| 释义 |
▪ I. horseshoe, horse-shoe, n.|ˈhɔːsʃuː|
1. a. A shoe for a horse, now usually formed of a narrow iron plate bent to the outline of the horse's hoof and nailed to the animal's foot.
Widely employed by the superstitious as an amulet, a protection from witchcraft, omen of good luck, etc.
1387Trevisa Higden (Rolls) VI. 255 Foure hors schoon. 1485Nottingham Rec. III. 245 Item for a hors shoo..jd. ob. 1596Dalrymple tr. Leslie's Hist. Scot. vii. 39 Makdonald..with horschone he schod his wife, and set thame on her solis with nailis. 1598Shakes. Merry W. iii. v. 123 To be throwne into the Thames, and coold, glowing-hot..like a Horse-shoo. 1665Boyle Occas. Refl. (1845) 348 The common People of this Country have a Tradition, that 'tis a lucky thing to find a Horse-shoe. 1751Univ. Mag. in Hone Every-day Bk. II. 1457 No horseshoe nor magpye shall baffle our skill. 1824Scott Redgauntlet ch. xi, Your wife's a witch, man; you should nail a horse-shoe on your chamber door. 1851D. Wilson Preh. Ann. (1863) II. iii. iv. 124. One of the ancient horse-shoes is described as consisting of a solid piece of iron. 1895Elworthy Evil Eye vi. 217 Here in Somerset, horseshoes are nailed on stable doors, hung up to the ceilings above the horses, or fastened to the walls of the cow-house, ‘to keep off the pixies’.
b. horseshoes, the game of quoits. dial.
1825in Brockett. 1846Ibid. (ed. 3) I. 228 The game of quoits is called ‘horse-shoes’ in the North because sometimes played with horse-shoes.
2. Applied to things shaped like a horseshoe, or a circular arc larger than a semi-circle.
a. generally.
1489Caxton Faytes of A. i. xxiv. 73 The bataylle ought to be then ordred and made in manere of a hors-shoo. 1725De Foe Voy. round World (1840) 130 The river making a kind of a double horse-shoe. 1770Washington Writ. (1889) II. 298 The Ohio running round it in the nature of a horse⁓shoe. 1799Kirwan Geol. Ess. 337 When the dip forms what is called a horse-shoe, descending from one mountain or hill, and ascending on the opposite. 1866Rogers Agric. & Prices I. xx. 507 The horseshoe which lies between the wooded hills of Maidenhead, Wycombe and Marlow.
b. Fortification. (See quot. 1704.)
1698Froger Voy. 108 Three pieces of Fortification call'd Horse-Shooes. 1704J. Harris Lex. Techn., Horse-Shooe, in Fortification, is a Work sometimes of a round, and sometimes of an Oval Figure, raised in the Ditch of a Marshy Place, or in low Grounds, and border'd with a Parapet. 1717tr. Frezier's Voy. 312 That Fortress has no other Out⁓works, besides a Horse-shooe next the Port, and a little Cover'd-way.
c. Ship-building. = horseshoe clamp in 5 d.
c1850Rudim. Navig. (Weale) 125 Horse-shoes, large straps of iron or copper shaped like a horse-shoe and let into the stem and gripe on opposite sides, through which they are bolted together to secure the gripe to the stem.
d. Turning-lathe. (See quot.)
1875Knight Dict. Mech., Horseshoe..2. A movable support for varying the gearing and the velocity of the screw which moves the slide.
e. A horseshoe bend. U.S.
1795in Amer. Speech (1963) XXXVIII. 183 In the bend, or horse shoe..is a neck of land about 4 or 500 yards wide. a1910[see fetch v. 9].
f. Logic. (See quots. 1926, 1954.) Cf. hook n.1 10 d.
1926H. M. Sheffer in Isis VIII. 231 The authors (1)..inform us, ‘unofficially’, that they are privately convinced that ‘either p is false or q is true’ (2) means ‘p implies q’; and they henceforth regard ‘p horseshoe q’ as meaning ‘p implies q’. 1952F. B. Fitch Symbolic Logic 15 The horseshoe symbol can be read as ‘implies’, but a more accurate reading is the if-then reading. 1954I. M. Copi Symbolic Logic ii. 17 We introduce the new symbol ‘⊃’, called a horseshoe, to represent the partial meaning common to all conditional statements. 1959Listener 30 Apr. 757/2 He spent another [term] worrying about the ordinary use of the words ‘if-then’ whereas logicians had assured us that nothing but the ‘horse-shoe’ was worth talking about.
3. Bot. The same as horse-vetch: see 5 d.
1578Lyte Dodoens iv. xxxi. 490 The thirde kinde is called..in English Horse shoe. 1597Gerarde Herbal ii. d. 1057 Horse shooe commeth vp in certaine vntilled and sunny places of Italy and Languedock. 1711J. Petiver in Phil. Trans. XXVII. 387 Horse-shoes..The Pods of this elegant Plant resemble a Half moon, or Horse-shoe.
4. Zool.
a. A horseshoe-crab: see 5 d.
b. An American name of a bivalve mollusc, Lutraria elliptica, the oval otter-shell.
1775Romans Florida 302 A crab..called in the southern province a king crab, and to the northward a horse-shoe. 1850Hawthorne Scarlet L. xv. (1883) 213 She seized a live horseshoe by the tail.
5. attrib. and Comb.
a. Simple attrib. ‘of a horseshoe’, as in horseshoe-fashion, horseshoe form, horseshoe shape.
1712J. James tr. Le Blond's Gardening 26 Great Stairs made Horse-shoo-Fashion. 1837Penny Cycl. VII. 23/2 Nose..bordered by a wide crest of a horseshoe shape. 1874Parker Goth. Archit. i. iii. 66 Norman arches are not unfrequently of the horse-shoe form.
b. attrib. passing into adj. ‘Of the form of a horseshoe, or arc larger than a semicircle’, as horseshoe arch, horseshoe bend, horseshoe brooch, horseshoe curve, horseshoe door, horseshoe moustache, horseshoe table.
1770Duchess of Northumberland Diary 10 June (1926) 139 In the midst of the Room were two Horse Shoe Tables the ends of which pretty near touching form'd a Kind of Oval. 1796Combe Boydell's Thames II. 71. The horse-shoe bend that begins at Mortlake. 1812–16J. Smith Panorama Sc. & Art. I. 131 A horse-shoe arch has its centre above the spring. 1857C. M. Yonge Let. 1 Oct. (1903) viii. 212 A great horse-shoe table, holding 116 people. 1873Hayne in Tristram Moab 375 Arches distinctly horse⁓shoe. 1875‘Mark Twain’ in Atlantic Monthly Aug. 192/2 The water cuts the alluvial banks of the ‘lower’ river into deep horseshoe curves. 1884Graphic 22 Nov. 538/1 The delegates took their places to the right and left of him at a horseshoe table. 1893T. B. Foreman Trip to Spain etc. 64 Through the usual horse-shoe door, we enter an open court. 1926F. M. Ford Man could stand Up i. i. 17 The gentlemen with sergeant-majors' horse-shoe moustaches. 1950G. Brenan Face of Spain ii. 42 The double horseshoe arches, striped buff-white and brick-rose, arrest one by their strangeness and novelty.
c. similative, parasynthetic, etc., as horseshoe-shaped, horseshoe-like adjs.
1776Pennant Zool. IV. 48 A horse-shoe-shaped mark of deep purple. 1892E. Reeves Homeward Bound 276 A small room entered by a horse-shoe-like arch. 1895Westm. Gaz. 4 Sept. 3/3 The tunnel..is 21 ft. high and 19 ft. broad, and is horseshoe-shaped.
d. Special combs.: horseshoe anvil (see quot.); horseshoe-bat, any species of bat having a nose-leaf more or less horseshoe-shaped, esp. Rhinolophus ferrum-equinum, R. hipposideros, and Phyllorhina armigera; horseshoe clamp (see quot.); horseshoe-crab, a crab-like animal of the genus Limulus, so called from the shape of its shell; a king crab; horseshoe-fern, (in New Zealand) Marattia fraxinea, called in Australia potato-fern (Morris Austral Eng. 1898); horseshoe goose, head, kidney, magnet, (see quots.); horseshoe-nail, a nail of soft iron for fastening on horseshoes; hence horseshoe-nail machine, horseshoe rod; horseshoe-vetch, a leguminous plant (Hippocrepis comosa) bearing umbels of yellow flowers, and jointed pods each division of which resembles a horseshoe.
1875Knight Dict. Mech., *Horseshoe-anvil, one which corresponds in shape and size to the hoof of a horse, and has shanks which permit its adjustment in the socket-hole of the anvil, in either a natural or a reversed position.
1774Goldsm. Nat. Hist. IV. 140 The *Horse shoe Bat, with an odd protuberance round its upper lip, somewhat in the form of an horse-shoe. 1847Carpenter Zool. §169 Two species are known in England under the name of the Greater and Lesser Horse-shoe Bats.
1875Knight Dict. Mech., *Horseshoe-clamp (Ship-building), an iron strap by which the gripe and fore-foot are attached.
1865Parkman Champlain iii. (1875) 231 The *horseshoe-crab awakened his especial curiosity.
1849Zoologist VII. 2393 The Egyptian goose is the ‘*horse-shoe goose’.
1727–41Chambers Cycl., *Horse-shoe Head, a disease in infants, wherein the sutures of the skull are too open, or too great a vacuity is left between them.
1887Syd. Soc. Lex., *Horse-shoe kidney..a variety of the kidneys in man in which they are connected by their lower ends, so as to make one horseshoe-shaped organ.
1785G. Adams Ess. Magnetism (ed. 2) 419 To touch horseshoe magnets. 1822J. Imison Sc. & Art I. 409 A magnet, bent so that the two ends almost meet, is called a horse-shoe magnet. 1871Tyndall Fragm. Sc. (1879) II. xvi. 441 He bent it into a continous ring, which..he caused to rotate rapidly close to the poles of a horse-shoe magnet.
1415–16Durham MS. Sacr. Roll, Et in furfure et *horsescho⁓nayle, xixs. xjd. 1800tr. Lagrange's Chem. II. 97 Six parts of iron in small fragments, as points of horse-shoe nails. 1888Law Rep. 13 App. Cas. 401 A patent for the manufacture of horse-shoe nails.
1875Knight Dict. Mech., *Horse⁓shoe Nail-machine, one in which rods of iron are shaped into nails for the purpose stated. 1894Daily News 22 Jan. 7/4 Rolled horseshoe nail rods (charcoal) are priced at {pstlg}16 10s.
1706J. Lee Introd. Bot. (1788) 282 Hippocrepis, *Horseshoe Vetch.
▪ II. ˈhorseshoe, v.
[f. prec. n.: cf. shoe v.]
1. trans. To provide with horseshoes.
2. Arch. To make (an arch) horseshoe-shaped.
1874J. Fergusson Hist. Archit. (ed. 2) i. iv. vi. I. 391 A Sassanian arch..horse-shoed to the extent of one-tenth of its diameter.
So horse-shoer |-ˌʃuːə(r)|, one who makes horseshoes, or shoes horses; ˈhorse-shoeing, the art or craft of shoeing horses.
1591Sparry tr. Catton's Geomancie 76 Craftsmen working by yron, as horse-shooers, locke-smiths, and such like. 1869G. Fleming (title) Horse-Shoes and Horse-Shoeing. 1888Pall Mall G. 24 Sept. 11/2 The horse-shoers wore new russet leather aprons, with blood-red horseshoe stamped in the centre. |