| 释义 |
driblet, dribblet, n.|ˈdrɪblɪt|
[f. drib v. + -let: association with dribble seems later.]
1. a. ‘A small sum, odd money in a sum’ (J.).
1632Quarles Div. Fancies iii. xxv. (1660) 107 We crave, and crave a longer Day, Then pay in Driblets, or else never pay. 1633T. Adams Exp. 2 Peter ii. 14 The high rate..that divers live at, can be maintained by no driblets. 1794Burke Sp. agst. Hastings Wks. XV. 41 They had received in little dribblets to the amount of ninety-five pounds. 1884Bowen in Law Rep. 28 Chancery Div. 16 A tenant who has paid his last quarter's rent by driblets under pressure.
†b. esp. A small or petty debt. Obs.
1591Harington Orl. Fur. xliii. cxxxvi, And quite each other all old debts and driblets [Note—Driblets used for petty recknings]. 1600Dekker Gentle Craft 18 Ide set mine olde debts against my new driblets. 1685Dryden Thren. Augus. xiv, So strictly wer't thou just to pay, Even to the driblet of a day. 1798Sporting Mag. XI. 104 Some other driblets, called debts of honour. 1867Trollope Chron. Barset II. lviii. 151 A small mortgage and such like convenient but uninfluential driblets.
2. A petty or inconsiderable quantity or part of anything. by (in) driblets: in petty portions at a time, little by little.
1678Phillips (ed. 4), Dribblets (old word), small portions or pieces. 1740Dyche & Pardon, Driblet..any small quantity or parcel of money, or any thing else. 1832Examiner 34/1 It is rumoured that the creation of peers is to be by dribblets. A drop-by-drop invigoration seems..absurd. 1862Macm. Mag. Oct. 501 A hundred weight of fish to be sold in driblets, for a few pence.
3. A small quantity or dribble (of liquid).
1860G. H. K. Vac. Tour 141 A driblet of sour milk. 1871L. Stephen Playgr. Eur. iii. (1894) 77 Every driblet of water seemed to be inseparably connected in their minds with a drop of brandy.
4. Comb. driblet cone, a cone produced by the successive ejections of small quantities of lava; a hornito.
1888J. D. Dana in Amer. Jrnl. Sci. CXXXV. 32 The projectile process in the basalt-volcano..makes not cinder-cones, but dribblet-cones, 15 to 40 feet high, out of the projected masses, the falling driblets becoming plastered together. Ibid., Such driblet-cones are of all angles from 30° to 90°. 1939A. K. Lobeck Geomorphol. xix. 675 Where gases sputter out through the side of the dome, a spatter or driblet cone may be built up 10 to 12 feet above the ground. 1969C. D. Ollier Volcanoes v. 58 Spatter may be erupted through a crack in the surface of a pahoehoe flow, and build up a small cone or spire of scoria and driblets. This is called a hornito or driblet cone. The term is usually restricted to small features perhaps 5 m high.
Hence † ˈdriblet v. intr., to come in driblets.
1659Gauden Tears Ch. iii. v. 276 Biting poverty..hardly to be relieved by those dribliting pittances. |