| 释义 |
Wellerism|ˈwɛlərɪzm|
Also wellerism.
[f. the surname Weller (see below) + -ism.]
A speech or expression employed by, or typical of Sam Weller or his father, two celebrated characters in Dickens's Pickwick Papers; usu. spec., a form of comparison in which a familiar saying or proverb is identified, often punningly, with what was said by someone in a specified but humorously inapposite situation.
1839Boston Morning Post 9 Jan. 2/2 Wellerisms.—‘It does one's heart good to look at you,’ as the fox said to the chickens, when he found he couldn't get over the barn-yard wall, to eat them. 1854Yankee Notions III. 142 (heading) Phrenological Wellerisms. 1886(title) Wellerisms from ‘Pickwick’ and ‘Master Humphrey's Clock’. 1931A. Taylor Proverb iv. 219 Wellerisms involving a temporal clause, e.g. ‘Much noise and little wool,’ said the Devil when he sheared a pig, are largely used of women. 1959[see knock-knock n., v., and int. s.v. knock-]. 1975New Society 25 Dec. 685/1 Sam Weller has joined Dr Spooner and fathered the wellerism: ‘Meet you at the corner as one wall said to another,’ but the wellerism can also be transformed into a riddle.
Also Welleresque |wɛləˈrɛsk|, Wellerian |wɛˈlɪərɪən|, adjs., typical or reminiscent of either of these characters.
1839Dickens Let. 25 Jan. (1965) I. 359 Your agreement is—in Wellerian phraseology—gammon. 1868L. M. Alcott Little Women x, ‘I'm the wretch that did it, sir,’ said the new member, with a Welleresque nod to Mr. Pickwick. 1886Pall Mall Gaz. 20 Feb. 5/2 Sam Weller's story of the muffins is not Wellerian at all. |