| 释义 |
grave-digger|ˈgreɪvdɪgə(r)|
[f. grave n.1]
1. a. One whose employment it is to dig graves.
1593Nashe Christ's T. to Rdr., Wks. (Grosart) IV. 4 He hath proued him selfe to be the only Gabriel Graue-digger vnder heauen. 1702Steele Funeral i. i. 5 The Grave digger of St. Timothie's in the Fields. 1749Fielding Tom Jones xvi. v, I never saw in my life a worse grave-digger. 1838Dickens O. Twist v, The grave-digger shovelled in the earth.
†b. One who digs up or violates graves. Obs.
1631Weever Anc. Funeral Mon. 51 These Tombe⁓breakers, these graue-diggers.
2. A name given to various insects that bury the bodies of small animals and insects, for the use of their larvæ on quitting the egg: esp. a beetle of the genus Necrophorus, called also burying-beetle and sexton; also, a digger-wasp, e.g. one of the genus Sphex.
[1847Grave-digging: see grave n. 6.] 1851Gosse Nat. in Jamaica 146 We perceive the Sphex at work..we discover by narrow watching that she is digging the hole; and hence the negro children have given her the appropriate title of grave-digger. 1884–5Riverside Nat. Hist. (1888) II. 385 On account of their habit of burying small dead vertebrate animals, in which they lay their eggs, these beetles [of the genus Necrophorus] are often called sextons or grave-diggers.
3. fig. (See quots.)
1887F. Gale Game of Cricket 193 Let me say a word to captains..about the gravediggers... They grow despondent for lack of encouragement, and there is a sameness in constantly bringing up the rear. 1896Daily Tel. 21 Aug. 3/2 Too much ‘route-marching, pipe-claying, and starching’ tends to dulness and apathy, whilst it leads the British soldier, when off duty,..to make too free an acquaintance with the ‘grave-digger’ [sc. strong drink], as it is termed in India. 1934Lewis Lang. Cricket 111 Grave diggers, the last batsmen of a side in the order of going in to bat. 1949I. Deutscher Stalin 94 Labelled by Lenin ‘the liquidators’, the grave-diggers of the party. 1957C. Hunt Guide to Communist Jargon l. 163 According to Marx, the proletariat is brought into existence by the capitalist system, of which it is destined to be the ‘grave-digger’.
Hence gravediggership, a gravedigger's office.
1894Crockett Lilac Sunbonnet 139 Anxious for his grave-diggership. |