释义 |
ˈthread-ˌpaper A strip of thin soft paper folded in creases so as to form separate divisions for different skeins of thread; the paper so folded forming a long and narrow strip.
1761Sterne Tr. Shandy III. xli, What is become of my wife's thread-paper? 1796F. Burney Camilla II. 404 [She] had lost the thread-paper from which she was to mend her gown. 1880Plain Hints Needlework 57 It should be cut at each end of the skein and folded securely into a ‘thread paper’. b. fig. A person of slender or thin figure.
1824Miss Mitford Village Ser. i. 153 So tall and so limp, bent in the middle—a thread-paper, six feet high! 1833Marryat P. Simple xxix, If the common sailors were..such little thread-papers as you. 1881Huxley in Life (1900) II. ii. 35, I was a thread paper of a boy myself. c. attrib. Having the attributes of a thread-paper; long and narrow, slender, attenuated; limp, feeble, flimsy.
1746–7Mrs. Delany in Life & Corr. (1861) II. 450, I expect soon to see the other extreme of thread-paper heads and no hoops, and from appearing like so many blown bladders, we shall look like so many bodkins stalking about. 1803Naval Chron. X. 510 Bonaparte's thread paper flotilla. 1882P. Fitzgerald Recreat. Lit. Man (1883) 186 [Landing from a Calais steamer] Singers, actresses, ladies of quality, princesses, queens, all reduced to the common thread-paper level. 1884Stevenson New Arab. Nts. 308 She was a thread-paper creature. |