| 释义 |
off-hand, offhand, advb. and adj. phr.
(see below)
[f. off prep. + hand n.]
A. adv. |ˌɒfˈhænd, ˌɔː-|.
1. At once, straightway, forthwith; without preliminary deliberation or preparation, extempore.
1694Wood Life 3 Mar. (O.H.S.) III. 446 The speech before mention'd..being off-hand upon the debates of the House of Commons, was burnt by command of the House. 1711Hearne Collect. (O.H.S.) III. 207 He was a learned Man..and would..speak very neatly offhand in Latin. 1764Mem. G. Psalmanazar 189 He read the office all in a good Latin off-hand, as the saying is, and without any hesitation or solecism. 1849FitzGerald Lett. (1889) I. 195 Wonderful bits of Poems, written off hand at a sitting, most of them. 1872Lowell Wks. (1890) IV. 243 Habit is a growth and cannot be made off-hand.
2. lit. From the hand with no other support. U.S.
1833Sk. & Eccentr. D. Crockett ix. 119 Forty yards off⁓hand, or sixty with a rest, is the distance generally chosen for a shooting match. 1840A. B. Longstreet Georgia Scenes (1848) 203 That they [rifles] should be fired off-hand, while the shot-guns were allowed a rest, the distance being equal. 1970Amer. Speech 1968 XLIII. 217 The shot could be made with a single-shot muzzle-loading rifle or with a two-shoot gun, fired either off-hand or with a rest.
3. to farm off-hand, to own or hold a farm without residing on it. dial.
1879Norfolk Archaeol. VIII. 171 A farmer having an occupation apart from his homestead is said to farm it off-hand. 1898Longman's Mag. Sept. 408 The land had been farmed ‘off-hand’, that is to say, the tenant did not live on the farm, but put in a working bailiff.
B. adj. (ˈɒfˌhænd, ˈɔː-; as predicate somet. ˌɒfˈhænd, ˌɔː-).
1. Of action, speech, etc.: Done or made off-hand (see A. 1); unpremeditated, extemporaneous, impromptu; having the air or style of something so done, free and easy, unstudied, unceremonious.
1719Free-thinker No. 107 ⁋2 A very Familiar, Off-hand Epistle.. from a young Gentleman. 1785–90R. Cumberland Observer No. 109 (R.) This..supplies him with many an apt couplet for off-hand quotations. 1822Hazlitt Table-t. Ser. ii. xvii. (1869) 344 The dashing off-hand manner of the mere man of business. 1844Dickens Mart. Chuz. vi, Speaking in his rapid, off-hand way. 1879G. Meredith Egoist xvi. (1889) 147, ‘I do not ride’, Laetitia replied to the off-hand inquiry.
2. transf.
a. Of persons: Doing or saying things off-hand, free and ready in action or speech; acting in an off-hand manner, unceremonious, curt, brusque.
1708Brit. Apollo No. 89. 3/2 Who come like Master of a Riddle Or Off-hand Man upon a Fiddle. 1744Ozell tr. Brantome's Span. Rhodomontades 1 An off-hand ready Wit, and lofty Words. 1853Lytton My Novel ii. vi, Egerton is off-hand enough where he runs glibly thro' paragraphs that relate to others. 1876T. Hardy Ethelberta (1890) 117 They are painfully off-hand with me, absolutely refusing to be intimate.
b. Mining. (See quots.)
1888W. E. Nicholson Gloss. Terms Coal Trade, Offhandmen, a term applied to all colliery workmen except hewers and putters. 1921Dict. Occup. Terms (1927) §047 Odd worker, off hand man, wage man, general terms for men or boys employed above or below ground and paid by the day. 1926[see face-worker s.v. face n. 27].
3. Of a shot: fired from a gun held in the hand without other support. U.S.
1856R. Glisan Jrnl. Army Life (1874) xxiv. 328, I surprised everybody by killing the duck at an off-hand shot.
4. Of a farm: owned or held by a person who does not reside there. dial.
1873F. T. Chevallier Let. 6 May in Thirsk & Imray Suffolk Farming in Nineteenth Cent. (1958) 106 On the off-hand farm I shall have a good opportunity of seeing what will be required during the ensuing year. 1880R. S. Charnock Gloss. Essex Dial. 33 Some who hold farms in different parishes call those farms where they do not reside ‘off-hand farms’. 1898Longman's Mag. Sept. 408 The labourer in charge of an off-hand farm. 1960G. E. Evans Horse in Furrow vii. 99 The whole capital he had sunk in the farms (the Bransons Land referred to was an off-hand holding) was not giving him the return it would have done if invested elsewhere. Ibid. xvi. 209 We generally spent two days at a farm, and perhaps another day at an ‘off⁓hand’ farm belonging to it.
5. Engin. Carried out with the workpiece held in the hand. Of a machine: intended for off-hand operations.
1931E. P. Van Leuven Cold Metal Working iv. 65 We refer to grinding as off-hand, semiprecision or precision grinding, depending on the type of machine and the degree of accuracy required. 1961L. E. Doyle et al. Manuf. Processes xxviii. 643 Nonprecision grinding, common forms of which are snagging and off-hand grinding, is done primarily to remove stock that cannot be taken off as conveniently by other methods. 1966G. H. Thomas Metalwork Technol. xiii. 150 ‘Off-hand’ grinders..are of two types—bench models and pedestal (or floor) models. 1969C. R. Shotbolt Workshop Technol. I. vi. 120 The author does not believe in any expensive cutting tool being ground by hand on an off-hand grinding machine.
6. Designating glass-ware made by hand, without a mould; also denoting such a process.
1941C. J. Phillips Glass viii. 156 The glass employed in ‘offhand’ glass blowing is usually melted in pots. 1949P. Davis Devel. Amer. Glass Industry iv. 49 The process of blowing in a mold was closely similar to the off-hand method. 1967C. Gaskin Edge of Glass vi. 144 He..took up his empty wineglass. ‘If you were making this by the ‘off⁓hand’ method—that's entirely by hand—you'd start with heating your batch.’ 1970Canad. Antiques Collector July—Aug. 14/2 You can feel the intrinsic beauty of an off-hand glass chain. |