| 释义 |
old man
1. a. lit. A man advanced in life. (Formerly sometimes as one word.)
the old man, familiar term for a husband or father. Also U.S. in old man eloquent, applied after Milton's phrase (see quot. c 1645) to John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), sixth President of the United States.
c1200Ormin 13212 To gan biforenn alde menn Inn alle gode þæwess. c1375Sc. Leg. Saints iii. (Andreas) 207 Myn barne,..to þis aldman enerthand is. c1400Destr. Troy 126 Þat elde man..Hade a son. 1535Coverdale 1 Sam. ii. 31 There shal no oldeman be in thy house. c1645Milton Sonn. to Lady M. Ley, As that dishonest victory At Chæronea,.. Kil'd with report that Old man eloquent. 1768Sterne Sent. Journ. (1778) II. 191 (Grace) His wife..join'd her old man again, as their children and grand⁓children danced before them. 1839C. M. Kirkland New Home xii. 75 ‘I reckon you'd ha' done better to have waited till the old man got back.’ ‘What old man?’ asked I... ‘Why, your old man to be sure,’ said he laughing. I had yet to learn that in Michigan, as soon as a man marries he becomes ‘th' old man’. 1846Brackenridge's Mod. Chivalry (rev. ed.) I. xxiii. 114 You are welcome, Sir, if you wish to stop..though since my old man's time, we don't take in strangers for common. 1846Quincy (Illinois) Whig 3 Mar. 2/3 We should suppose that the ‘old man eloquent’, would pause in his career, and look about him. 1848Thackeray Van. Fair xviii, His wife..called him..her dear John—her old man—her kind old man. 1848Congress. Globe 24 Feb. 388 Let not the grave of the old man eloquent be desecrated by unfriendly remembrances. 1871E. Eggleston Hoosier Schoolmaster (1872) iii. 28 My ole man's purty well along in the world. 1892M. C. F. Morris Yorksh. Folk-Talk 81 ‘T' au'd man—t' au'd woman’ are synonymous with father or mother. 1900Congress. Rec. 25 Jan. 1208/1 John Quincy Adams, the ‘Old Man Eloquent’, expressed very happily what we now..believe. 1901S. E. White Claim Jumpers i. 4 He's been pestering the old man to send him West. Old man doesn't approve. 1914‘Bartimeus’ Naval Occasions xix. 171 Not bad work,..bagging your Old Man's ship. 1932[see kid v.4]. 1946R. Allen Home Made Banners xiii. 163 My old man says Quebec or no Quebec they'll have to send the Zombies over. 1974‘J. Le Carré’ Tinker, Tailor vi. 47 She was a sight better qualified than her old man.
b. A familiar term for a ship's captain.
1835N. Ames Old Sailor's Yarns 53 The commander of a merchantman, although perhaps under twenty years of age, is invariably called the ‘old man’, by all hands on board. 1840R. H. Dana Two Yrs. before Mast xxxi. 374 The ‘old man’..was determined to carry sail till the last minute. 1845Knickerbocker XXVI. 206 I've known the Old Man come on deck at midnight. 1865Routledge's Ev. Boy's Ann. 445 The term ‘old man’, so much applied by sailors to their commander,..was hardly aptly applied, seeing the captain was only twenty-five. 1873‘Mark Twain’ & Warner Gilded Age iv. 44 The ‘old man’ was the captain—he is always so, on steamboats and ships. 1897Kipling Capt. Cour. vii. 143 The Jennie Cushman..cut clean in half—graound up an' trompled on at that! Not a quarter of a mile away. Dad's got the old man. 1916‘Taffrail’ Pincher Martin v. 68 Having a sherry-and-bitters with ‘the old man’. 1924‘P. Blundell’ Confessions of Seaman ii. 22 You'd better come along and see the ‘old man’ now. He's just off ashore. 1958N. Marsh Singing in Shrouds (1959) ix. 184 Did you ever know such a bloody Old Man! 1968Daily Tel. 14 Aug. 15/4 ‘It was just like a furnace,’ said Mr. Martin Jones, deckhand, of Slough, Bucks. ‘The old man was grand.’
c. Hence applied in the other Services to a commanding officer.
1830J. P. Martin Narr. Adventures Rev. Soldier viii. 190 They and some others of the men..were about to have some fun with ‘the old man’, as they generally called the Captain. 1890Kipling Life's Handicap (1891) 41 An' whin I'm let off in ord'ly-room through some thrick of the tongue an' a ready answer an' the ould man's mercy, is ut smilin' I feel? 1917A. G. Empey Over Top 311 ‘The Old Man’, captain of a company. He is called ‘the old man’, because generally his age is about twenty-eight. 1942R.A.F. Jrnl. 3 Oct. 24 It was preposterous to think of the Old Man on a bicycle... The idea of the Old Man riding a bicycle set us back a long way. 1948Partridge Dict. Forces' Slang 131 Old Man, the Commanding Officer. The Air Force gets it from the Army, which gets it from the Navy, which gets it from the Merchant Service. 1967Everybody's Mag. (Austral.) 18 Jan. 36/2 Today, in Vietnam, Australians are again catching up on American Army Slang... The Company Commanding Officer is a CCO or the Old Man—even if he's all of 23. 1977‘D. MacNeil’ Wolf in Fold xiii. 137 The Old Man had commanded longer than most lieutenant-colonels.
d. As a term of affectionate familiarity: see old a. 8.
e. old man of the mountain(s) [tr. Arab. šaiḵ-al-jibal], (a) named applied to Hasan ibu-al-Sabbah, founder of the Assassins (see assassin 1) and his successors; (b) applied allusively to other political murderers, and fig. to persons of ruthless ambition; (c) a rock formation resembling the face of an old man.
1579J. Frampton tr. Marco Polo's Travels xvii. 27 That way,..could not be travelled to Crerima for the crueltie of the king of that countrie,..from whome fewe coulde scape, but eyther were robbed or slayne. And for this cause manye kings did paye him tribute, and hys name is as muche to saye, as the olde man of the mountayne. 1625Purchas Pilgrimes III. i. iv. 72 Hauing spoken of the Countrey, the old man of the Mountayne shall bee spoken of, of whom Marco heard much from many. His name was Aloadine, and was a Mahumetan... Alaodine had certaine Youthes from twelve to twentie yeares of age,..other Lords and his Enemies were slaine by these his Assasines. 1773W. Jones Hist. Life Nader Shah p. xiii, It may be worth while to remark in this place, that the Old man of the mountain, who is mentioned in our accounts of the Crusades, was no other than a Prince of the Ismaëlian family. 1777J. Richardson Dict. Persian, Arabic & Eng. p. xvi/1 He was stabbed by a Batanist, one of the subjects of the Old Man of the Mountain; whilst he was reading a petition which the assassin had presented. 1792H. Walpole Let. 4 Sept. (1905) XV. 138 A whole senate has assumed the accursed dignity of the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’, and spawned a legion of assassins. 1818W. Marsden tr. Trav. Marco Polo I. xxi. 112 (heading) Of the old man of the mountain; of his palace and gardens; of his capture and his death. Ibid. 114 There was no person however powerful, who having become exposed to the enmity of the Old man of the mountain, could escape assassination. 1837H. Martineau Society in Amer. I. ii. 220 Our party..was..struck with the romance of the domestic history of the old man of the mountain, as the guide is called. 1871N.Y. Herald 6 Sept. 6/6 It seems as if ‘the Old Man of the Mountains’ [sc. Brigham Young] meant to fight every step of the federal government for the supremacy of Utah. 1888Kipling In Black & White (1889) 67 He might have been the original Old Man of the Mountains. 1905H. W. C. Davis Eng. under Normans & Angevins xi. 308 An Arab writer lays the blame on Saladin, affirming that he had offered the chief of the Assassins, the Old Man of the Mountain, a heavy bribe. 1934A. Huxley Beyond Mexique Bay 80 The lessons of Loyola and the Old Man of the Mountain. 1936J. Buchan Island of Sheep vi. 118 Desperadoes who had crushed their lives were in-spanned in Castor's sense{ddd}like the servants of the Old Man of the Mountain in the Crusades. 1939G. B. Pickwell Deserts 48/2 The devil's garden is well named: with boulders and ‘barrels’ and ‘Old Men of the Mountain’ it is a grotesque feature of the land of sun and wind and freakish rain. 1957Encycl. Brit. II. 554/1 Before long perfervid imaginations detected the hand of the Old Man of the Mountain in political murders and attempts even in Europe. 1965J. Fleming Nothing is Number i. ii. 21 You are great assassins,..the word itself is your very own, it comes from the Arabic hashshash, dating from the Crusades when your old sheik, Old Man of the Mountains, sent out his Moslem fanatics to kill the Christian leaders. They filled themselves with hashish to get themselves in the right mood.
f. old man of the sea: in the story of Sinbad the Sailor in the Arabian Nights, the sea-god who forced Sinbad to carry him on his shoulders for many days and nights until he was thwarted by being made so drunk that he toppled off. Hence, allusively, a person of whose company one may not easily be rid; a heavy and encumbering burden, esp. in fig. use. Also attrib.
1712tr. Arabian Nights' Entertainments (ed. 2) III. lxxxiv. 57 You fell say they into the Hands of the old Man of the Sea, and are the first that ever escap'd strangling by him. 1809W. Scott Let. 7 Aug. in J. G. Lockhart Scott (1837) II. vii. 252 About three years ago I accepted the office I hold in the Court of Session, the revenue to accrue to me only on the death of the old incumbent. But my friend has since taken out a new lease of life... Such odious deceivers are these invalids. Mine reminds me of Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea, and will certainly throttle me if I can't somehow dismount him. 1850C. M. Yonge Henrietta's Wish viii. 112 Uncle Roger has got hold of him, and he is as bad as the old man of the sea. 1856G. Meredith Let. 15 Dec. (1970) I. 28 The Dulness is something frightful, and hangs on my shoulders like Sinbad's old Man of the Sea. 1874M. Clarke His Natural Life (1875) I. 9 The old-man-of-the-sea burden of parsimony and avarice which he had voluntarily taken upon him was not to be shaken off. 1899Strand Mag. Mar. 308/1 When a man once gets a Cavalanci and plays to it, it sticks to him like the Old Man of the Sea. 1904G. S. Porter Freckles iii. 54 Again Freckles' ‘old man of the sea’ sat sullen and heavy on his shoulders and weighed him down until his step lagged and his heart ached. 1927Times 22 July 15/4 The bad habit into which we slip almost unconsciously fixes itself about our necks as firmly as any Old Man of the Sea. 1947M. Lowry Under Volcano ix. 281 What could she do under the weight of such a heritage? How could she rid herself of this old man of the sea? 1957C. F. MacIntyre Stephane Mallarmé: Selected Poems p. viii, Mallarmé has been like the Old Man of the Sea, like the Biblical poor. There's no getting rid of him! 1965N. Freeling Criminal Conversation ii. xx. 186, I am tired. I find you like the Old Man of the Sea. 1971A. Price Alamut Ambush xiv. 169 ‘He's a man who likes to use others to do his own work. He likes to ride on other people's backs.’ The Old Man of the Sea, thought Roskill.
g. Theatr. An actor playing the role of an old man, esp. one who specializes in such roles. Also, the role itself. Cf. old woman 1 c.
1747T. Whincop Scanderbeg 243/1 An Actor of great Humour in low Comedy, especially in the Parts of Old Men. 1762J. Love Let. 5 July in D. Garrick Private Corr. (1831) I. 144 His feeble old men, which he has only tried one season, will increase your hopes. 1775T. Holcroft Let. 1 June in Mem. (1816) I. ii. iv. 236, I have succeeded best in low comedy and old men. 1794C. Mathews Let. 3 Aug. in A. Mathews Mem. Charles Mathews (1838) I. 101 He is a very respectable performer in a general line, but mostly ‘old men’. 1849Theatrical Mirror 24 Sept. 31 Mr. Basil Baker..is engaged for the first old men at Drury Lane. 1901C. Morris Life on Stage vii. 39 A company was generally made up of a leading man.., first old man, second old man, heavy man, first comedian, [etc.]. 1957Oxf. Compan. Theatre (ed. 2) 772/1 The old stock company was formed of a group of actors each of whom undertook some special line of business... The Old Man played Sir Anthony Absolute and Sir Peter Teazle, and was a person of consequence.
h. A person set in authority over others: a master, overseer, or foreman; a superintendent or senior official; a ‘boss’.
1837Southern Lit. Messenger III. 86, I say, darkie, the old man keeps good liquor, and plenty of belly timber, don't he? 1844Knickerbocker XXIII. 83 The ‘old man’ himself came to the door, and looking down at his apprentice, shook his head sorrowfully. 1845E. J. Wakefield Adventure N.Z. I. xi. 331 Tommy Evans, the ‘old man’ who headed the principal station, started..to get on board. 1887C. B. George 40 Yrs. on Rail ix. 167 They feel that if they can only lay it before the ‘old man’ it will be properly dealt with. 1913C. E. Mulford Coming of Cassidy xii. 197 ‘Is there any chance to get a job here?’ he asked anxiously. ‘You'll have to quiz th' Old Man.’ 1921H. G. Wells Grisly Folk in Story-Teller Apr. 14/1 There was no Old Man who was lord and master and father of this particular crowd. 1935A. J. Pollock Underworld Speaks 82/2 Old man, the big underworld boss; boss politician. 1949W. Hertrich Huntington Bot. Gardens 32, I declined to accept it, but suggested that he deduct this amount ‘from the Old Man's bill’. 1958‘Castle’ & ‘Hailey’ Flight into Danger x. 137 Is that you, Dave? Harry. Surprise for you—the Old Man is on the line. 1967E. & M. A. Radford No Reason for Murder xii. 80 The Old Man is the traditional police name for a Chief Constable. 1974‘P. B. Yuill’ Bornless Keeper xiii. 119 Has the old man been on? He'll be wanting to ask your old mates at the Yard for help. Ibid., The old man wants to hear a progress report.
i. Substituted familiarly for ‘old Mr.―’. orig. and chiefly U.S.
1843‘R. Carlton’ New Purchase I. 92 It ain't more nor a mile to ole-man Sturgisses. 1859Bartlett Dict. Amer. (ed. 2) 301 In the South and West, instead of saying..‘Old Mr. Smith’, it is customary to say, ‘Old man Smith’. 1862R. R. Butler Let. 8 Jan. in Congress. Globe (4 Mar. 1868) 1664/1, I send a few lines to you by old man Jesse Price. 1902A. D. McFaul Ike Glidden xvii. 126 There is old man Spencer who had always been poor. 1930Chicago Daily Maroon 28 Oct. 1/3 Old Man Stagg spoke a few words in commending..the students for their show of enthusiasm. 1949[see old a. 8 c]. 1961‘E. Lathen’ Banking on Death (1962) xv. 123 Old man Michaels didn't like him.
j. slang. The penis.
1902Farmer & Henley Slang V. 99/1 Old man,..the penis. 1968R. Lait Chance to Kill xxii. 139 There was David getting out of bed in his shirt, his old man hanging out. 1971B. W. Aldiss Soldier Erect 23 She had been opening up her legs before the reprise. Those glorious mobile buttocks... I felt my old man perking up again at the memory.
k. fig. Applied to things; spec. Old Man River, the Mississippi (see also quot. 1932).
1910W. M. Raine Bucky O'Connor iii. 37 When Old Man Trouble comes knocking at the door. 1919C. P. Thompson Cocktails 252 Why, being officially booked to meet Old Man Death on ground, I had kept the appointment in the air. 1927Kern & Hammerstein (song-title) Old man river. 1932Sun (Baltimore) 24 Sept. 16/3 Old Man River Sinking... The north branch of the Susquehanna river is lower than it was 112 years ago. 1933Lit. Digest 12 Aug. 28/2 (heading) Who Owns Old Man River?
1949Natural Hist. Nov. 427/3 At last they have succeeded in vaulting the natural barriers between the Great Lakes and Old Man River. 1976B. Bova Multiple Man v. 55 St. Louis is a dull town... Old Man River is wide and sluggish.
2. Theol. Unregenerate human nature (old a. 12: cf. Old Adam).
1382Wyclif Eph. iv. 22 Do ȝe away vp the firste lyuyng the olde man. c1450tr. De Imitatione iii. xxxix. 110 Allas! yit liueþ in me þe olde man; he is not all crucified. 1567Gude & Godly B. (S.T.S.) 146 The haly Spreit vs geue, Quhilk may our auld man mortifie. 1733Revolution Politicks ii. 40 You provoke me to Wrath, and if you should raise the old Man, you can't tell what mischief may ensue.
3. A local name for the Rainbird of Jamaica (Hyetornis pluvialis).
1694Ray in Lett. Lit. Men (Camden) 200 The referring of the Old-men, or Rain-fowls, to the Cuckow. 1725Sloane Jamaica II. 313 They are called Old-Men from the light brown, or grey colour their downy feathers are of. 1894Newton Dict. Birds 654.
4. a. In Australia: A full-grown male kangaroo.
1828P. Cunningham N.S. Wales (ed. 3) II. 151 He..relates..that he has been fortunate enough to kill an old man as he came along. 1873J. B. Stephens Black Gin 39 The ‘old man’ fleetest of the fleet. 1884R. Boldrewood Melbourne Mem. iii. 24 The fiercest ‘old man’ forester did not seem to be too heavy weight for her.
b. Austral. and N.Z. slang. Used attrib. to denote the largeness or significance of the thing specified; freq. of animals (see also sense 4 a).
1834G. Bennett Wanderings New South Wales I. xv. 286 Many persons when alone are afraid to face a large ‘old man’ Kangaroo. 1845R. Howitt Impressions Australia Felix 233, I stared at a man one day for saying that a certain allotment of land was ‘an old man allotment’: he meant a large allotment, the old-man kangaroo being the largest kangaroo. 1866R. Henning Let. 18 July (1966) 226 Spring, a very fine kangaroo dog we have here, killed..an old-man kangaroo about five feet high. 1888D. Macdonald Gum Boughs 7 Who that has ridden across the Old Man Plain. 1902Kipling Just So Stories 87 Still ran Kangaroo—Old Man Kangaroo... He ran till his hind legs ached. 1906E. Dyson Fact'ry 'Ands xv. 199 Two 'underd ole-man rats that 'ad bin glued on t'Bunyip in mortil combat. 1930J. Devanny Bushman Burke i. ii. 17 [He] had once taken an Old Man pig with a slasher. 1934A. Russell Tramp-Royal in Wild Austral. xxix. 190 An ‘Old Man’ sand storm. Lashed up and hurried along by a forty-mile-an-hour gale..an inferno of swishing sand and gravel..in Central Australia. 1936I. L. Idriess Cattle King xii. 107 The river-bed is indicated by wide flats, mostly lignum bush, by big old-man coolabahs, and big old gums in places. 1941― Great Boomerang xi. 82 Fifteen years may pass before an old man flood brings a miracle to the land. 1945Baker Austral. Lang. xiv. 244 Especially heavy gales of this type are often called old man southerlies or old man busters. 1947J. Stevenson-Hamilton Wild Life S. Afr. xxxi. 259, I was the owner of a large boarhound which killed a great many ‘old men’ baboons. 1953A. Upfield Murder must Wait xviii. 157 An old-man red-gum growing close to the track. 1965[see dogger4]. 1972P. Newton Sheep Thief ii. 17 The homestead..was fringed with a towering belt of real oldman pines. 1973‘D. Shannon’ No Holiday for Crime (1974) 78 You're going to be like Old Man Kangaroo, my girl. As per Mr. Kipling. Very truly sought after.
5. A name of the Southernwood (Artemisia Abrotanum); perh. from its hoary foliage.
1824Mrs. Cameron Marten & Scholars ii. 13 She tied up two or three pinks and a rose with a bit of old-man and some sweetbriar. 1863Mrs. Gaskell Sylvia's L. i, A few ‘berry’ bushes, a black-currant tree or two..with possibly a rose tree and ‘old man’ growing in the midst. 1884Harper's Mag. July 234/2 Roses, and ‘lad's-love’, or ‘old-man’. 1920E. Thomas Collected Poems 97 Old Man, or Lad's-love—in the name there's nothing To one that knows not Lad's-love, or Old Man, The hoar-green feathery herb. 1973F. A. Boddy Foliage Plants iv. 62 Old world charm and sentimentality can be further satisfied with the grey, feathery, aromatic leaves of Artemisia abrotanum, commonly called southernwood, lad's love or old man.
6. Mining. An old vein or working which has become exhausted or has been abandoned for a long time; also, oreless stuff, waste or rubbish left from the working of a mine; see also quot. 1829.
1653E. Manlove Lead Mines 225 No miner ought of an Old man to set To seek a Lead-mine, or Lead oar to get, Untill the Burghmaster a view hath taken And find such work an Old work quite forsaken. 1710Bp. Nicolson in Hutchinson Hist. Cumberld. (1794) II. 214 A new belly was happily discovered before the forehead of the Old Man, which proved so rich, that in less than twenty-four hours they had filled several sacks with fine and clean-washed mineral. 1747Hooson Miner's Dict. N iv b, Crusht Wholes sometimes may be mistaken for Oldman. 1829Glover's Hist. Derby I. 61 Ironstone, in cheeseshaped nodules, containing septariæ of carbonate of iron (Old man). 1866Jevons Coal Quest. (ed. 2) 300 The thousands of tons of cinder and slag—‘old man’ as it is locally called..left by the Romans.
7. Comb. old man cactus, a Mexican plant (Pilocereus or Cereus senilis) with long grey hairs covering the top of the stem; † old-man-house, a hospital for old men; old man salt-bush, an Australian shrub, Atriplex nummularia, of the family Chenopodiaceæ, used as food for sheep in dry areas.
1634Brereton Trav. (Chetham Soc.) 49 Here [Haerlem] is a most dainty curious old-man-house. 1880W. A. Dixon in Jrnl. & Proc. R. Soc. New South Wales XIV. 140 The order in which the salt-bushes proper are considered to stand from a grazier's point of view are 1st, A. numularia [sic], or old man salt-bush. 1900Daily News 6 Sept. 3/1 Another singular product is Pilocereus Senilis, or ‘old man cactus’, from Mexico, the body of the plant being hidden by long grey hair. 1903‘T. Collins’ Such is Life 16 He disappeared in the timber and old-man salt-bush. 1933Bulletin (Sydney) 14 June 25/1 Old-man saltbush is a rapid grower and gives more fodder in drought-time than any other tree. 1954B. Miles Stars my Blanket x. 58 A great valley, the floor..thickly covered with Old Man Saltbush. 1965Austral. Encycl. VII. 541/2 The round-leaved Atriplex nummularia (old-man or cabbage saltbush) is one of the tallest species and may reach 10 feet in height.
8. Combinations of old man's in plant names: old man's beard, (a) a name of the epiphytic plant Tillandsia usneoides, also called black-moss, long-moss, and Spanish moss; (b) the Traveller's Joy, Clematis Vitalba; (c) the Strawberry Saxifrage, Saxifraga sarmentosa; (d) the South European composite Geropogon; old man's eyebrow, Drosera binata (Treas. Bot. 1866); old man's head, (a) a name of the pink or carnation (Dianthus); (b) the old man cactus: see 7.
1742W. Ellis Mod. Husbandman June vi. 67 In this Month [sc. June], be sure to cut..what we in Hertfordshire call the *Old-Man's Beard. 1756P. Browne Jamaica 193 Old-Man's-Beard, this slender parasitical plant is found upon the trees in many parts of Jamaica... It is frequently imported from North America for the use of sadlers and coachmakers. 1760J. Lee Introd. Bot. App. 321 Old Man's Beard, Clematis. 1821Clare Vill. Minstr. I. 84 Dig old man's beard from woodland hedge, To twine a summer shade. 1857Mayne Expos. Lex., Old Man's Beard, common name for the Gerontopogon. 1952Cape Argus Mag. 30 Aug. 2/4 That soft yellowy-green parasite that festoons itself so theatrically over the tops of the trees, giving the forests that appearance of hoary old age, is known as ‘old-man's-beard’. 1965E. Richardson Living Island 10 Many standing trees are dead hosts to tattered Old Man's Beard and other lichens. 1972R. & R. Wright Cariboo Mileposts 86 Old man's beard lichen, the small green plant often seen in trees. 1974Islander (Victoria, B.C.) 3 Nov. 7/3 Across the path and up into the old man's beard hanging from the pines.
1760J. Lee Introd. Bot. App. 321 *Old Man's Head, Dianthus. 1858Hogg Veg. Kingd. 341 Another curious species of this genus is what is popularly termed The Old Man's Head (Cereus senilis). |