| 释义 |
ˈwitch-ˌdoctor
1. a. One who professes to cure disease and to counteract witchcraft by magic arts.
1718F. Hutchinson Witchcraft viii. 110 The said Dorothy Durent, having been with a Witch-Doctor, acknowledges..that [etc.]. 1901Lancet 19 Oct. 1085/2 He was considered to be a ‘witch doctor’ and..farmers and females went to him to have the ‘evil eye’ removed.
b. A magician among African tribes, whose business it is to detect witches, and to counteract the effects of magic. (Cf. medicine-man.)
1836R. M. Martin Hist. S. Africa i. iv. 168 So infatuated [are the Kaffirs] in a belief of the infallibility of the wizard or witch doctor. 1897M. Kingsley W. Africa 445 One witch doctor may have..particular influence over one class of spirit and another over another class.
2. Mil. slang. A psychiatrist.
1966Listener 29 Dec. 960/3, I did not again rub shoulders with..the fraternity until I entered the army.., where they were known..as ‘trick-cyclists’, ‘head⁓shrinkers’, or ‘witch-doctors’. 1979D. Anthony Long Hard Cure vi. 58 That sounds like one of your witch doctors at the Retreat.
Hence witch-doctoring vbl. n., -doctory (also fig.); ˈwitch-ˌdoctress.
1892Rider Haggard Nada vii, The most famous witch⁓doctress..a woman whose scent was as keen as a dog's. 1924Kipling Debits & Credits (1926) 182 All the cars I met were ‘protected’ [with a label] as mine was—till I reached..the limit of the witch-doctoring. 1927G. B. Shaw in Sunday Express 7 Aug. 7/7 The dismal survivals of augury and witch-doctoring. 1944J. S. Huxley On Living in Revolution iv. 45 As irreconcilable as is..witch-doctoring with preventive medicine, or number⁓mysticism with higher mathematics. 1962Observer 13 May 6/5 ‘Organisation and management’ was for a long time regarded—as one Treasury man put it—as ‘third-rate witchdoctory’. 1972H. A. Williams True Resurrection ii. 22 And this was called scientific medicine as opposed to all forms of witch-doctory. 1977P. Johnson Enemies of Society xv. 197 Those who practise psychiatric medicine are in the position of early-nineteenth-century doctors, trying to get round as yet unsolved difficulties by witch-doctoring. |