| 释义 |
hurdy-gurdy|ˈhɜːdɪˈgɜːdɪ|
[app. a riming combination suggested by the sound of the instrument. Cf. hirdy-girdy, uproar, disorderly noise.]
1. a. A musical instrument of rustic origin resembling the lute or guitar, and having strings (two or more of which are tuned so as to produce a drone), which are sounded by the revolution of a rosined wheel turned by the left hand, the notes of the melody being obtained by the action of keys which ‘stop’ the strings and are played by the right hand; thus combining the characteristics of instruments of the bowed and the clavier kinds. b. In recent times, applied popularly to any instrument having a droning sound and played by turning a handle, as the barrel-organ.
1749Lady Luxborough Lett. to Shenstone 10 Dec., Receive this incorrect epistle..not for its wit or its beauty: for it has no more pretence to either than a hurdy gurdy has to harmony. 1764O'Hara Midas i. 7 A sightly clown!—and sturdy! Hum!—plays, I see, upon the hurdy⁓gurdy. 1770F. Burney Early Diary 10 Jan., Hetty went as a Savoyard, with a hurdy gurdy fastened round her waist. 1785–96Grose Dict. Vulg. T., Hurdy gourdy, a kind of fiddle..at present it is confounded with the humstrum. 1807T. Young Course Lect. Nat. Philos. I. xxxiv. 399 The vielle, or monochord, commonly called the hurdy gurdy, has frets which are raised by the action of the fingers on a row of keys. 1851Thackeray Eng. Hum. iv. (1876) 261 A Savoyard boy..with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey. 1879A. J. Hipkins in Grove Dict. Mus. I. 759/2 The Hurdy Gurdy was the prototype of the Piano Violin, and all similar sostenente instruments.
transf. and fig.1863Longfellow Wayside Inn, Birds Killingworth xviii, And hear the locust and the grass⁓hopper Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play. 1871Smiles Charac. i. (1876) 27 Perpetual grinding at the hurdy-gurdy of long-dead grievances.
2. (More fully hurdy-gurdy wheel.) An impact wheel driven by a tangential jet of water which issues under pressure from a nozzle and strikes a series of buckets on the periphery. U.S.
1868Rep. J. Ross Brown on Min. Resources west of Rocky Mts. (U.S. Treasury Dept.) 101 In 1866 they struck into pay and erected a 10-stamp mill, which is driven by a hurdy-gurdy wheel. 1872Raymond Statist. Mines & Mining 86 An eight⁓stamp mill, run by a ‘hurdy-gurdy’ wheel 8 feet in diameter, using 75 inches of water under a pressure of 75 feet. 1882Rep. to Ho. Represent. Prec. Metals U.S. 628 The actuating power of the derrick is, generally, a hurdy-gurdy. This is a peculiar kind of impact wheel made to utilize water under high pressures.
3. A crank or windlass used for hauling trawls in deep-sea fishing.
1883Fisheries Exhib. Catal. 196 Trawl-winch or hurdy⁓gurdy.
4. a. attrib. and Comb.
1861Sala Dutch Pict. i. 8 Airs..such as the hurdy⁓gurdy players..grind so piteously before cottage doors. 1891Duke of Argyll in 19th Cent. Jan. 12 The famous formula that geology saw ‘no trace of a beginning, no symptom of an end’..may be called the great hurdy-gurdy theory.
b. Special comb. hurdy-gurdy girl N. Amer. Hist., a dance hostess in a hurdy-gurdy house; hurdy-gurdy house N. Amer. Hist., a disreputable type of cheap dance-hall.
[1860C. E. De Long in Calif. Hist. Soc. Q. (1931) X. 256 Rode over to young Hill's to see Tom Smith married to a hurdy gurdy.] 1865Harper's Mag. June 4/1 *Hurdy-gurdy girls are singing bacchanalian songs. 1958P. Berton Klondike 6 A circus parade of camp-followers crowded in upon them, saloon-keepers, and hurdy-gurdy girls. 1973Islander (Victoria, B.C.) 18 Nov. 12/3 A dance with a ‘hurdy-gurdy’ girl cost {pstlg}10 a whirl!
1866Beadle's Monthly Oct. 280/1 *Hurdy-gurdy houses, with dancing⁓girls, music, and long bars. 1874T. B. Aldrich Prudence Palfrey vii. 115 At sundown the dance-house would open,—the Hurdy-Gurdy House, as it was called. 1955P. F. Sharp Whoop-up Country 192 The saloons and hurdy⁓gurdy houses of Benton, Macleod, and Calgary.
Hence hurdy-ˈgurdyist, a hurdy-gurdy player.
a1845Hood Town & Country viii, Two hurdigurdists, and a poor Street-Handel grinding at my door. 1862Miss Mulock Domestic Stor. 335 He made friendships with blind pipers, Italian hurdy gurdyists. |