| 释义 |
▪ I. feature, n.|ˈfiːtjʊə(r)|
Forms: 4–5 fetour(e, 4–6 feture, feyture, 5 fetur, (fay(c)ture, fetture, fe(i)ter, feetour, 6 feuter, fewter, 7 feauture), 6– feature.
[a. OF. feture, faiture (= Pr. faitura, factura):—L. factūra: see facture.]
1. a. Make, form, fashion, shape; proportions, esp. of the body; a particular example of this. Obs. exc. arch.
c1325Song of Mercy 41 in E.E.P. (1862) 119, I made þe Mon..Of feture liche myn owne fasoun. 14..Why I can't be a Nun 134 ibid. 141, I behelde welle her feture. c1410Sir Cleges 11 He was a man of hight stature, And therto full fayr of feture. 1526Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 306 b, In all feyture of body..I was moost lyke vnto thy Grace. 1600J. Dymmok Ireland (1843) 5 Horses of a fine feature. 1613Purchas Pilgrimage vi. i. (1614) 558 Apes..twice as bigge in feature of their limmes. a1661Fuller Worthies (1840) II. 501 The king fell much enamoured of her feature. 1671H. M. tr. Erasm. Colloq. 320 A woman appeared to him in his sleep, in a wonderful feature. 1684T. Hockin God's Decrees 328 Pleasantness..is very visible in the complexion and feature of true Religion. 1820Keats Hyperion iii. 88 An image, huge of feature as a cloud. 1875Tennyson Q. Mary i. i, Courtenay..of splendid feature.
†b. Good form or shape; comeliness. Obs.
1594Shakes. Rich. III, i. i. 19, I, that am..cheated of Feature by dissembling Nature. 1594Parsons Succession to Engl. Crown Ep. Ded., His excellent partes of lerning, wit, feuter of body, curtesie [etc.].
†c. concr. Something formed or shaped; a form, shape, creation. Obs. Cf. creature 1.
1483Caxton Gold. Leg. 256/2 Alle fetures and creatures prayse the moder of lyghte. 1601B. Jonson Poetaster ii. i, No doubt of that, sweet feature. a1618Sylvester Arctophilos' Epist. to Arctoa 84 Nature..Adorns her shop still with the matchlesse feature. 1667Milton P.L. x. 279 So sented the grim Feature, and upturn'd His Nostril wide into the murkie Air.
†d. As a term of contempt: = creature. [So OF. faiture; in Eng. perh. confused with faitour.]
c1460Towneley Myst. 60 Fature, for thy sake, Thay shalbe pent to pyne. Ibid. 120 To felle those fatures I am bowne. 14..Chester Pl. (1847) II. 162 Fye on thee, feature, fie on thee.
†2.
a. In pl. The elements which constitute bodily form; the build or make of the various parts of the body. Hence in sing. with distributive adj.b. concr. A part of the body; a limb. Obs.
13..E.E. Allit. P. B. 794 Alle feturez ful fyn & fautlez boþe. 1393Langl. P. Pl. C. vii. 46 Prout of my faire fetours. 1447O. Bokenham Seyntys Introd. (Roxb.) 5 Hyr oo foot is Both flesh and boon..Men may behoden eche feture Ther of saf the greth too only. c1460–70Compl. Criste 200 in Pol. Rel. & L. Poems 172, I sende the bodyly helthe..fayrenes and also feturs fele. 1508Fisher Wks. (1876) 240 How many lacke theyr armes..and other fetures of theyr bodyes. 1599Weever Epigr. iv. xxii. E vj, Their rosie⁓tainted features cloth'd in tissue. 1726Swift Gulliver iv. vii. 103, I agreed in every Feature of my Body with other Yahoos, except, etc. 1752Young Brothers iv. i, Shall I stab Her lovely image stampt on every feature?
3. In narrower sense.
a. In pl. and distributively: The lineaments of the face, the form or mould of its various parts. Also collect. in sing.
c1350Will. Palerne 857 Wanne..meliors miȝt se his face, sche þout..þat leuer hire were haue welt him at wille þan of þe world be quene, So faire of all fetures þe frek was. 1393Gower Conf. III. 255 The fetures of her face In which nature had alle grace. 14..Epiph. in Tundale's Vis. 112 They began to behold..hys feyr face Consyduryng hys feturis..With grett insyght. 1603Knolles Hist. Turks (1621) 12 Under such simple and homly feature, lay..a most subtil..wit. a1639T. Carew Poems Wks. (1824) 4 That rich treasure Of rare beauty and sweet feature. 1766Fordyce Serm. Yng. Wom. (ed. 4) II. xiii. 225 Men of sensibility desire in every woman soft features. 1842Prichard Nat. Hist. Man 222 The features of the Tschuk-tschi..pronounce them of American origin. 1887T. A. Trollope What I remember I. xvi. 331 [He] equalled him in.. refinement of feature.
fig.a1680Butler Sat. Hum. Learn. ii. Rem. 1759 I. 223 Words are but Pictures..To draw the..Features of the Mind. a1788Mickle Siege Marseilles i. i, Oft..have I beheld A little, wayward, giddy levity Show its capricious features. 1827Pollok Course T. v. 738 Redeeming features in the face of Time. 1868Freeman Norm. Conq. (1876) II. vii. 25 Tenderness for animals is no unusual feature in the portraits of holy men.
b. concr. Any of the parts of the face; the eye, nose, mouth, forehead, or chin.
1828Scott F.M. Perth ii, There was daring..in the dark eye, but the other features seemed to express a bashful timidity. 1847Emerson Poems, Visit Wks. (Bohn) I. 404 Say, what other metre is it Than the meeting of the eyes? Nature poureth into nature Through the channels of that feature. 1858Hawthorne Fr. & It. Jrnls. II. 23 Hitting the poor Venus another..blow on that unhappy feature.
4. transf. A distinctive or characteristic part of a thing; some part which arrests the attention by its conspicuousness or prominence.
a. Of material things.
1692Dryden St. Euremont's Ess. 164 Examine separately each feature of the Picture. 1791Burke French Affairs Wks. 1842 I. 570 The several kingdoms..have..some features which run through the whole. 1815Elphinstone Acc. Caubul (1842) II. 225 The grand feature of the country is the Indus. 1866Crump Banking x. 220 These Irish rings possessed..the features of a true coinage. 1871B. Stewart Heat §362 Another feature of the locomotive is the blast-pipe. 1874J. T. Micklethwaite Mod. Par. Churches 186 String courses or other architectural features.
b. In various specific applications: (a) Applied to a person, esp. a professional entertainer.
1801T. Fremantle Let. 1 May in A. Fremantle Wynne Diaries (1940) III. 54 Living on such very friendly terms with all the leading features in the Squadron. 1838Actors by Daylight I. 123 Covent Garden was advertised to open, and Miss Fanny Kemble announced as the feature.
(b) A distinctive or prominent article or item in a newspaper, magazine, etc.
1855Geo. Eliot in Westm. Rev. VIII. iv. 438 The Press has no band of critics who..are on the watch for a slip or defect in the preacher, to make a ‘feature’ in their article. 1933H. G. Wells Shape of Things to Come i. §9 93 A daily paper..would..have found itself vigorously outdone by more richly endowed competitors, able because of their wealth to buy up all the most attractive features. 1959Times 5 May 13/5 (Advt.), Nowadays it's not so much news as features; features or comment.
(c) A feature film. So feature-length attrib. Also in Broadcasting, a feature programme.
1913[see 4 f]. 1921A. C. Lescarboura Cinema Handbk. (1922) i. 23 Feature, a pictured story, a plurality of reels in length. Ibid. x. 351 Paralleling all this is the filming of short features for the news and magazine films. 1930J. B. Priestley Angel Pavement iv. 177 Then came the film of the evening, the star feature. 1932N.Y. Times 10 Apr. Mag. 22/3 In England there is more chamber music, more serious drama,..fewer ‘educational features’. 1938I. Barry in Bardèche & Brasillach Hist. Film 388 Since the advent of sound, feature-length travel and documentary pictures produced commercially have been less evident than formerly. 1941B.B.C. Gloss. Broadc. Terms 20 News Feature, programme in which news is presented in radio-dramatic form. 1954Economist 11 Sept. Suppl. 11/1 A BBC feature depicting Folland Aircraft and the Gnat brought a host of small buying orders for Folland shares into the market. 1956Ann. Reg. 1955 385 The first feature-length cartoon film, Animal Farm. 1965Listener 20 May 746/3 There is a Robert Mulligan going the circuits as a second feature to Good Neighbour Sam.
(d) Philol. (See quots. 1942 and 1957.)
1926Language II. 157 Different morphemes may be alike or partly alike as to vocal features. 1942Ibid. XVIII. 7 It turns out that some things..are constantly associated in groups of two or more, one appearing wherever the others do. Where this is true, the two or more elements clearly constitute a single unit, one of the minimum units into which the utterances of the range may be analyzed. These units are termed features. 1948Ibid. XXIV. 33 Some distinctively different segments contain a distinctive combination, or one or more distinctive components in common. The distinctive aspects or components of a segment constitute one or more features of the segment. We use the term ‘feature’ for what is commonly called a distinctive feature of a sound. Features are said to occur in segments; segments are said to contain features. 1952R. Jakobson et al. (title) Preliminaries to speech analysis: the distinctive features and their correlates. Ibid. i. 3 The listener is obliged to choose either between two polar qualities in the same category..or between the presence and absence of a certain quality... The choice between the two opposites may be termed distinctive features. 1957Trans. Philol. Soc. 1957 122 Referring to the two ways of discriminating elements in the flow of speech—the one, which distinguishes elements as successive (segmentation), and the other, which distinguishes elements as successive or simultaneous (substitution): we establish two fundamental types of element—(i) such as can be isolated by segmentation, to be called ‘segments’, and (ii) such as cannot be, to be called ‘features’. 1968Chomsky & Halle Sound Pattern Eng. 66 Our tentative assumption is that the segmental features and the boundary features fall into distinct sets.
(e) Mil. A topographically noteworthy point or area.
1944Daily Tel. 15 May, They have also taken five more hill features and three towns. 1956J. Masters Bugles & Tiger xviii. 229 M. L. sent my company..up the hill and spread the others out..on smaller features.
c. Of immaterial things.
a1822Ld. Castlereagh Speech, The feature on which this question chiefly hinges. 1835Marryat Jac. Faithf. viii, The principal feature in him was lightness of heart. 1875A. R. Hope Schoolboy Friends 163 A great feature of the day were the recitations.
d. attrib.
1792Burns Let. to G. Thomson 8 Nov., The emphasis, or what I would call the feature-notes of the tune. 1853Lynch Self-Improv. vi. 145 A feature-mark, a seminal speciality.
e. Relating to a linguistic feature (sense 4 b (d) above).
1953C. E. Bazell Linguistic Form i. 2 Sufficient evidence is also provided by the analogical extension of a feature-alternation to phonemes for which it was previously unknown. Ibid. 3 It is misleading to describe feature-analysis as ‘analysis in depth’. 1964Language XL. 221 Particularly important for an understanding of the decoding process would be experimentation with ‘feature opposition’. 1967Word XXIII. 218 Feature analysis in the area of morphological categories is indeed very old, probably at least as ancient as Aristotle.
f. Special Combs. feature film, the principal film in a programme; so feature picture; feature programme, a programme based on one central theme; feature writer, one who writes a special feature (sense 4 b (b) above) in a newspaper, magazine, etc.; so feature editor, feature story, etc. The pl. form features is also used.
1911D. S. Hulfish Cycl. Motion-Pict. Work II. 200 (caption) Feature Films. 1912Harrington & Frankenberg Essentials Journalism vi. 62 It may not be amiss..to speak briefly of the work of trained ‘feature’ writers. Ibid. 294 A feature story is one in which the news element is made subordinate. 1913Moving Picture Ann. 1912 15 The rapid growth of what has come to be known as the ‘feature film’..characterizes the year 1912... Features rather than ‘first runs’ became the popular cry. 1913Technical World XIX. 464 Sunday feature pictures, sports, and advertising are all made in this dark room. 1913Writer's Bull. Oct. 101/2 Here is a little suggestion to those who write feature articles. 1927Melody Maker May 523/1 Fox-trots..occur frequently in feature pictures to accompany dancing. 1928B.B.C. Handbk. 1929 60 Particular attention..is being paid to what have been called ‘feature programmes’—composite programmes in which the aid of music and the spoken word is asked to evoke a mood, or to present an idea. 1929F. A. Pottle Stretchers (1930) 318 The editor-in-chief of the Flare, Cpl. Herbert M. Davidson..was, until recently, feature editor of the Chicago Daily News. 1938Ann. Reg. 1937 371 Feature films, that is films of 3,000 feet or more, showed only a trifling increase. 1938Encycl. Brit. Bk. Yr. 122/1 During 1937, dramatic productions in the studios showed a considerable development of ‘feature programmes’, dealing with such subjects as the history of journalism,..Hadrian's Wall, the anti-slavery movement..and the Duchy of Cornwall. 1938E. Waugh Scoop i. v. 85 The other agencies are sending feature men. 1939‘N. Blake’ Smiler with Knife v. 78 One of the Daily Post feature-writers. 1956Features-producer [see C.]. 1957C. Brooke-Rose Langs. Love v. 48 The literary types..with families to support on a regular out⁓put of criticism, non-fiction books..and long feature programmes for the B.B.C. 1957Times Lit. Suppl. 8 Nov. 670/4 She persuades the great Arthur Brisbane, of the New York World..to hire her, and becomes a first-class journalist, feature-writer and columnist herself. 1958Punch 1 Jan. 80/2 At the cinema trailers usually precede feature films by at least one week. 1958New Statesman 25 Jan. 107/1 Success tempts the American novelist to become a kind of Public Relations Officer ad-libbing into feature journalism. 1969Listener 8 May 660/2 The death last week of Joe Burroughs removes one more of the small corps of features pioneers whose common link was..a belief that all radio is one art. Ibid. 5 June 811/3 (Advt.), Features Editor—to be responsible for the quality of the words of the features pages.
▪ II. feature, v.|ˈfiːtjʊə(r)|
[f. prec. n.]
1. trans. To resemble in features; to favour; esp. with reference to family likeness or resemblance. Now chiefly dial.
1755Johnson, To feature, to resemble in countenance. 1859Geo. Eliot A. Bede v. xxxviii, ‘Ye feature him, on'y ye're darker.’ 1879G. F. Jackson Shropsh. Word-bk. s.v., Ben faichurs 'is faither, but all the rest favour the mother's side. 1881J. Hawthorne Fort. Fool i. xx, She featured her mother's family more than her father's.
2. a. To affect, or mould the features of. b. To stand as a feature or distinctive mark upon.
1810Crabbe Borough iv, Fear, hope, dismay..featured every face. 1832De Quincey Charlemagne Wks. XIII. 160 Differences by which they are severally marked and featured. 1863Kinglake Crimea (1877) V. i. 85 Knolls and ridges which featured the landscape. 1878–9S. Lanier Remonstr. 3 Forbear To feature me my Lord by rule and line.
3. To sketch the features of; to outline, picture, portray. Also, To impress the features of upon (something).
1791–1823D'Israeli Cur. Lit. (1859) II. 62 The characters cannot be very minutely featured. 1822Beddoes Bride's Tragedy ii. iv, Something in the air..Featured its ghastly self upon my soul. 1864Reader 19 Mar. 351 Which some keen spirits are already featuring to themselves.
4. a. To exhibit as a ‘feature’; to make a special feature or display of, make a special attraction of. orig. U.S.
1888St. Louis Globe-Democrat 29 Apr. (Farmer), The biggest thing I saw at the wedding was a lot of glass⁓ware and block tin knives and forks, which were featured in one of the rooms. 1906Westm. Gaz. 24 Sept. 9/3 The way in which Miss Clifford had been ‘featured’ and ‘billed’ in preference to herself. 1907Times (weekly ed.) 28 June 402 Every day for weeks past it has ‘featured’ articles..on the Japanese question. 1928Publishers' Weekly 12 May 1932 You will know then why so many booksellers feature Macaulay books. 1928G. B. Shaw Intell. Woman's Guide Socialism 444 The Government posters ‘feature’ precisely the same epithets. 1929Times 1 Aug., The Louvre, Oxford-circus, are featuring coats and skirts and top coats for Scotland in new designs. 1938E. Waugh Scoop i. v. 86 [Newspaperman loq.] They're featuring me as a special service.
b. spec. To exhibit as a prominent feature in a play, film, etc.
1897Metropolitan Mag. (N.Y.) Nov. 383/2 A company that includes in addition to the ‘featured’ members, [etc.]. 1919J. Buchan Mr. Standfast xiii. 245 Were you ever a cinema actor, Dick?..‘Featuring Mary Lamington.’ How does the jargon go? 1923Westm. Gaz. 22 Jan., Balzac's ‘The Eternal Flame’, featuring Miss Norma Talmadge. 1927Daily Chron. 29 Mar. 6 She said she had been ‘featured’ in 22 or 23 different pieces in America. 1928Manch. Guardian Weekly 7 Dec. Suppl. p. ix/1 A handsome middle-aged gentleman featuring himself through five acts. 1936Amer. Speech XI. 220 Is the actor to be starred or merely featured? If starred, the program, the signs outside the theater, and all advertising will read, ‘X in Hamlet’. If featured, it will be, ‘Hamlet with X’.
5. intr. To be a feature (in); to participate or play an (important) part in.
1941London & N.E. Railway Mag. Mar. 55/1 Tea..featured frequently in early newspaper advertisements. 1965Listener 9 Sept. 371/1 At the University Physiological Laboratory in Cambridge cats feature in some of the fundamental research. 1968Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 25 Nov. 5/3 The man also admitted ‘featuring’ at the Toowong Cemetery in black magic rites. 1968R. Gittings John Keats ii. 30 The uncles and aunts who feature so largely in the memories of many orphan children. 1976Times 21 May 4/2 Libraries and the youth service feature prominently in many of the local authority cuts. 1984F. Forsyth Fourth Protocol ii. xiv. 252 The habitual practice when Soviet illegals enter a country by ship is that they do not feature on the crew list.
Hence ˈfeaturing vbl. n.; in quot. concr.
1865Carlyle Fredk. Gt. VI. xvi. vii. 202 Documents and more explicit featurings. |