| 释义 |
roundhead, round-head|ˈraʊndhɛd|
Also 7–8 Round-head, -Head, Round head.
[round a.]
1. Eng. Hist. A member or adherent of the Parliamentary party in the Civil War of the 17th century, so called from their custom of wearing the hair close cut.
In this sense now usu. with capital and as one word.
The name appears to have arisen towards the end of the year 1641: see Clarendon Hist. Reb. iv. §121. Rushworth Hist. Coll. (1692) iii. i. 463 attributes its origin to an officer named David Hide, who (app. on 27 Dec. of that year) threatened to ‘cut the Throat of those Round-headed Dogs that bawled against Bishops’. Brathwait's use, if earlier than this, may be only an accidental anticipation of it.
1641R. Brathwait Merc. Brit. iv, See..how these notted and round heads with their prick eares doe listen and stare on their predicating Pinner. 1642Heads of all Fashions 4 A Round-head is a man whose braine's compact, Whose Verilies and Trulies are an Act Infallible. 1651[see cavalier n. 3]. a1671Ld. Fairfax Mem. (1699) 95 Those of the array exceeded their commission in oppressing many honest people, whom, by way of reproach, they called Roundheads. 1735Bolingbroke On Parties 53 The Whigs were not Roundheads, tho' the Measures They pursued..gave Occasion to the Suspicions I have mentioned. 1816Scott Old Mort. viii, My cockade and my broadsword are my commission, and a better one than ever Old Nol gave to his roundheads. 1842Tennyson Talking Oak 299 Far below the Roundhead rode, And humm'd a surly hymn.
transf.1643in Swainson Prov. Names Brit. Birds (E.D.S.) 110 Her colour is most comely, And a Round-head is she [sc. a cuckoo], And yet no sect She doth respect. 1973D. Aaron Unwritten War 345 Southern magazines featured articles contrasting invidiously planter ‘Cavaliers’ and Yankee ‘Roundheads’. 1976Listener 5 Feb. 140/3 Under the Cromwellian leadership of Peter Hall, the roundheads of the new professionalism drove the cavalier dilettanti largely from the scene.
attrib.1845James Arrah Neil i, The roundhead rascals, I wish I had my sword in their stomach. 1855Macaulay Hist. Eng. xv. III. 520 They would have been pointed at in the street as Roundhead knaves. 1963Times 11 Feb. 6/7 Now that industry is ‘dishoarding’ labour and achieving results more effectively than Roundhead policy at the Treasury.
b. N. Amer. slang. An immigrant from northern Europe, spec. a Swede.
1895Dialect Notes I. 393 Roundhead, a Swede. 1902S. Clapin New Dict. Americanisms 341 Roundhead, in the North-West, frequently said of a Swede. 1931‘D. Stiff’ Milk & Honey Route iii. 38 Swedes are ‘roundheads’ or ‘salve eaters’. 1976‘Trevanian’ Main (1977) iii. 57 ‘He's not a bad type, for a Roundhead,’ Gaspard says.
c. Ethnol. One of a race or type of man characterized by roundness of the head. Cf. round-headed a. 1 b. rare.
1896A. H. Keane Ethnol. i. v. 106 Mounds differing in type from those of the round-heads.
†2. A kind of weapon: (see quot. 1643). Obs.
1643Mercurius Civicus No. 11. 84 A thousand of those weapons which the Papists call Round-heads, for that with them they intended to bring the Round-heads into subjection. 1643[Angier] Lanc. Vall. Achor 22 A new-invented mischievous Instrument... An head about a quarter of a yard long, a staffe of two yards long put into their head, twelve iron pikes round about, and one in the end to stop with; This fierce Weapon they called, A Round-head. 1644–5Rec. Nottingham (1900) V. 232 Paid to Richard Smith for roundheads for the towne, Vli. Ibid. 233.
3. a. A siluroid fish of S. America. b. The weakfish of N. America.
1842Penny Cycl. XXII. 17/1 It is said that the other species, the round-head (Callichthys littoralis, Hancock), has not been known to attempt such excursions. Ibid., The round-head forms its nest of grass.
4. attrib. or as adj. Round-headed; puritanical.
1840Penny Cycl. XVI. 276/1 Columns..are employed as piers to support the arches (not round-head, but pointed). 1907Mem. Old Derbyshire 55 The intrusion of a round-head people upon the Neolithic long-heads. 1908A. W. Tilby Eng. People Overseas I. ii. 72 The former was strongly cavalier and episcopal; the latter was as strongly roundhead and puritan.
Hence ˈroundheader = sense 1 b above.
1934J. O'Hara Appointment in Samarra iii. 80 The schwackies, the roundheaders..—regional names for non-Latin foreigners—probably were inside getting drunk. |