| 释义 |
man in the moon
1. The fancied semblance of a man (or a man's face) in the disk of the moon. Proverbial phr. no more than the man in the moon.
a1310in Wright Lyric P. 112 Mon in the mone stond ant strit, on is bot forke is burthen he bereth. a1548Hall Chron., Rich. III 37 When the quene had heard this frendely mocion (which was as farre from her thought as the man that the rude people saie is in the moone). 1562J. Heywood Prov. & Epigr. (1867) 205 Wee say (not the woman) the man in the moone. 1572Abp. Parker Corr. (Parker Soc.) 404 He is no more my kinsman than the man in the moon. 1610Shakes. Temp. ii. ii. 141, I was the Man ith' Moone, when time was. 1676Marvell Mr. Smirke 12 Which he knows no more then the Man in the Moon. 1722De Foe Col. Jack (1840) 266, I thought no more of being serious..than I thought of being a man in the moon. 1840Marryat Olla Podr. (Rtldg.) 227 Gum. Then you don't know how things are settled? Jel. No more than the man in the moon.
allusively.1695Congreve Love for L. ii. v, Thy Wife is a Constellation of Virtues; she's the Moon, and thou art the Man in the Moon.
2. Referred to as the type of an imaginary person.
In recent use, a jocular name for a pretendedly unknown person who supplies money for illicit expenditure at elections.
1596Nashe Saffron Walden Wks. (Grosart) III. 175 Non est inventus: there's no such man to be found; let them that haue the Commission for the Concealments looke after it, or the Man in the Moone put for it. 1621Laud Serm. 19 June 24 It is not now sufficient that the Iewes shall be..conuerted... But these conuerted Iewes must meet out of all Nations: the ten Tribes, as well as the rest... Good God, what a fine people haue we here? Men in the Moone. 1866John Bull 1 Sept. 584/1 [The witness] created some amusement by his description of Mr. Mum, the man in the moon, who, he said, was a necessary consequence of a Totnes election. 1881Rep. Oxf. Elect. Comm., Min. Evid. 239 One of the first things Mr. M. said to me was, ‘You know I am not a ‘man in the moon’... I am simply come to see that the money is spent properly’. 1882Standard 14 Jan. 5/2 Hundreds of highly respectable Parliamentary agents were ready to wink at the presence of the ‘Man in the Moon’. |