| 释义 |
▪ I. unˈpeople, v.
[un-2 4.]
1. trans. To divest or empty of people; to depopulate.
a1533Ld. Berners Gold. Bk. M. Aurel. (1546) K vj b, Bycause thou hast vnpeopled the lanes and stretes of worke⁓men and officers, and hast peopled it all about with infinite vacaboundes. 1594Kyd Cornelia iv. i. 106 [Caesar] hath vnpeopled most part of the earth. 1641Milton Reform. ii. 60 They have unpeopl'd the Kingdome by expulsion of so many thousands. 1685N. Crouch Eng. Emp. Amer. i. 2 There is no such Torrid Zone where the heat is so noxious as to unpeople any part of the Earth. 1768Sterne Sent. Journ., Paris, Thirty-five years..have unpeopled her dominions of the slaves of love. 1820Byron Mar. Fal. iii. ii. 492 'Tis mine to sound the knell, and strike the blow, Which shall unpeople many palaces. 1865W. G. Palgrave Arabia II. 328 Systematic ill government can do more to unpeople a land than..the Black Death.
transf.1712Blackmore Creation vii. 40 That costly banquets..May crown thy table,..Ransack the hills,..The lake unpeople, and despoil the flood. 1781Westm. Mag. IX. 263 Now, to unpeople ev'ry brook, The long-neglected mesh repairs.
b. fig. To divest or strip of something.
1823Chalmers Serm. I. iv. 114 When the business of devotion is thus unpeopled of all its externals.
2. To divest of the status of a people.
1653O. Sedgwick Doubting Believer 255 It is an un⁓advised folly in the suspension of Gods favour, to unsonne our selves, and unpeople our selves.
▪ II. ˈunpeople, n.
[un-1 12.]
a. People excluded from ‘the people’ as understood politically.
b. Unpersons.
1962E. Snow Other Side of River (1963) l. 380 There is less mystery in China today than in most Communist countries about what both people and ‘unpeople’ find unbearable. 1968Guardian 28 Nov. 11/2 (heading) Czech unpeople down on the farm. 1970Guardian Weekly 21 Mar. 6 People on foot on a hot road..walking from nowhere to nowhere... Tired people. Unpeople. 1975P. Lively Going Back vii. 88 Who are those people the Greeks knew about—the ones who wander around the Styx? The unburied dead: grey, unpeople. I am one of them. 1975Ld. Hailsham Door wherein I Went vi. 28 Communists teach that there was no such person as Jesus at all... He is the unperson to end all unpeople. |