| 释义 |
ˈpitch-cap, n.
[f. pitch n.1 + cap n.1]
a. A cap lined with pitch, used as an instrument of torture by the soldiery during the Irish rebellion of 1798.
b. Med. A kind of plaster containing pitch, formerly used as a depilatory for the scalp in cases of favus (Syd. Soc. Lex.).
1589Rider Bibl. Schol. 1093 A pitche cappe made to take away the hair from scabbed heads, depilatorium, psilothrum. 1803E. Hay Insurr. Wexf. 181 They certainly were the introducers of pitch-cap torture into the county of Wexford [in 1798]. 1842R. R. Madden United Irishmen I. xi. 337 The numbers tied up to the triangles and tortured with the scourge, or tormented with the pitch-caps..in the year 1798. 1887H. D. Traill in Macm. Mag. July 175 Why should anybody go out of his way to fit such a pitch-cap as that on his head?
Hence pitch-cap v. trans., to torture with a pitch-cap.
1864Sala in Daily Tel. 14 Nov., The ignorant and deluded peasants who were tarred, pitchcapped, singed, and flogged until their entrails fell out. |