| 释义 |
‖ upas|ˈjuːpəs|
Also 9 oopas.
[a. Malay ūpas poison, in the comb. pōhun (or pūhun) ūpas poison-tree.
In senses 1 and 2 correct usage would require the compound upas-tree. The full Malay name has been used by some writers in the inexact forms bohon, bohun, bopon, bon, and boa upas.]
1. A fabulous tree alleged to have existed in Java, at some distance from Batavia, with properties so poisonous as to destroy all animal and vegetable life to a distance of fifteen or sixteen miles around it.
The account given in the London Magazine of 1783, from which Erasmus Darwin adopted and gave currency to the fiction, professed to be translated from one written in Dutch by Mr. Foersch (who was a surgeon at Samarang in 1773), but was app. the invention of George Steevens. The history of the fable is fully traced in Yule and Burnell's Hobson-Jobson, s.v. Upas.
α1783London Mag. 513/1 They are asked.., whether they will go to the Upas tree for a box of poison? 1819J. H. Wiffen Aonian Hours 58 His life was like the Upas-tree, The curse of all his kind! 1841Thackeray Misc. Ess. (1885) 401 Avoid tobacco as you would the upas plant.
β1783London Mag. 516/2, I have been convinced, that the gum of the Upas is the..most violent of all vegetable poisons. 1789E. Darwin Loves of Plants iii. 238 Fierce in dread silence on the blasted heath Fell Upas sits, the Hydra-Tree of death. 1815Helen M. Williams Pres. St. France iv. 68 Held in as much abhorrence as if they had shed the poisons of the Upas. 1858Sears Athan. ii. 89 The Upas of the desert, and the nightshade of the jungles.
attrib. and Comb.1838Ruskin Scythian Banquet Song iv, Nor deemed [I] my love, like Upas dew, A plague. 1845Ford Handbk. Spain ii. 724 Such is its upas-like atmosphere. 1847Emerson Mithridates 19 Swing me in the upas boughs, Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse.
b. fig. A baleful, destructive, or deadly power or influence.
α1801Southey Thalaba ix. II. 200 From that accursed venom springs The Upas Tree of Death. 1824Westm. Rev. April 464 That Upas tree, which has since borne all the bitter fruits of Turkish oppression. 1839F. A. Kemble Resid. in Georgia (1863) 90 This tremendous soil, where one grain of knowledge may spring up a gigantic upas-tree. 1885E. Garrett At Any Cost iv. 64 This failure..lies about the very root of many upas-trees of human life.
β1818Byron Ch. Har. iv. cxxvi, This uneradicable taint of sin, This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree. 1865Parkman Huguenots viii. (1875) 138 Thus did Spain..crush the upas of heresy in its germ. 1876Farrar Marlb. Serm. xxxvi. 359 This is the sole resemblance between the tree of life and the upas of evil.
attrib.1832[R. Cattermole] Beckett, etc. 169 Even Despotism's dark upas-root For us a blessing bore. 1853Kingsley Hypatia I. p. xi, Was not the Empire trying to extend over the Church itself that upas shadow with which it had withered up every other form of human existence?
2. Bot. The Javanese tree Antiaris toxicaria, yielding a poisonous juice. (Cf. antiar.)
1814T. Horsfield in Thomson's Ann. Philos. IX. 202 An Essay on the Oopas, or Poison Tree of Java. 1834Penny Cycl. II. 98/2 There is such a tree as the upas, and its juice, if mixed with the blood.., is speedily fatal. Ibid. 420/2 The Upas tree of Java. 1872Oliver Elem. Bot. ii. 234 The celebrated Upas..is a native of Java. The juice..was formerly used by the natives to poison their arrows.
attrib.1857Miller Elem. Chem., Org. 287 Strychnia..is one of the active constituents of the upas poison.
3. The poison obtained from the upas-tree.
1783London Mag. 515/2 To suffer death by a lancet poisoned with Upas. Ibid. 516/1, I..procured..some grains of Upas. 1814T. Horsfield in Thomson's Ann. Philos. IX. 207 One of the experiments..was made with the oopas prepared by myself. 1830Lindley Nat. Syst. Bot. 95 An order [of plants] which contains the most deadly poison in the world, the Upas of Java. 1860Mayne Expos. Lex. s.v. |