| 释义 |
white man
Also † white-man, whiteman.
†1. A man clothed in white: cf. white a. 6. In quot. 1691, a surpliced chorister. Obs. rare.
1691[see white boy 2]. 1693D' Emilianne's Hist. Monast. Orders xix. 216 Of the Order of the White Men. In the year 1399,..a certain Priest, came down from the Alpes into Italy,..Cloathed all in White,.. great crouds both of Men and Women..followed him, and took White Cloaths like⁓wise on their Backs.
2. a. A man belonging to a race having naturally light-coloured skin or complexion: chiefly applied to those of European extraction: see white a. 4. the white man's burden: see burden n. 2 a; the white man's grave, equatorial West Africa considered particularly unhealthy for white people.
1695Motteux tr. St.-Olon's Morocco 12 [The Moors of Tetuan] are White-men, pretty well Civiliz'd. 1791W. Bartram Carolina 96 The centinels..perceiving that I was a whiteman, ventured to hail me. 1835C. F. Hoffman Winter in West I. 164 We white men have been spoiled by education; we have been taught to think many things necessary that you red men can do well without. 1836F. H. Rankin White Man's Grave I. p. viii, [Sierra Leone] bears the terrific and poetic title of the ‘White Man's Grave’. 1897M. Kingsley Trav. W. Afr. 2 My friends..said, ‘Oh, you can't possibly go there; that's where Sierra Leone is, the white man's grave, you know.’ 1904Hazzledine (title) The White Man in Nigeria. 1924Maurice & Arthur Life Ld. Wolseley iv. 65 The Gold Coast had well earned the name of ‘The White Man's Grave’. 1938X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) iii. 24 The whitemen left the hunting to the [Australian] natives. 1944F. Clune Red Heart 19, I dug up his body, souvenired his false teeth and diaries, and reburied him in whiteman fashion. 1952P. Atkey Juniper Rock xiv. 127, I was a bride at eighteen... I went out to the white man's grave. 1956A. Sampson Drum xi. 156 As whites regard Africans as natives or boys, not people or men so Africans never describe whitemen (which they spell, significantly, in one word), as abantu, or people. 1970G. F. Newman Sir, You Bastard ii. 67 The street in Hammersmith where Whitmarsh lodged was so overrun with immigrants that an English-speaking whiteman was a latterday Livingstone.
b. orig. U.S. slang. A man of honourable character (such as was conventionally associated with one of European extraction): see white a. 4 b.
1883Century Mag. XXVI. 913/1 You've behaved to me like a white man from the start. 1887Pall Mall Gaz. 22 June 5 Tricoupis the President is a white man—an extremely white man. |