| 释义 |
▪ I. actual, a.|ˈæktjuːəl|
Also 4–5 actuel.
[a. Fr. actuel, ad. late L. actuāl-is (in philos. and theol. writers), of or pertaining to action; f. actu-s acting; see act n. and -al1. Subseq. assimilated to the L. spelling.]
1. Of or pertaining to acts; exhibited in deeds; practical, active. Obs. exc. in actual grace, actual sin (see quots.). R.C. Ch.
c1315Shoreham 107 Thys senne cometh nauȝt of thy ken..Tho seggeth thys leredemen And clypyeth hyt actuel. c1386Chaucer Pars. T. 283 Thus is synne accomplisid..and thanne is the synne cleped actuel. 1534More On the Passion Wks. 1557, 1284 Original syn without actual adioyned thereto dampned the kynde of man. 1577[see original A. 1 b]. 1594Hooker Eccl. Politie (1617) 47 Actuall, that holynesse, which afterwards beautifieth all the parts and actions of our life. 1605Shakes. Macb. v. i. 13 In this slumbry agitation, besides her walking, and other actuall performances, what (at any time) haue you heard her say? 1638W. Chillingworth Relig. of Protestants Answ. 2, para. 163, p. 118 Not touching the Virgin Maries freedome from actuall and original sinne. 1647H. More Song of the Soul ii. ii. ii. xxxviii, So when the present actuall centrall life Of sense and motion is gone. 1742J. & C. Wesley Hymns & Sacred Poems (1869) II. 338 From actual and from inbred sin Us thou hast wash'd in Thine own blood. 1855F. W. Faber Growth in Holiness xxii, They [sc. seven supernatural gifts of the Holy Ghost] are played upon according to the needs of our spiritual life by what are called the actual impulses of the Holy Ghost, and which correspond in their subject-matter to actual grace, standing in the same relation to the habitual gifts as it does to habitual grace. 1859Catechism Chr. Doctr. 18 Q. How many kinds of sin are there? A. Two; original and actual... Q. What is actual sin? A. Every sin which we ourselves commit. 1890Wilhelm & Scannell Man. Cath. Theol. I. iii. ii. i. 437 Around this [Habitual] Grace are grouped all other salutary Graces especially ‘Actual Grace’. 1957Oxf. Dict. Chr. Ch. 14/2 Actual sin, a sin, whether of commission or omission, which is the outcome of a free personal act of the individual will. Ibid. 577/1 Actual grace, a certain motion of the soul, bestowed by God ad hoc for the production of some good act. It may exist in the unbaptized.
†2. Abounding in action, active, energetic. Obs.
1470–85Malory Morte d' Arth. i. xvi. (1816) I. 30 ‘I wol wel,’ said Arthur, ‘for I see your dedes full actual.’
3. Existing in act or fact; really acted or acting; carried out; real;—opposed to potential, possible, virtual, theoretical, ideal. Formerly often absol. in pl. = actual qualities, actualities.
1541Copland Guydon's Quest. Cyrurg. D iij b, Whiche cauteres are the surest, the actualles, or the potencyalles? Answere. The actualles, bycause y⊇ action of fyre is moste simple. 1587Golding De Mornay xii. 178 And thinkest thou..that his [God's] potentials..are not stronger than thine actuals? 1651Hobbes Leviathan iii. xxxviii. 244 By comparison with their own actuall miseries. 1656Bramhall Replic. iv. 160 With the Romanists themselves I distinguish between habituall and actuall Jurisdiction. Habituall Jurisdiction is derived only by Ordination. Actuall Jurisdiction is a right to exercise that habit, arising from the lawfull application of the matter or subject. 1769Junius Lett. xxxv. 155 The natives of Scotland are not in actual rebellion. 1817Jas. Mill Brit. India II. v. viii. 661 The nominal revenue was but a portion of the actual proceeds. 1837Carlyle Fr. Rev. I. i. ii. iii. 31 Great truly is the Actual; is the Thing that has rescued itself from bottomless deeps of theory and possibility, and stands there as a definite indisputable Fact. 1853F. W. Robertson Serm. iii. vii. 90 There is every difference between the ideal and the actual—between what a man aims to be and what he is. 1870Tyndall Heat v. §154, 131 It may be called actual energy in antithesis to possible.
4. In action or existence at the time; present, current.
1642R. Carpenter Experience ii. vii. 162 If a man finde his wife in the actuall commission of Adultery, he may kill both his wife, and the Adulterer. 1790Burke Fr. Revol. 78 If this be your actual situation, compared to the situation to which you were called. 1873Browning Red Cotton Night-Cap Country 132 Never constructed as receptacle..for him their actual lord. 1880Geikie Phys. Geog. i. 3, 21 No telescope has yet detected any actual volcanic eruption going on in the moon. Mod. In the actual position of affairs in Egypt.
Add:5. As an intensifier. a. Placed before a noun to emphasize its exact or particular identity; (the thing) itself. In weakened use: precise, exact. Cf. very a. 10 b.
1869'M. Twain' Innoc. Abr. lv. 601, I touch, with reverent finger, the actual spot where the infant Jesus lay, but I think—nothing. 1892Pall Mall Gaz. 18 Aug. 1/3 The actual form on which the message was written is put into a little cloth box, called a carrier, and blown through a tube to the central telegraph office. 1914S. Lewis Our Mr. Wrenn xvi. 211 He was already ‘getting right down to brass tacks on it’,..he had already investigated four more plays and begun the actual writing. 1934J. B. Priestley Eng. Journey vii. 213 For most of the people engaged in it, excluding the technical men in charge, the actual work here is not so interesting as that in the factories I explored later, where the domestic and more decorative earthenware and porcelain are manufactured. 1976G. Gordon 100 Scenes from Married Life 37 Look, I'm sorry, friend of Ferdy Linden, at this actual moment I think you look idiotic and I find you boring. 1991N.Y. Times Mag. 13 Oct. 51/1 They are some of Paris's most formidable fashion weapons—the embroiderers, button makers, jewelry and handbag craftsmen and the all-important les mains, ‘the hands’ that make the actual garments.
b. your actual (..): placed before a noun to emphasize its authentic or archetypal status; genuine, real, typical. colloq. (sometimes iron.).
1966Took & Feldman in Round the Horne (1974) 97 Well chacun à son goût—that's your actual French you know. Ibid., Well there's not really enough to build a career on in that. What you want to be is your actual TV personality. 1973Time Out 2 Mar. 14/1 My impression is that when the surge of violence was on..quite a few teachers got messed about. It was somewhere beyond extreme rudeness, but short of your actual NAS physical assault. 1976Times 23 Mar. 19/4 There won't be any room for your actual horny-handed sons of toil in the TUC; there'll be too many sharp-suited managers. 1986R. Sproat Stunning the Punters 103 One, since you ask, is too many Waverley novels. Whereas your actual Wild Romantic Gael was lying out on the hill after Culloden getting his Wild Romantic Arse frozen off. 1994Observer 16 Oct. (Life Suppl.) 93/2 Several newspaper columnists..were let loose on the Net and decided it was full of silly little people and that ‘yer actual human contact’ was much better than online communication.
6. Phr. in actual fact: in reality, contrary to expectation or appearance; gen., really, actually, as a matter of fact. Cf. fact n. 6 b.
1900in N.E.D. s.v. Indeed advb. phr. 1, In actual fact, in reality, in truth. 1947Sporting Mirror 7 Nov. 8/1, I must add that in actual fact there was not much scientific football. But the dizzy paced thrills made up for that. 1959P. Bull I know Face iii. 54 In actual fact we should have been sitting pretty, as the get-out was only {pstlg}663 a week. 1980R. Quirk in Michaels & Ricks State of Lang. 9 We have come to insist that the different styles of language (or dress) required for different occasions and purposes are neither immutable nor even absolutely obligatory. Not that we have in actual fact levelled out to a ‘unistyle’, of course, any more than to a unisex. 1991A. A. Aidoo Changes ix. 73 He would sit behind his desk at Linga Hide Aways after office hours, pretending he was working. In actual fact he was thinking about Esi.
7. actual bodily harm (Brit. Law), physical injury, such as bruising, broken bones, etc., inflicted intentionally on a person, but less serious than grievous bodily harm (cf. grievous a. 3 b) under the terms of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861; also, in some instances, emotional trauma so inflicted. Abbrev. ABH.
1851Act 14 & 15 Vict. c. 100 § 29 Any indecent Assault, or any Assault occasioning actual bodily Harm. 1945Weekly Notes 24 Mar. 71/1 Humphrey J. said that persons who were not acquainted with the jumble into which sentences in this country had got might be surprised to learn that an assault with intent to commit rape was not punishable by nearly as heavy a sentence as an assault occasioning actual bodily harm. 1977Abingdon Herald 17 Mar. 17/2 At Didcot on Friday, McDermott,..admitted assaulting Mr William Collins and causing him actual bodily harm. 1991A. Ashworth Princ. Crim. Law viii. §5 301 If the man uses force or inflicts emotional shock on his wife in order to obtain sex, he is liable to conviction for assault occasioning actual bodily harm or some other offence against the person.
8. actual size phr. used attrib. and absol. to denote plans, drawings, models, etc., which represent objects at full scale, or which are reproduced without reduction or enlargement. Also occas. as advb. phr.
1893S. H. Wells Engineering Drawing & Design ii. xiii. 156 Dimensioning a Drawing.—All the parts of working drawings should be fully dimensioned the actual size of the part, blue ink being used for the dimension lines. 1901T. Walton Steel Ships vii. 180 His domain is the mould loft, where..he proceeds to reproduce the ‘lines’ plan upon the loft floor to actual size. 1953Radiology LXI. 88/1 The point-by-point technique of plotting the frontal area occupied by the thyroid gland..has been simplified by the introduction of the ‘scintiscanner’ for obtaining an actual size scintigram of the gland. 1987Graphics World Nov./Dec. 31/2 When drawing up the artwork it should be done at actual size (or reduced to actual size) to ensure that the image will work on such a small scale. 1990Artist's & Illustrator's Mag. May 23 (caption) Because of the simple nature of these illustrations I worked actual size throughout the book for the first time.
▸ Med. Designating a cauterizing agent having the form of a red-hot implement; performed using such an agent; contrasted with potential (cf. potential adj. 2). Chiefly in actual cautery. Now hist.
a1400tr. Lanfranc Sci. Cirurgie (Ashm. 1396) 305 He knowiþ not þe difference bitwixe a cauterie þat is clepid actuel & potencial [L. layci..inter actuale et potentiale cauterium non discernunt.]. 1575G. Turberville Bk. Faulconrie 234 If these receytes and skowrings yeelde no remedie, then must you to the actual cauterie. 1656J. Smith Compl. Pract. Physick 326 Let the Chirurgion hold a great actual Cautery in his hand. 1748T. Smollett Roderick Random II. xlvi. 110 Banter prescribed the actual cautery, and put the poker in the fire. 1874Manufacturer & Builder Dec. 278/2 He proposes to use for actual cautery a large spirit blow-pipe. 2000A. Wear Knowl. & Pract. Eng. Med. v. 242 Paré had popularised the use of the potential cautery over the actual cautery.
▪ II. actual, n.|ˈæktjuːəl|
[f. the adj.]
pl. Actual qualities, actualities (opposed to ideals).
1541,1587[see actual a. 3]. a1902S. Butler Way of All Flesh (1903) vii. 31 He may have had an ill-defined sense of ideals that were not his actuals. 1926D. Watson Church at Work x. 119 Christian ideals must be made actuals. |