| 释义 |
flivver, n. slang (orig. U.S.).|ˈflɪvə(r)|
[Of obscure origin.]
1. A cheap motor car or aeroplane. Also, ‘a destroyer of 750 tons or less’ (Funk's Stand. Dict. 1928).
1910W. A. Fraser Red Meekins (1921) 22 You stick to me an' you'll be travellin' 'round the country in a flivver. 1919F. Hurst Humoresque 296 Was his little Sid fool enough to beat it all the way over here in a flivver for eight bucks the round trip? 1920Glasgow Herald 21 July 9 May be I will disguise the Shamrock as a ‘flivver’ (as the Ford car is known here). 1924‘Digit’ Confess. 20th Cent. Hobo 11 Flivver, Ford automobile. 1924W. M. Raine Troubled Waters vi. 58 Rowan McCoy drove his new car—it was a flivver, though they did not call it that in those days. 1926Ladies' Home Jrnl. Apr. 39 Won't it be amusing when we can..step into our little up-shooting flivvers at the back door? 1927Punch 2 Feb. 135/1 He has successfully fought the villain Trust; his workmen all own ‘flivvers’; there has never been a strike. 1936Beaver Mar. 9/1 So-called ‘flea’ or ‘flivver’ types [of aeroplanes]. 1956S. Bellow Seize Day (1957) i. 22 He had driven a painted flivver.
2. A person or thing that has a damaging or deleterious influence; a failure.
1915H. L. Wilson Ruggles of Red Gap (1917) xiii. 230 That Jackson lad has offered me about ten thousand of them vegetable cigarettes, but I'll have to throw him down. He's the human flivver. Put him in a car of dressed beef and he'd freeze it between here and Spokane. 1915Dialect Notes IV. 233 Flivver, a hoax; also, a failure.
Hence ˈflivver v. intr., (a) to fail, to come short of success; (b) to travel in a flivver.
1912L. J. Vance Destroying Angel vi. 74 If the production flivvers, I'll need that thirty cents. 1927Bulletin 11 Apr. 14/1, I was finding the desert a bit flat when you flivvered in. |