who have been disappeared’), which posits a passive transitive use of the usually intransitive Spanish verb desaparecer, evoking an action performed on another but disguised as autonomous.
1979N.Y. Times Mag. 21 Oct. 66 While Miss Iglesias ‘was disappeared’, her family's writ of habeus corpus, filed on her behalf, was rejected by the courts. 1987E. Leonard Bandits iii. 37 Our two Nicaraguan doctors were disappeared, one right after the other. 1990Times 8 Aug. 17/1 Armed men arrive in a village and ‘disappear’ any activists, several of whom have later been found floating in nearby rivers. 1999Guardian 28 Sept. i. 2 By refusing to tell the families of the 1,198 people who were forcibly disappeared by the Chilean security forces what had happened to their loved ones they were subjecting them to ‘mental pain, suffering and demoralization’. |