| 释义 |
ˈwasteland
[f. waste n. + land n.1; cf. waste land under waste a. This compound is now indistinguishable from collocations of the adjective: see waste a. 1.]
1. a. Land in its natural, uncultivated state. Also attrib.
1887Morris Odyss. xi. 293 The wasteland neatherds. 1916Nature 12 Oct. 105/1 The most accessible of the wastelands would be selected and the order of planting laid down. 1919Contemp. Rev. Aug. 181 A flock of from thirty to forty meadow-pipits feeding on waste-land.
b. Land (esp. that which is surrounded by developed land) not used or unfit for cultivation or building and allowed to run wild.
1922W. J. Locke Tale of Triona x. 116 They walked..through the maze of new and distressingly decorous avenues, some finished, others petering out..into placarded building lots or waste land. 1933Archit. Rev. LXXIV. 166/1 Farm and meadow, hedge and coppice are all part of a system which the urban dweller takes for granted but which agricultural decay can only transform..into wasteland, flood and marsh. 1969Daily Tel. 5 Sept. 18 Within a stone's throw of the Guildhall are wasteland areas created by the bombing of 25 years ago. 1974A. J. Huxley Plant & Planet xxix. 359 Land sterilization by building and industrial use, and the subsequent creation of wastelands. 1980Daily Tel. 23 July 2/2 A conference on wasteland, organised in London by Thames Television.
c. spec. a waterless or treeless region, a desert. (Not distinguishable from some examples at sense1 a.)
1966F. Herbert Dune 399 The stranger might think nothing could live or grow in the open here, that this was the true wasteland that had never been fertile and never would be. 1969Daily Tel. (Colour Suppl.) 3 Oct. 20/4 Horses cannot last long in that pitiless wasteland where no rain has fallen for the last five years. 1979P. Theroux Old Patagonian Express (1980) vii. 131 We were in a waterless desert: no sign of the river in this parched wasteland.
d. transf. and fig., sometimes with allusion to T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922).
1868Trollope Phineas Finn (1869) I. xxxvi. 310 Young members..who are green from the waste lands and road-sides of private life. 1932H. Nicolson Let. 15 Apr. (1966) 114 He [sc. Sir Oswald Mosley] will be edged gradually into becoming a revolutionary—and to that waste land I cannot follow him. 1934C. Lambert Music Ho! v. 281 The composer finds himself in a spiritual waste land. 1964S. Bellow Herzog 75 The commonplaces of the Wasteland outlook. 1972Sat. Rev. (U.S.) 27 May 7/1 Television's sad wasteland. 1976Brit. Jrnl. Sociol. XXVII. 35 Above all, there is one fundamental chasm which divides this terminological wasteland. 1981N.Y. Rev. Bks. 5 Nov. 34 The once proud and efficient public school system of the United States{ddd}has turned into a wasteland.
2. N.Z. (See quot. 1875.)
1844F. Mathew Reports (typescript) II. 18 Any attempt on his part to assert the right of the Crown, without purchase, to what are known as Waste Lands would have immediately been attended with serious results. 1875J. Vogel Official Handbk. N.Z. 103 Public—or as they are called, ‘waste’—lands are sold on several principles. 1930L. G. D. Acland Early Canterbury Runs 1st Ser. viii. 205 Godley..was very much against letting the ‘waste lands’ in large areas. |