| 释义 |
infall|ˈɪnfɔːl|
[f. in adv. 11 d + fall n.; = Ger. einfall, Du. inval, hostile incursion.]
1. An inroad, attack, incursion, or descent upon an army, town, etc., or into a country. Now rare.
1645Cromwell Let. 25 Apr. in Carlyle, A party of the Earl of Northampton's Regiment..came to make an infall upon me. 1647Clarendon Hist. Reb. vii. §322 The garrison at Hull had many strong infalls into the country. 1679in Wodrow Hist. Suffer. Ch. Scot. (1722) II. 54 At the Infal upon Glasgow. 1894Atkinson Old Whitby 67 The piratical, predatory raids or infalls—we can hardly dignify them by calling them invasions—from the side of the sea.
2. The place where the water enters a reservoir, canal, etc. Cf. outfall.
1863Daily Tel. 6 Apr., The puddling was not put in for about 300 feet at the infall, and about 150 feet at the outfall, the ground forming, in fact, a natural bank.
3. The falling of a stream, road, etc. into another; junction, confluence.
1895Crockett Men of Moss Hags xlvii. 334 It was near the infall of the road from Loch Dee that we first got sight of those we sought.
4. a. (A) falling upon or into (esp. a planet) from an outside source.
1899Edin. Rev. Oct. 328 The waning atmospheric stock of carbon is reinforced by meteoric infalls. 1961New Scientist 23 Feb. 465/3 Cosmic infall dust..would also provide a source of very finely divided ferrous material [on the moon]. 1969Nature 20 Dec. 1160/1 Relative to the galactic gas the average velocity of infall would be about 500 km s-1. 1971I. G. Gass et al. Understanding Earth iii. 67/2 At present the energy of infall of a meteorite or a space rocket is very large.
b. Material that falls or has fallen.
1960New Scientist 18 Feb. 387/2 There is..some evidence of it in the spectra of comets, and fragments from these continue to form part of the meteoroidal infall. 1962F. I. Ordway et al. Basic Astronautics v. 188 On airless worlds surface materials may be..mixed with cosmic infall, including meteoritic debris. |