| 释义 |
airport|ˈɛəpɔət|
[port n.1, in transf. use of sense 2.]
An aerodrome, esp. one with a customs-house, to which aeroplanes resort to load and unload, and at which passengers embark or disembark. (For air-port in an unconnected use see air- II.)
In quot. 1921 [after seaport], a landing-place for a seaplane.
1919Aerial Age Weekly 14 Apr. 235/1 There is being established at Atlantic City the first ‘air port’ ever established, the purposes of which are..to provide a municipal aviation field,..to supply an air port for trans-Atlantic liners, whether of the seaplane, land aeroplane or dirigible balloon type. 1921Aeronautics 19 May 351/2 The flight..was made in..two hours, the machine landing above Westminster Bridge... It was the first occasion on which the Thames had been used as an air port for a machine from abroad. 1924Lancet 9 Feb. 309/2 The vigilance practised by sanitary authorities at our seaports will require to be exercised in even greater degree at the great airports of the future. 1926Glasgow Herald 13 Nov. 4 The scene [at Croydon] is characteristic of the airports of all the big cities. 1933Jrnl. R. Aeronaut. Soc. XXXVII. 22 Another important feature of night lighting is the airport beacon, usually of the rotating or flashing type, and mounted upon the terminal building. 1943[see airfield]. 1946Daily Tel. 26 July 6/3 The course began at the helicopter airport at Bridgeport.
▸ attrib. Designating a work of popular fiction of a type commonly sold in airports as suitable for in-flight reading, and typically regarded as light or undemanding entertainment; designating a writer of this type of fiction. Cf. railway novel n. at railway n. Compounds 2.
1979Washington Post 14 Oct. (Bk. World section) 5/1 Something more than another airport thriller. 1988N. Postman Conscientious Objections 54 Reading for distraction—which is what makes the airport book so popular. 1992Chicago Tribune (Nexis) 5 June c, The reigning king of airport novelists, specializing in a kind of suspense fiction meant to be read by tired businessmen taking the red-eye. 2002Afr. Business Apr. 60/3 In some ways this book is quite conventional—it has the feel of a popular airport novel, promising to occupy a reader entertainingly and undemandingly. |