| 释义 |
scrannel, a.|ˈskrænəl|
[Cf. Norw. skran lean, shrivelled.]
a. Thin, meagre. Now chiefly as a reminiscence of Milton's use, usually with the sense: Harsh, unmelodious.
1637Milton Lycidas 124 Their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw. 1667H. More Div. Dial. ii. xviii. (1713) 145 As lank and scrannel as a Calf that sucks his Dam through an hurdle. 1788A. Seward Lett. (1811) II. 92 His voice has a scrannel tone. 1858G. Macdonald Phantastes xvii. 209 Voices like those of children in volume, but scrannel and harsh as those of decrepit age. 1862Smiles Engineers III. 20 Time..which he spent in birdsnesting, making whistles out of reeds and scrannel straws [etc.]. 1868Browning Ring & Bk. vi. 1000 Now from the stone lungs sighed the scrannel voice. 1889Antiquary Nov. 196 It would have..made the scrannel list of honest men show thinner still in history. 1908Dobson De Libris 191 In this cash-cradled Age, We grate our scrannel Musick. 1927E. F. Benson Lucia in London ii. 60 It was strange..to hear..the foe of all modern music..producing these scrannel staccato tinklings that had so often made her wince. 1934[see mimsey a.]. 1951Auden Nones (1952) 54 His scrannel music-making. 1976New Yorker 1 Mar. 89/1 But the music Berlioz heard in St. Peter's was scrannel stuff, and it was years before he himself received the commissions to compose.
b. Comb.: scrannel-piping, the use of a ‘scrannel pipe’.
1831Carlyle Sart. Res. iii. x, A kind of infinite, unsufferable, Jew's-harping and scrannel-piping. |