| 释义 |
ˈpot-ˌboiler
1. One who boils a pot; spec. in Eng. Politics = potwaller. rare.
1824Hitchins & Drew Cornwall I. xvii. §17. 650 The right of election is vested at present in all the inhabitants [of Tregony] who are pot-boilers. 1826[see potwaller].
2. colloq.
a. Applied depreciatively to a work of literature or art executed for the purpose of ‘boiling the pot’, i.e. of gaining a livelihood: see pot n.1 13 e; a writing, picture, or other work, made to sell. Also applied to musical compositions, plays, and films.
1864Sat. Rev. 27 Aug. 275/2 Artists and novelists of a certain stamp joke about ‘pot-boilers’—the name facetiously given to hasty, worthless pictures and books,..composed for the simple and sole purpose of being sold under cover of a reputation. 1864D. G. Rossetti Let. 25 June (1965) II. 509 Small things and water-colours I never should have done at all, except for the long continuance of a necessity for ‘pot⁓boilers’. 1882J. C. Morison Macaulay iv. 129 Macaulay's contributions to the Edinburgh at this period have largely the characteristics of what are vulgarly called ‘pot-boilers’, though..they were written to keep, not his own but another man's pot boiling. 1884H. D. Traill Coleridge iii. 53 Such..was the singular and even prosaic origin of the ‘Ancient Mariner’..surely the most sublime of ‘pot-boilers’ to be found in all literature. 1897W. C. Hazlitt Four Gen. Lit. Fam. I. iii. ii. 242 All men who have to live by their labour have their pot-boilers. 1915W. S. Maugham Of Human Bondage. 256 You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother. 1934C. Lambert Music Ho! v. 306 A certain number of works that were neither potboilers nor works of individual genius. 1973Times 14 Mar. 18/7 In the next three years he directed five pot-boilers and did some screen writing. 1975Listener 31 July 152/3 Ayckbourn's name could become associated with middle⁓brow, comedy potboilers. 1977Time 10 Oct. 61/1 Condon works on his potboilers seven hours a day, seven days a week for ten weeks at a stretch.
attrib.1879W. L. Lindsay Mind Lower Anim. 20 Writing what are vulgarly known as ‘pot-boiler’ books.
b. A writer or artist who produces ‘pot-boilers’.
1892G. S. Layard C. Keene ii. 37 He never seemed to realize that he was anything more than a hard-working pot-boiler. 1900Pall Mall G. 31 Aug. 1/2 The joys of matrimony have an odd way of turning all but the greatest into ‘pot-boilers’.
3. Anthropol. (See quot. 1874.)
1874Dawkins Cave Hunt. iii. 91 Among the articles of daily use were many rounded pebbles, with marks of fire upon them, which had probably been heated for the purpose of boiling water. Pot-boilers, as they are called, of this kind are used by many savage peoples at the present day. 1899J. Kenworthy in Essex Nat. XI. 105 The large quantity of ashes and charcoal, with calcined pebbles and ‘pot-boilers’, at the bottom of the lake and upon the platform upon which the huts were built.
So (in senses corresponding to 2) ˈpot-boil v. intr., to do pot-boiling; trans. to produce for sale; ˈpot-ˌboilery a. (nonce-wd.), of the nature of a pot-boiler; ˈpot-ˌboiling n. and a. in quot. 1775, in sense ‘providing for the immediate necessities of life’; cf. boil the pot: pot n.1 13 e.
1775S. J. Pratt Liberal Opin. cxxii. (1783) IV. 130 Send, I say, the {pstlg}1. 1. just for the pot-boiling business, and who knows what tomorrow may bring forth. 1867D. G. Rossetti Let. 22 Mar. (1965) II. 618, I have been pot-boiling to an extent lately that does not hold out much hope of estate buying. 1870Daily Tel. 10 Feb. 5/1 The eccentric, superficial, or ‘pot-boiling’ qualities which degrade much of what is manufactured and sold. 1880Howells Undisc. Country xx, I write and sell my work. It's what they call pot-boiling. 1881Saintsbury Dryden iii. 60 A ‘pot-boiling’ adaptation of Troilus and Cressida was brought out. 1888Rider Haggard Mr. Meeson's Will iv, He will be paid five hundred or a thousand pounds apiece for his most ‘pot-boilery’ portraits. 1891Murray's Mag. Oct. 550 [They] saw themselves absolutely obliged to ‘potboil’, if I may be pardoned the phrase, in order to live. 1903Westm. Gaz. 19 Mar. 4/3 To prove..that several ‘old masters’..are also ‘fakes’, and were ‘pot-boiled’ in Montmartre. 1905J. K. Jerome in Daily Chron. 14 July 4/4 Every barrister who accepts a brief is pot-boiling. Every clergyman who preaches a sermon is pot-boiling. The pot has got to be boiled. |