| 释义 |
way station U.S.
Also way-station.
a. An intermediate station on a railway route, a way-side station. Also transf.
1850Ann. Rep. Railroad Corp. Massachusetts 1849 21 Way stations for express trains. 1854Harper's Mag. VIII. 566/2 The boats touched at most of the prominent towns on the river, to land such passengers as might desire to disembark at ‘way-stations’. 1855[see lock v.1 7 d]. 1856Olmsted Slave States 53 Twenty minutes spent at way-stations. 1881R. G. White Eng. Without & Within ii. 44 If it is at a way-station, the passengers give up their tickets as they pass out through the station. 1891C. Roberts Adrift Amer. 67 This was only what is called a way station. There was nothing but a section house and a long siding, besides the usual offices. 1912F. J. Haskin Amer. Govt. 210 Cities which are to-day mere way stations on the international routes of trade will grow into rich world centers. 1914Sat. Even. Post 4 Apr. 52/2 At ten o'clock that night at a way-station the kid was ditched. 1934A. Woollcott While Rome Burns 258 To fly by way of Ottawa, Point Barrow, and other way-stations. 1944Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Va.) 21 July 1/8 The island [sc. Guam]..formerly served as a way-station on the trans-Pacific airroute to the East. 1976N. Thornburg Cutter & Bone vi. 134 It was..a way station carefully restored and preserved to offer at least a semblance of its original state. 1984New Yorker 9 July 43/2 The United States may..use Moroccan facilities..as way stations for combat troops destined for service in, say, the Middle East.
b. fig., or in fig. context.
1892Congress. Rec. 23 Mar. 2462/2 ‘Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question?’.. ‘The gentleman will excuse me. On a fast schedule I can not stop at way stations.’ 1926[see tectal a.]. 1948Menjou & Musselman It took Nine Tailors 10 She thought a theater was just a way station on the road to perdition. 1960Bruner & Klein in Kaplan & Wapner Perspectives in Psychol. Theory 65 There are corticofugal impulses that go down through the reticular formation to program selectivity of intake by way stations in the sensory system. 1973Sci. Amer. July 52/1 Lymphocytes are found in high concentrations in the lymph nodes, way stations along the lymphatic vessels. 1978W. Garner Möbius Trip (1979) i. 12 The Belgravia apartment was not a home... It was a way station. 1982H. Kissinger Yrs. of Upheaval viii. 302 The cease-fire was merely a tactic, a way station toward their objective of taking over the whole of Indochina by force. |