| 释义 |
lamplighter|ˈlæmplaɪtə(r)|
[f. lamp n.1 + lighter.]
1. One who lights lamps; one whose business it is to light the street lamps.
like a lamplighter: said with allusion to the rapidity with which the lamplighter ran on his rounds, or climbed the ladders formerly used to reach the street lamps.
1750Baker in Phil. Trans. XLVI. 601 A Lamp-lighter was giving an Account, that [etc.]. 1776Court & City Reg. 167/2 John Bird, master lamp lighter. a1813A. Wilson Hogmenae Poet. Wks. (1846) 293 So Dempster, and Brodie, in Co., Like lamplighters ran to the baker's. 1830Marryat King's Own xxxiii, Skim up the rigging like a lamplighter. 1843A. Bethune Sc. Fireside Stor. 68 That's Lucifer, flying about like a lamplighter. 1874Burnand My time ii. 12 The arrival of the lamplighter in the winter-time was quite the event of the day.
2. U.S. A contrivance for lighting lamps; e.g. a spill of paper, a torch, or an electric appliance.
1859E. Dickinson Lett. (1894) I. 194 Please, now I write so often, make lamplighter of me.
3. local U.S. The calico bass.
In recent (American) Dicts.
4. A North American freshwater sunfish of the genus Pomoxis, esp. the white crappie, P. annularis.
18771st Ann. Rep. Ohio State Fish Comm. 77 P[omoxys] hexacanthus... Strawberry Bass;..Lamp-lighter, of Portsmouth. 1892C. F. Lummis Tramp across Continent 33 For three years I had been fairly starving for a bout with these beauties—a hunger which the catfish and ‘lamplighters’ of Ohio had utterly failed to satisfy. 1947B. W. Dalrymple Panfish 84 Here, my friend, are the various names by which you would address that little gamester, the Crappie, depending on where you happened to be at the moment: Bachelor,..Lake Bass, Lake Erie Bass, Lamplighter. |