| 释义 |
▪ I. gopher, n.1 U.S.|ˈgəʊfə(r)|
Also 9 gophir.
[? Said to be ad. colonial F. gaufre.
According to Webster 1848–64, gaufre was used by the French settlers in North America as a name for various burrowing animals, and is a transferred use of gaufre honeycomb (see gofer1, goffer); cf. the vb. ‘to honeycomb’, as expressing the action of such animals.]
1. a. A burrowing rodent of the genera Geomys and Thomomys; a pocket gopher or pouched rat.
1812Brackenridge Views Louisiana (1814) 58 The Gopher..lives under ground, in the prairies, and is also found east of the Mississippi. 1841Catlin N. Amer. Ind. (1844) II. liv. 165 The subterraneous whistle of the busy gophirs that were ploughing and vaulting the earth beneath us. 1856Bryant Poems, Prairies 64 The gopher mines the ground Where stood their swarming cities. 1883B. Harte Carquinez Woods vii. 161 [She] went like a squirrel up a tree or down like a gopher in the ground.
b. A native or inhabitant of Arkansas or Minnesota.
1845in C. Cist Cincinnati Misc. 240 The inhabitants of..Arkansas [are called] Gophers. 1872Harper's Mag. Jan. 317/2 The various nicknames given to the States and people of this republic..Minnesota, Gophers. 1873J. H. Beadle Undevel. West xxxiii. 706 In May, 1859, I first became a ‘gopher’,—practical Western title of the Minnesotians. 1949Amer. Speech XXIV. 26.
2. A burrowing or ground squirrel of the sub-family Spermophilinæ; a spermophile.
1874Coues Birds N.W. 357 Gopher: Frontier vernacular name for all the ground-squirrels (Spermophili) indiscriminately. 1883Leisure Hour 475/2 Numbers of..grey..land squirrels (gophers) scampered..over the flats.
3. a. A burrowing land-tortoise (Testudo carolina), of nocturnal habits, common in the southern U.S.
1791W. Bartram Carolina 18 The dens, or caverns, dug..in the sand hills, by the great land-tortoise, called here Gopher, present a very singular appearance. 1845Lyell Trav. N. Amer. I. 161, I frequently observed the holes of the gopher, a kind of land-tortoise. 1884Times 18 Apr. 8 They vary this with a fish or gopher caught in the lakes or woods, the gopher being a species of land turtle.
b. A native or inhabitant of Florida.
1869Overland Monthly III. 129 On account of the great number of gophers in that State,..a Floridian is called a ‘Gopher’.
4. A large burrowing snake of the southern United States; also, the bull-snake. Also gopher-snake. (Cent. Dict.)
1837J. L. Williams Territory of Florida 68 The Bull Snake..is sometimes called the Gopher snake. 1853Baird & Girard Catal. N. Amer. Reptiles i. 165 Gopher Snake (Georgia Couperi). 1884–5Riverside Nat. Hist. (1888) III. 367 Spilotes couperi..is known by the negroes as the indigo or gopher-snake.
5. Mining. A gopher-drift q.v.
1881[see gopher-drift].
6. attrib. and Comb., as gopher-burrow, gopher-hill, gopher-pelt; also gopher-drift (see quot.); gopher-hole, (a) the opening of a gopher's burrow; (b) (see gopher v. 2); gopher man, ‘a safe-blower (Thieves' slang)’ (Cent. Dict.); also gopher, ellipt.; gopher-plum, -root (see quots.); Gopher State, a nickname for Minnesota.
1850L. H. Garrard Wah-To-Yah (1927) x. 138 The animals..stumbled more than once in the numerous *gopher burrows. 1903A. Adams Log of Cowboy iv. 42 Officer's horse suddenly struck a Gopher burrow with his front feet.
1881Raymond Mining Gloss., Gopher or *Gopher-drift, an irregular prospecting-drift, following or seeking the ore without regard to maintenance of a regular grade or section.
1841Catlin N. Amer. Ind. (1844) II. liv. 166 Over an extended plain are seen, like *gophir hills, their excavations ancient and recent.
1865N.Y. Herald in Morn. Star 3 Feb., Some of our troops covering themselves from the fire by resort to the *gopher holes in the vicinage. 1883Stevenson Silverado Sq. 90 The meanest boy could lead them miles out of their way to see a gopher-hole.
1901‘J. Flynt’ World of Graft 220 *Gopher-men, safe-blowers. 1926J. Black You can't Win ii. 12 Famous ‘gopher men’ who tunneled under banks like gophers and carried away their plunder after months of dangerous endeavor. 1928M. C. Sharpe Chicago May 287 Gopher, one who tunnels to steal.
1891Century Mag. Nov. 62, I cannot pay for a team each year with *gopher pelts as others do.
1893Funk's Stand. Dict., *Gopher-plum, the Ogeechee lime (Nyssa capitata).
1889Century Dict., *Gopher-root, a low rosaceous shrub, Chrysobalanus oblongifolius, with extensively creeping underground stems, found in the sandy pine-barrens of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.
1880J. M. Farrar 5 Yrs. Minnesota 166 Gophers are here such a pest to the farmer that Minnesota has been called the ‘*Gopher State’. 1963R. I. McDavid in H. L. Mencken Amer. Lang. x. 695 Minnesota..popularly..is the Gopher State,..and the football representatives of its state university are known as the Golden Gophers.
▸ Computing. Usu. with capital initial. Named after the gopher mascot of the University of Minnesota, U.S., where the system was invented (compare Gopher State above), probably partly with allusion to the tunnelling activities of gophers and the ability of the computer system to ‘dig’ through the Internet for information, and partly punningly after gofer n.2 A menu- and text-based system created as a user-friendly resource for searching, accessing, and displaying electronic documents or executing programs stored on a network system, esp. the Internet.
The system predates the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web, which has now largely superseded it.
1991F. Anklesaria Notes on Internet Gopher Protocol (Electronic text) (Internal document, Univ. of Minnesota) 1 Apr. 1 The internet Gopher protocol is so simple that it does not require a detailed syntax of commands and replies. 1992Minnesota Daily 31 Jan. 3/2 Development on the gopher started in March 1991, according to McCahill, and the system has been running for about three months. 1994Sci. Amer. Mar. 78/1 Running Gopher initiates a dialogue between a client program on the user's machine and a Gopher server somewhere on the Internet. 1998R. Darnell et al. HTML 4 Unleashed iii. xii. 189 Although there are several different transfer protocols or schemes, ranging from older ones like Gopher and WAIS to obscure ones like Prospero, HTML authors are generally concerned with only the few URL schemes currently in common use.
▪ II. gopher, n.2|ˈgəʊfə(r)|
[a. Heb. gōpher.]
The tree of the wood of which the ark was made. Chiefly in comb. gopher-wood: applied in U.S. to the yellow-wood (Cladrastis tinctoria).
1611Bible Gen. vi. 14 Make thee an Arke of Gopher⁓wood. 1856Aird Poet. Wks. 101 There to a pillar of black gopher-wood Brought near, a fettered prisoner he stood. 1867J. Ingelow Story Doom i. 20 Where the palm, The almug, and the gophir shot their heads.
▪ III. gopher, v. U.S.|ˈgəʊfə(r)|
[f. gopher n.1]
1. intr. To act like a gopher; to burrow.
1893Scribner's Mag. Apr. 473/2 At first were those who..gophered under the mighty walls of the temple.
2. ‘In Mining, to begin or carry on mining operations at hap-hazard, or on a small scale; mine without any reference to the possibility of future permanent development. Such mine-openings are frequently called gopher-holes and coyote-holes (Pacific States)’ (Cent. Dict.). So ˈgophering vbl. n.
1905R. Beach Pardners i. 22 We kept gophering around till March, in hopes. 1910Sat. Even. Post 13 Aug. 4/1 Promising mines did ‘gophering’ or development work by contract. 1916Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 19 July 3/3 The numerous dumps along the hillside indicate how thoroughly the gulch has been gophered in the search for gold. 1927C. M. Russell Trails plowed Under 129 This old boy is a prospector and goes gopherin' 'round the hills, hopin' he'll find something. 1966McGraw-Hill Encycl. Sci. & Technol. VIII. 481/1 Gophering, or coyoting, refers to small-scale mining utilizing small, irregular excavations in ground that usually stands without support.
▪ IV. gopher
variant of goffer. |