释义 |
Ferris|ˈfɛrɪs| The name of G. W. G. Ferris (1859–96), American engineer, used attrib. to designate a fairground machine, the Ferris wheel (see quot. 1897), invented and first erected by him. Also fig.
1893Sci. Amer. 9 Sept. 169/1 The World's Columbian Exposition—A view from the Ferris wheel. 1897R. Johnson Hist. World's Columb. Expos. I. 77 The feature at the Exposition that corresponded in its character with the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Exposition of 1889 was the Ferris Wheel—an enormous wheel two hundred and fifty feet in diameter, projected into the air, hung upon supports of steel framework by an axle thirty-two inches in diameter, forty-five feet long, and weighing fifty-six tons... On the periphery of the wheel were hung thirty-six passenger cars, each with a seating capacity of forty to sixty persons. 1927Blackw. Mag. Sept. 358/2 Two ferris wheels squeaked like pigs in agony. 1947Auden Age of Anxiety vi. 136 Fortune's Ferris-wheel. a1963L. MacNeice Astrol. (1964) iv. 120 It was Ptolemy who invented what Arthur Koestler has called ‘the ferris-wheel universe’. 1969Auden City without Walls 91 As passive objects, packed tightly together On Roller-Coaster or Ferris-Wheel, mortals Taste in their solid flesh the volitional joys of a seraph. |