| 释义 |
pemmican, n.|ˈpɛmɪkən|
Also pemican.
[a. Cree pimecan, pimekan, f. pime fat.]
A preparation made by certain North American Indians, consisting of lean meat, dried, pounded, and mixed with melted fat, so as to form a paste, and pressed into cakes; hence, beef similarly treated, and usually flavoured with currants or the like, for the use of arctic explorers, travellers, and soldiers, as containing much nutriment in little bulk, and keeping for a long time.
1801Sir A. Mackenzie Voy. St. Lawrence Pref. 121 The provision called Pemican, on which the Chepewyans and other savages in the N. of America chiefly subsist in their journeys. 1827Chron. in Ann. Reg. 58/1 Pannican, a concentrated essence of meat dryed by a fire of oak and elm wood, so as to reduce 6 lb. of the best beef to 1 lb. 1855Longfellow Hiaw. xi. 31 Then on pemican they feasted, Pemican and buffalo marrow. 1869E. A. Parkes Pract. Hygiene (ed. 3) 245 The Pemmican of the arctic voyagers is a mixture of the best beef and fat dried together.
b. fig. Extremely condensed thought, or literary matter containing much information in few words.
1870Huxley Lay Serm. xii. (1874) 257 A sort of intellectual pemmican. 1888Spectator 8 Sept. 1211/2 It [Sir F. Bramwell's Address] is really a wonderful specimen of thought and knowledge, reduced to pemmican.
c. attrib.
1831Westm. Rev. XIV. 441 Who will..give us a chance..of..getting rid of the soup and pemmican diet we have so long been doomed to. 1895Daily News 16 Oct. 5/7 Their big pemmican cache, 124 miles distant. 1900Athenæum 8 Dec. 749/2 A certain tendency to what may be described as the pemmican style.
Hence ˈpemmican v. trans., to condense, compress, ‘squeeze’. So ˈpemmicanize v.; whence pemmicaniˈzation.
1837T. Hook Jack Brag vi, As if he had seen all the dæmons of the Hartz Forest pemmican'd into one plump lady. 1839― in New Monthly Mag. LV. 1 So elaborated a history,..which..might be Pemmicaned into a comparatively few pages. 1892Pall Mall G. 1 Sept. 3/2 The modern man is but rarely inclined to read his history in many volumes. He much prefers it pemmicanized. 1901Westm. Gaz. 16 Dec. 4/2 What one may call the era of the Pemmicanisation of life is rapidly approaching. |