| 释义 |
middleman|ˈmɪd(ə)lmən|
[f. middle a. + man n.]
†1. ? A workman employed in some particular operation in the making of iron wire. Obs.
1435Coventry Leet Bk., The Cardwirdrawers and the myddelmen most nedes bye the wire that they shull wirche of the smythiers.
†2. Mil. One of the soldiers in the fifth or sixth rank in a file of 10 deep. Obs.
1616Orders establ. by Soc. of Armes, Lond. A v, Item, That no man take the place of Leading or Middle-man..without hee be thereunto appointed by the Captaine or Lieutenant. 1625Markham Souldiers Accid. 28 The fifth Ranke from the Front downeward towards the Reare, are called Middlemen to the reare, and the sixth Rank are called Middlemen to the front. 1672T. Venn Milit. & Mar. Discip. v. 11 A File so drawn is distinguished according to their dignity of Place, a Leader, a Follower, two Middlemen, a Follower and a Bringer-up. 1696Phillips, Middleman (a term in the Art-military), he that stands middlemost in a File.
3. a. One who takes a middle course.
1741Warburton Div. Leg. v. §6 Wks. 1788 III. 167 Neither Unbelievers nor Believers will allow to these middle men that a new-existing Soul..can be identically the same with an annihilated Soul. 1884A. Birrell Obiter Dicta 179 Middle men may often seem to be earning for themselves a place in Universal Biography. 1902A. B. Davidson Called of God vi. 168 There were three parties, the true worshippers of Jehovah, the strict idolaters, and the middle⁓men who were neither.
b. nonce-use. (See quot.)
1845Disraeli Sp. 11 Apr. in Hansard Parl. Deb. Ser. iii. LXXIX. 565 We have a great Parliamentary middleman. It is well known what a middleman is: he is a man who bamboozles one party, and plunders the other, till, having obtained a position to which he is not entitled, he cries out. ‘Let us have no party questions, but fixity of tenure’.
4. a. (Originally two words.) A person standing in an intermediate relation to two parties concerned in some matter of business: usually in somewhat unfavourable sense, as implying that direct relations between these parties would be more advantageous. Chiefly applied, in discussions on the theory of commerce, to the trader or any of the series of traders through whose hands commodities pass on their way from the maker or producer to the consumer.
1795Burke Th. on Scarcity Wks. VII. 401 If the object of this scheme should be..to destroy the dealer, commonly called the middle man [etc.]. 1805East Reports V. 178 The Metcalfes..were middlemen between the vendors and the vendees. 1845Encycl. Metrop. VIII. 52 In one Trade at least..a class of middle-men, who were formerly interposed between the maker and the merchant, now no longer exists. 1861J. G. Sheppard Fall Rome viii. 414 While to the odious middle-man, or bailiff, was left the management of those patrimonial estates. 1866C. W. Hatfield Hist. Notices Doncaster I. 100 There are middlemen and others who encourage and aid them in disposing of the stolen goods. 1880J. Lomas Alkali Trade 245 A considerable part of the demand for low-strength ash and alkali emanates from certain unscrupulous vendors or ‘middle-men’. 1887Westm. Rev. June 315 The helpless victims of grasping middlemen and a grinding competition which [etc.].
attrib.1851Mayhew Lond. Labour (1864) II. 373 The workmen gradually became transformed from journeymen into ‘middlemen’, living by the labour of others... The middleman system is the one crying evil of the day.
b. In Ireland, one who leases land, and sub-lets it again at an advanced rate.
1802M. Edgeworth Rosanna i. Wks. 1832 IV. 297 Mr. Hopkins was what is called in Ireland a middle-man. 1903Edin. Rev. July 209 Absenteeism with its resulting evils of middlemen and rackrents was the worst bane of Ireland.
c. Mountaineering. The middle climber of a team. Also attrib., as middleman('s) loop, noose, etc., a knot used by a climber to tie himself on to the middle of a rope.
1892C. T. Dent et al. Mountaineering iv. 102 The ‘fisherman's bend’, used as a middleman noose for instance, has only 65 per cent of the strength of the rope. 1909C. E. Benson Brit. Mountaineering ii. 33 The Middleman Loop is the only one that should be used for middlemen. 1951E. Coxhead One Green Bottle vi. 160 Each child was tied on with a middleman's noose. 1968E. Franklin Dict. Knots 21 Middleman's knot, also called the Englishman's Loop, (in America) the Fisherman's or Angler's Loop... It is a useful loop knot tied in the bight by one of at least four different methods. Once much used for the middleman on a rope in climbing, but now superseded. 1971J. Lovelock Climbing iii. 43 The middle man can tie on to the rope in a number of ways.
5. U.S.
a. ‘In negro minstrelsy, the man who sits in the middle of the semicircle of performers during the opening part of the entertainment, and leads the dialogue between songs.’
b. ‘In the fisheries, a planter.’ (Cent. Dict.)
1870O. Logan Before Footlights 248, I give it up, Brudder Bones, as the middle man at the minstrels always does the end man's conundrums. 1880[see interlocutor1 c]. 1930C. Wittke Tambo & Bones iv. 136 Lively repartee between the endmen and the middleman.
c. N. Amer. One who paddles or rows in the middle of a canoe or boat.
1761A. Henry Trav. & Adventures Canada (1901) ii. 14 They engage..the middle-men at one hundred and fifty livres and the end-men at three hundred livres, each. 1801A. Mackenzie Voy. from Montreal p. xxviii, The canoe men are of two descriptions, foremen and steersmen, and middlemen. 1839J. K. Townsend Narr. Rocky Mts. xv. 355 The middle-men ply their oars; the guides brace themselves against the gunwale of the boat, placing their paddles edgewise down her sides. 1968[see bowsman].
Hence ˈmiddlemanism, ˈmiddlemanship, the system of employing middlemen.
1848Fraser's Mag. XXXVII. 383 A sort of middlemanship, somewhat of the nature of the ‘butty’ system carried on in Staffordshire. 1889G. J. Holyoake in Co-operative News 6 Apr. 330 Middlemanism was becoming in every country a serious question. 1899A. White Mod. Jew 132 Their trading instincts and intuitive taste for middlemanship. |