| 释义 |
‖ gradus|ˈgreɪdəs|
Short for Gradus ad Parnassum ‘a step to Parnassus’, the Latin title of a dictionary of prosody until recently used in English public schools, intended as an aid in Latin versification, both by giving the ‘quantities’ of words and by suggesting poetical epithets and phraseology. Hence applied to later works of similar plan and object; also extended as in Greek gradus, and transf.
The earliest edition of the ‘Gradus’ in the British Museum is that of Cologne 1687; there was a London edition in 1691.
a1764R. Lloyd Poetry Professors 6 What reams of paper will be spoil'd! What graduses be daily soil'd By inky fingers, greasy thumbs, Hunting the word that never comes! 1810Bentham Packing (1821) 69 The arguments you have to encounter—together with whatsoever other appropriate epithets and phrases..are furnished by the Courtier's and Lawyer's Gradus. 1827J. B. Mozley Lett. (1885) 8, I should like to have a Greek Gradus, if there is such a book [Written æt. 14]. 1857Hughes Tom Brown ii. iii, The three fell to work with Gradus and dictionary upon the morning's vulgus.
attrib.1887Athenæum 25 June 831/1 A fair descriptive passage is spoilt by a commonplace or gradus epithet. |