| 释义 |
marginal, a. and n.|ˈmɑːdʒɪnəl|
[ad. mod.L. marginālis, f. margin-, margo, margin n. Cf. F. marginal.]
A. adj.
1. a. Written or printed in the margin of a page, as marginal note, marginal reference. Hence marginal bible, one with marginal notes.
1576Fleming Panopl. Epist. 34 margin, Thes words are..made plaine, in the first Epistle, Li. 6. in a marginall note. 1611Cotgr. s.v. Marc, Looke the next marginall word. 1641Milton Ch. Govt. ii. 41 To club quotations with men whose learning and beleif lies in marginal stuffings. a1656Hales Gold. Rem. (1673) 288 That so you may bring them [sc. scattered notes] together by marginal references. 1683Moxon Mech. Exerc., Printing xxii. ⁋5 Marginal Notes come down the side (or sides, If the Page have two Columns). a1732T. Boston Crook in Lot (1805) 78 Here there is a line reading, and a marginal. 1733Neal Hist. Purit. II. 48 Mr. Canne, author of the Marginal References to the Bible. 1860Dickens Lett. (1880) II. 113, I thought the marginal references overdone. 1885Act 48 Vict. c. 15 Sched. ii. Precept §35 You are..to publish..the register with your marginal additions. 1903Expositor July 1 Fuller lists..in what are called ‘marginal bibles’.
†b. marginal finger: a ‘finger’ or hand set in the margin to call attention to something; hence fig.
1604Dekker Honest Wh. Wks. 1873 II. 6 Let it stand Within the Wizards booke (the kalendar) Markt with a marginall finger. 1632Massinger & Field Fatal Dowry iii. i, To haue mens marginall fingers point At Charaloys, as a lamented story!
2. a. Pertaining to an edge, border, or boundary; situated at the extreme edge (of an area, mass, etc.).
1658Phillips, Marginal, belonging to the margin or margent, i. the brink or brim of any thing. 1831Brewster Optics vi. 54 The central parts of the lens..refract the rays too little, and the marginal parts too much. 1872Black Adv. Phaeton vii. 100 A marginal growth of willow and flag. 1882Garden 25 Mar. 202/2 Lobelias..are most useful, as marginal plants for flower beds and borders. 1892Photogr. Ann. 229 The lenses are of special optical glass, constructed with the nicest precision of curvature, so maintaining good marginal definition. 1893S. Lane-Poole Aurengzib xii. 190 The extreme point south of Trichinopoly, and the marginal possessions of the Portuguese. 1925J. Laird Our Minds & their Bodies ii. 31 For scientific purposes the marginal or borderline cases are usually the most instructive. 1934H. C. Warren Dict. Psychol. 159/1 Marginal contrast, an accentuated type of simultaneous contrast, which occurs in regions close to the boundary between two contrasting areas. 1950tr. Mountaineering Handbk. (Assoc. Brit. Members Swiss Alpine Club) ix. 88 Marginal crevasses..run diagonally upwards and towards the centre of the glacier. 1957R. G. Collomb Dict. Mountaineering 52 The changing course of a glacier causes marginal crevasses (i.e. splits at the edges)..; the changing angle of slope over which it flows causes marginal crevasses and transverse crevasses in mid-stream. 1962Blake & Trott Periodontology v. 49 Marginal gingivitis involves only the free gingiva. 1962M. L. Haselgrove Photographers' Dict. 141 (caption) A beam parallel to the principal axis will not be brought to a focus at the principal focus; marginal rays will converge to M while axial rays converge to A. 1965G. Y. Shevelov Prehist. of Slavic 74 As in many other cases this columnal final stress was replaced by the marginal final stress.
b. Nat. Hist. (Cf. margin n. 1 b.)
1776–96Withering Brit. Plants (ed. 3) IV. 97, I never observed the seeds exposed in the marginal sinusses. 1800Phil Trans. XC. 436 When the marginal lips are brought together, the animal will have a considerable power of suction. 1859J. R. Greene Man. Anim. Kingd., Protozoa 20 To send forth pseudopodia through the marginal pores. 1875Bennett & Dyer tr. Sachs' Bot. 298 Adventitious shoots, arising in the thalloid forms from cells of the older marginal parts.
c. Psychol. Of, on, or pertaining to the edge of the field of consciousness.
1894C. L. Morgan Introd. Compar. Psychol. i. 17 We..pay attention solely to focal consciousness, omitting all reference to the great body of marginal subconsciousness. 1899W. James Talks to Teachers ii. 18 The expressions ‘focal object’ and ‘marginal object’, which we owe to Mr. Lloyd Morgan, require, I think, no further explanation. 1903F. W. H. Myers Hum. Personality I. Introd. 14 They speak of ‘fringes’ of ordinary consciousness; of ‘marginal’ associations. 1927W. E. Collinson Contemp. Eng. 108 The field of consciousness with its focal and marginal presentations.
3. a. That is on the ‘margin’, or close to the limit, below or beyond which something ceases to be possible or desirable. Freq. in Econ.; esp. of or pertaining to goods produced and marketed at a small margin of profit; spec. in phrases marginal cost, marginal man, marginal utility.
1887Daily News 23 May 2/8 Competition is as keen as ever and prices as marginal as they can be. 1890Marshall Princ. Econ. iii. iii. (1898) 168 That part of the thing which he is only just induced to purchase may be called his marginal purchase, because he is on the margin of doubt whether it is worth his while to incur the outlay required to obtain it. And the utility of his marginal purchase may be called the marginal utility of the thing to him. Ibid. i. p. x, The term ‘marginal’ increment I borrowed from von Thünen, and it is now commonly used by German economists. 1909J. A. Hobson Industr. Syst. v. 109 So with the case of the ‘marginal shepherd’, the tenth man whom a farmer calculates it is just worth his while to employ because he can get him for the price of twenty sheep a year, and he will just save that number by his work. Ibid., Marginal productivity of labour..the productivity of any single man, ‘marginal’ or other. 1920A. Marshall Princ. Econ. (ed. 8) vi. i. 517 The farmer's interests are equally served by hiring 10 or 11 men; but..the eleventh man (supposed to be of normal efficiency) is the marginal man, when the markets for labour and sheep are such that one man can be hired..for the price of 20 sheep. 1925J. M. Keynes in A. C. Pigou Memorials A. Marshall 22 It undoubtedly gave Jevons priority of publication as regards the group of ideas connected with ‘marginal’ (or, as Jevons called it, ‘final’) utility. 1930Economist 28 June 1441/1 The proposals were based upon marginal cost on full-time running. 1931Encycl. Social Sci. V. 366/1 In 1871..W. Stanley Jevons coined the phrase final utility, Carl Menger spoke of marginal utility and Léon Walras used the term rarity. 1934Punch 17 Oct. 424/1 People babble cheerfully about the Marginal Man, the law of Diminishing Returns and so on. 1957Times 21 Dec. 5/2 The weather at Idlewild international airport was reported to be ‘marginal’, and the captain had to ensure that sufficient fuel remained to divert to an alternative base. 1958Listener 25 Sept. 447/1 The ordinary American citizen enjoys amenities which not even the rich enjoyed a century ago, and marginal output consists of goods that by any standards are patently inessential. Ibid. 448/1 Marginal production in affluent America today..is in general much less urgent..than was marginal production 100 years ago. 1963Times 16 Apr. 13/1 At any point of time there are some who would buy less coal if the price went up, either economizing in fuel or switching to some alternative. We economists call these the ‘marginal’ users. 1969J. Argenti Managem. Techniques 155 Marginal cost calculations can be extremely complex in a large multi⁓product company... Unless marginal costing is used, the answer given to the question ‘will it pay us to meet this order or should we turn it down?’ will be wrong. 1973Black Panther 8 Sept. 12/3 In Southern Appalachia, Black Appalachians are ‘marginal’ (just above the poverty level).
b. Applied to land, ore, etc., barely worth developing. Also applied to a person working such land, etc. (Cf. margin n. 2 a, quot. 1863.)
1910P. H. Wicksteed Common Sense of Pol. Econ. ii. vi. 571 ‘Marginal land’..is not land..considered with reference to the volume of supply. 1935Economist 30 Nov. 1095/2 Huge quantities of marginal ore which, unattractive at the old price of gold, are attractive at the new. 1943J. S. Huxley TVA i. 7 Reafforestation and the proper use of marginal lands. 1944Ann. Reg. 1943 283 Policy..of aiding the thousands of inefficient marginal farmers to raise their standards of farming. 1954M. Beresford Lost Villages x. 346 Derbyshire... There seems to have been surprisingly little retreat of settlement from marginal lands in the Peak. 1975Times Lit. Suppl. 2 May 471/3 The bringing back into production of marginal agricultural land..formed part of his [sc. Keynes's] vision.
c. Sociol. Of an individual or social group: partly belonging to two differing societies or cultures but not fully integrated into either.
1928R. E. Park in Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. May 881 (heading) Human migration and the marginal man. Ibid., One of the consequences of migration is to create a situation in which the same individual..finds himself striving to live in two diverse cultural groups. The effect is to produce an unstable character... This is the ‘marginal man’. Ibid. 893 It is in the mind of the marginal man—where the changes and fusions of culture are going on—that we can best study the processes of civilization. 1937E. V. Stonequist (title) The marginal man. 1957V. W. Turner Schism & Continuity in Afr. Society iv. 108 Sandombu was from many points of view..an atypical, marginal man in Mukanza Village. 1963Rev. Eng. Stud. XIV. 258 A homosexual, he regarded himself as a marginal man, out of step with society, yet contemptuous of its hypocritical standards. 1964Gould & Kolb Dict. Social Sci. 407/1 Sociologists wrote of the second generation immigrants as the most distinctively marginal group, measured by their relatively high index of crime. 1964R. D. Hopper in I. L. Horowitz New Sociol. 324 The Creole marginal group constituted about 10 per cent of the population at the time of the revolution. 1964L. A. Costa Pinto in Ibid. 471 In a marginal society it is possible to find strong support..for quite opposite decisions.
d. Of minor importance, small, having little effect; usu. const. to.
1929New Statesman 1 June 232/1 For the ‘marginal’ voter—he who is at the point of indifference whether he comes to the poll or not—is unlikely..to be induced to do so by any really important consideration. 1954M. Beresford Lost Villages vii. 261 The lands marginal to medieval corn-growing. 1955Times 11 June 9/6 Most of the changes are..shifts of emphasis rather than reversals of previous policy; they are important but they are marginal. 1959Times 14 Jan. 3/6 There is no major writer who uses the stage as his preferred medium of creation... Mr. Graham Greene and Mr. Angus Wilson, for example, still seem marginal to the drama. 1959Times Lit. Suppl. 29 May 321/3 Twenty-six changes of punctuation, of which four or five seem..to be improvements, fourteen almost certainly wrong, and seven or eight marginal. 1964[see marginality]. 1969Listener 16 Jan. 92/3 The lack of a character with which we can identify—..the soldiers..remain uncharacterised and marginal—soon stills our wish to be emotionally involved.
e. Pol. Pertaining to a constituency, etc., in which an election or issue is likely to be closely contested and the majority very small. Also ellipt. as n.
1951Times 25 Oct. 6/3 (heading) Marginal seats... A significant feature of today's General Election polling is the substantial number of constituencies which may be described as marginal, and where the result of the voting is problematical. 1955Times 7 June 7/4 A marginal constituency is one where the retiring member, having won the last election by a small majority, stands a sporting chance of being defeated at the next one. 1960Butler & Rose Brit. Gen. Election 1959 xi. 135 Despite the concentration on marginal seats, the Conservatives managed to put on a full-scale campaign almost everywhere. 1965Listener 24 June 921/1 It was difficult for him to give a lead on this particular topic directly after such a marginal vote in his favour. 1966New Statesman 25 Feb. 246/1 For Labour MPs in ‘marginals’..it means that their perilous positions could be secured. 1970Guardian 16 June 10/4 Three of the four Labour-held marginals theoretically at risk would be lost only on a swing against Labour of between 4 and 5 per cent. 1974Times 13 Feb. 4/6 Redistribution can make a safe seat marginal.
4. Stockbroking. Pertaining to, of the nature of, margins (sense 2 c).
1870J. K. Medbery Men & Mysteries Wall St. 59 Nor is there any dissimilarity between the conditions of purchase in complete and in marginal transactions. Ibid. 62 The broker..demands of his customer either solid deposit of money or stocks, or marginal deposit of money. 1930Economist 22 Mar. 653/1 Dominion and colonial stocks..attracted only the ‘marginal’ business of the market. 1936Ibid. 15 Feb. 368/2 The Great Western, whose ‘marginal’ security is an ordinary stock. 1938J. B. Williams Theory Investment Value iii. 21 To the marginal investor, it will be indifferent whether he invests in stock or in promissory notes. 1954B. Graham Intelligent Investor ii. 34 Marginal trading—a potent cause of financial ruin to many—has been held within strict limits and at times suspended entirely.
B. n.
1. A marginal note, reference, or decoration. Now rare.
16022nd Pt. Return fr. Parnass. i. ii. 248 For Lodge and Watson, men of some desert, Yet subiect to a Critticks marginall. 1618J. Smyth Lives Berkeleys (1883) II. 205 What great services hee often did against the French,..the marginall will informe his posterity. 1641‘Smectymnuus’ Vind. Answ. §4. 59 Doth not the Marginall tell you..that the holy Church was founded in the state of Prelacie? 1743Emerson Fluxions 34 The Values of the Marginals on the left. 1884Times (weekly ed.) 10 Oct. 7/4 The text is printed in old black letter type, with pictorial headings and marginals.
2. Zool. A feather on the edge of a bird's wing.
1887Proc. Zool. Soc. 347 They [sc. feathers along the posterior border of the wing] are best termed marginals (tectrices marginales). 1898F. E. Beddard Struct. & Classification Birds 9 The patagium is mainly filled up with several rows of feathers, which are collectively termed the marginals.
Hence ˈmarginal v. trans., to enter in the margin of a book; to add marginal notes to.
1618J. Smyth Lives Berkeleys (1883) I. 212 The records here marginald. 1787Bentham Wks. (1843) X. 170, I am marginaling Essai sur les Recompenses. All I have to say..is marginaled and ready for reading. |