| 释义 |
God-wottery, Godwottery|gɒdˈwɒtərɪ|
Also with lower-case initial.
[f. God wot (cf. god n. 10) in the line ‘A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!’ in T. E. Brown's poem My Garden (1876) + -ery.]
An affected or over-elaborate style of gardening or attitude towards gardens (see quots.); also (in quot. 1939), archaic language.
1939N. Lofts Colin Lowrie (Author's note), I have written this so-called historical novel in so-called modern language... I am foolish enough to believe that people..will appreciate this lack of ‘God-wottery’. 1952Archit. Rev. CXI. 59/2 The God-wottery..in that anaemic kind of ‘Trajan’ which societies concerned with what they generally call ‘amenities’ seem to think particularly refined. Ibid. CXII. 235 He plays fast and loose with the average Englishman's sentimental leanings towards God⁓wottery, drawing his clichés from the Cotswolds where, it is widely believed, lie the typical English villages and the homeland of the picturesque. 1960‘A. Burgess’ Right to Answer i. 7 Who shall describe..those semi-detacheds with the pebble-dash.., the tiny gates which you could step over, the god-wottery in the toy gardens? 1969Guardian 18 Aug. 7/1 ‘Godwottery’, the sentimental preconception of what a garden should be, results in a very strange collection of elements... Cotswold stone retaining walls; vaguely Spanish wrought iron gates; ‘crazy’ paving, nowadays often coloured yellow, green, and pink; plainly irregular ponds, now usually of pale blue fibre⁓glass, fed by streams of impossible source; gnomes, fairies, and animals, usually plastic. |