| 释义 |
Mills & Boon, n. phr.|ˈmɪlz ənd ˈbuːn|
Also Mills and Boon.
[The names of Gerald Mills (1877–1928) and Charles Boon (1877–1943), who together founded the publishing house Mills & Boon Limited in 1908.]
1. A proprietary name used attrib. and absol. to designate popular romantic novels published by Mills & Boon Limited.
1912Dundee Courier 8 Aug., In choosing a ‘Mills & Boon’ novel readers of fiction can never go very far wrong when in quest of genuine entertainment. 1912Pall Mall Gaz. 9 Aug. 8 (heading) The latest Mills & Boon literature. 1952W. H. Smith Trade Circular 26 July 18/3 Without ever having read a Mills & Boon romance I know I can quite safely say to the vague customer in search of ‘a nice romance’—‘Try a Mills & Boon romance!’ 1982J. Scott Uprush of Mayhem iii. 23, I reckon she must have been lonely. Read a lot of Mills and Boon. 1985Mail on Sunday 3 Nov. 27/2 Most of them are as idealistically romantic as the blue-eyed heroines of the Mills and Boon novels they swallow like Smarties. 1990Sunday Tel. 18 Feb. 61/4, I found her.., with Meg and Mog and a child's mittened paw in one hand and a Mills & Boon in the other.
2. transf. Used attrib. and absol. to designate material and situations regarded as resembling or typical of the type of fiction published by Mills & Boon Limited; romantic, story-book.
1982Financial Times 13 Jan. 19/1 It is more boring to make cheap jokes about Barry Manilow, the Mills and Boon of popular music, than to sit through one of his concerts. 1990Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 15 Oct. 2/6 When in-vitro fertilisation pioneer Carl Wood met his future wife it was not a Mills and Boon romance. 1994Daily Mail 18 Feb. 78/2 Long before the XVIIth Winter Olympics became a made-for-TV mini-series starring an American skater called Tonya Harding, they were packaged for a Mills and Boon ending to another sporting soap opera, featuring Torvill and Dean.
So Mills and ˈBoony a. (rare).
1946P. Larkin Let. 23 Aug. in A. Thwaite Sel. Lett. Philip Larkin (1992) 123, I have remembered a title I thought of soon after starting to write it—‘A Girl in Winter’—which, though I believe I discarded it on the grounds of sounding Mills & Boony (if you know what I mean) does conjure up a more precise image than the present one does. |