| 释义 |
grey-back, greyback|ˈgreɪbæk|
1. U.S. colloq. A Confederate soldier in the American Civil War.
1864Daily Tel. 7 July 3/4 The last thing he is likely to attempt is to send a solitary grayback or an army of gray-backs beyond the mountains. 1870T. W. Higginson Army Life vi. 152 Yonder loitering gray-back leading his horse to water. 1883Daily Tel. 9 Feb. 5/4 The Confederate armies, during the great Civil War in America..were known..as ‘greybacks’.
2. U.S. (See quot.) Cf. greenback.
1897Gen. H. Porter in Century Mag. Aug. 593 The depreciation in the purchasing power of graybacks, as we call the rebel treasury notes, is so rapid.
3. dial. and U.S. colloq. A louse.
1864Daily Tel. 17 Mar. 5/2 The darkies sat grinning and hunting in their rags for greybacks. 1864Sala ibid. 22 Apr. 5/2 The attire of the Secesh partisans is..infested..by an insect sportively termed a ‘greyback’. 1877Holderness Gloss.
4. A name of various birds.
a. The Hooded Crow, Corvus cornix. Also greyback crow.
b. U.S. The North American Knot, Trigla canutus.
c. dial. and U.S. The scaup duck, Fuligula marila.
1888G. Trumbull Bird-names 55 Another title at Chicago is gray-back, and certain gunners about Detroit prefer black-neck to..‘blue-bill’. 1891Atkinson Moorland Par. 325 Once a grayback crow came. 1893Newton Dict. Birds, Greyback, in England a common name of the Grey form of Crow, Corvus cornix; but in North America applied by gunners to the Knot. 1895East Angl. Gloss., Grey-backs, scaup ducks.
5. U.S. The grey whale (see grey a. 8 b).
1884–5Riverside Nat. Hist. (1888) V. 186 The gray whale has received many curious titles, such as ‘hard-head’, ‘mussel-digger’, ‘devil-fish’, and ‘gray-back’.
6. techn. (See quot. Cf. grey n. 1 b.)
1876J. Paton in Encycl. Brit. IV. 685/2 Between the central bowl [of a cylinder calico-printing machine] and the cloth to be printed there passes an endless band of cloth or blanket..and a ‘grey back’ or web of unbleached calico, used to keep the blanket clean. |