| 释义 |
‖ Pará2|pəˈrɑː|
Also Para and in some collocations para.
a. Name of a seaport (now usu. known as Belém) on the south estuary of the Amazon, in Brazil, and of the state in which it is situated. Used attrib. in the following:
Pará cress, a composite plant (Spilanthes oleracea), cultivated in tropical countries as a salad and pot-herb; Pará grass, (a) = piassaba; (b) a forage grass, Panicum purpurascens, native to Brazil but widely cultivated in tropical or sub-tropical regions; Pará-nut = Brazil-nut: see brazil 4; Pará rubber, an india-rubber obtained from the coagulated milky juice of Hevea brasiliensis (family Euphorbiaceæ), a tree growing on the banks of the Amazon.
1866Treas. Bot. 1083 Spilanthes,..the leaves..have a singularly pungent taste, which is especially noticeable in the *Pará Cress, S. oleracea. 1882Garden 30 Sept. 295/3.
1858Simmonds Dict. Trade, *Para-grass, a name for the fibres of the leaves of the Attalea funifera. 1858Hogg Veg. Kingd. 759 Attalea funifera furnishes that fibre, resembling whalebone, which is now so much used in this country for making brushes and brooms,..their fibre..is called in commerce Piassaba fibre, Monkey Grass, or Para Grass. 1871Kingsley At Last x, The creeping Para grass. 1916L. H. Bailey Stand. Cycl. Hort. V. 2453/1 Pará-Grass... Intro[duced] from Brazil. P[anicum] numidianum, Lam., is a closely related species of the E. Indies, sometimes confused with the true para-grass. 1929J. W. Bews World's Grasses vi. 230 ‘Para grass’ (a perennial, with stout stolons, as much as 15 feet long..)..is cultivated for forage. 1958J. Carew Black Midas iv. 65 Here and there amidst lotus lilies, reeds or paragrass were alligator's eyes. 1968E. Lovelace Schoolmaster xiv. 221 Silence, and the many fingers of para grass at the roadside..gesturing skyward. 1973Tothill & Hacker Grasses S.E. Queensland i. 17 Para grass..is an introduced pasture grass which is planted in wet places.
1848Craig, *Para Nut, the fruit of the tree, Bertholetia excelsa. 1866Treas. Bot. 138 Brazil nuts form a considerable article of export from the port of Para (whence they are sometimes called Para nuts). 1884Encycl. Brit. XVII. 761/1 Para-nut or Brazil-nut oil, yielded by the kernels of Bertholletia excelsa, is employed in South America as a food-oil and for soap-making. 1931B. Miall tr. Guenther's Naturalist in Brazil iv. 77 It [sc. the sapucaja] yields..edible fruits..whose nuts, known to the trade as Pará-nuts, appear on our Christmas dinner⁓tables as Brazil-nuts.
1857T. Hancock Personal Narr. Caoutchouc 281 (Index), Para rubber. 1860Chem. News 25 Aug. 125/1 The Para rubber, which is of a superior quality, is generally sent in the shape termed bottle rubber. 1898Daily News 31 Aug. 5/1 The area producing Para rubber extends over 1,000 square miles. 1947J. C. Rich Materials & Methods of Sculpture v. 98 Clarke states that the rubber cement can be made by dissolving ½ ounce of caoutchouc (para rubber) in 25 ounces of benzene. 1968A. S. Craig Dict. Rubber Technol. (1969) 112 Para rubber was the best variety of all wild rubber but the advent of plantation rubber steadily reduced its importance until it is now of little significance in world rubber production.
b. Used absol. for Pará rubber.
1897Outing (U.S.) XXX. 280/1 The crude rubber, which..is the best up-river Para that the market affords. 1922[see overvulcanize v.]. 1954H. J. Stern Rubber i. 17 Apart from some domestic consumption the wild rubber of South America is now of small commercial importance, although the so-called ‘fine hard Para’ is still favoured in some quarters. 1963A. S. Craig Rubber Technol. iii. 18 As late as 1920, the best quality of Para (pa-rá) rubber (known as ‘Fine Hard Para’) was the standard by which the newer plantation rubbers were judged. |