| 释义 |
▪ I. byre1|baɪə(r)|
Forms: 1– byre; also 6 bire, 6–9 byer, 8 byar.
[OE. býre, found only in vocabularies and hence of doubtful gender and declension; but perh.:—OTeut. type *bûrjo(m, deriv. of *bûro(m, OE. búr, cottage, dwelling, ‘bower’, f. *bū̆- to dwell: see bower. Not the same word as ON. bý-r, bœ-r, Icel. bær str. masc. ‘farm house’, etc. (in which the final r is merely the nom. ending:—*bûi-z, *bôi-z); although from the same root.]
1. A cow-house. Perh. in OE. times, more generally, ‘a shed’. to muck the byre (Sc.): to take out the dung and cleanse the byre.
a800Corpus Gl., Wr.-Wülcker 32 Magalia, byre. c1050Supp. ælfric's Gloss. ibid. 185 Magalia, uel capanna, byre, uel sceapheorden. c1440Gaw. & Gol. i. 3 (Jam.) The king farith with his folk our firthis and fellis, Withoutin beilding of blis, of bern, or of byre. 1521in Archæol. XVII. 203 Ther is a bire made for oxen. 1535Stewart Cron. Scot. III. 420 Bayth hall and chalmer, bakhous, barne and byre. 1570Levins Manip. 143 A Byre, cowhouse, bouile. 1724Ramsay Tea-t. Misc. (1733) I. 76, I ha' a good ha' house, a barn and a byer. a1775Jacobite Song, ‘The mucking o' Geordie's byre.’ 1805Wordsw. Prel. viii. (1851) 169 Long ere heat of noon, From byre or field the kine were brought. 1847Barham Ingol. Leg. Ser. iii. (1858) 440 He had beeves in the byre, he had flocks in the fold.
¶ Misused (from a mistaken notion as to the etymology) to english the Icelandic bær (ON. bœr, býr): ‘A farmyard and buildings, including the farm-house’, called in Scotland a ‘farm-toun’.
1863Baring-Gould Iceland 137 He set about erecting a byre with a great hall one hundred feet long.
2. attrib., as in byre-door, byre-dung, byre-loft, byre-man, byre-woman; and in comb., as byre-mucker, one who ‘mucks’ or cleanses a byre; byrewards adv., towards the byre.
1883Gd. Words Aug. 495/2 From the *byre door, he watched the birds.
1833Act 3 & 4 Will. IV, xlvi. §3 Stable and *byre dung.
1822T. Bewick Mem. 19, I always took up my abode for the night in the *byer-loft. 1814Edinb. Corresp. 4 June (Jam.) Mr. Heriot's byreman..was found..dreadfully bruised.
1790Burns Let. to Dr. Moore 14 July As ill-spelt as country John's billet-doux, or as unsightly a scrawl as Betty *Byremucker's answer to it.
1880Mrs. C. Reade Brown Hand & Wh. I. Prol. 30 The goat and kid now being driven *byrewards by a boy.
1820Scott Monast. xxviii, ‘There is na ane fit to do a turn but the *byre-woman and myself’.
▪ II. byre2
? Obs. form of bier.
1467Mann. & Househ. Exp. 427 For iij. flytes, ij. botte⁓bolts and ij. byres, xvij.d. |