| 释义 |
▪ I. quasi, adv. and prefix|ˈkweɪsaɪ, -zaɪ, ˈkwaːzɪ|
[L. quasi as if, as it were, almost.]
I. In limiting sense.
1. Used parenthetically = ‘as it were’, ‘almost’, ‘virtually’. rare.
In Caxton after F. quasi (15th c., from It. or L.).
1485Caxton Paris & V. (1868) 30 Whereof he was moche angry, and quasi half in despair. ― Chas. Gt. 204 After that charles had the domynacyon quasi in al espayne. 1692T. Watson Body of Div. 97 Men come quasi armed in Coat of Male, that the Sword of the Word will not enter. 1818Cruise Digest (ed. 2) V. 184 This devolution..is quasi a descent per formam doni.
2. In close connexion with the word following; hence usually treated as a prefix and hyphened.
a. With ns.: (A) kind of; resembling or simulating, but not really the same as, that properly so termed. quasi-art, quasi-belief, quasi-continuum, quasi-copula, quasi-crime, quasi-definition, quasi-dereliction, quasi-dying, quasi-emperor, quasi-equilibrium, quasi-existence, quasi-implication, quasi-jazz, quasi-marriage, quasi-miracle, quasi-modal, quasi-molecule, quasi-monopoly, quasi-neutrality, quasi-nuptial, quasi-object, quasi-partner, quasi-quotation, quasi-quote, quasi-religion, quasi-science, quasi-semi, quasi-sensation, quasi-statement, quasi-substance, quasi-totality, quasi-universal, quasi-vacuity, quasi-verb, quasi-war.
1837Carlyle Fr. Rev. I. vi. iv, The art, or quasi-art, of standing in tail.
1925C. D. Broad Mind & its Place in Nature iv. 217 The quasi-belief which is an essential factor in all perceptual situations. 1942Mind LI. 245 When I read about Captain Costigan or about Mr. Micawber I knew perfectly well and all the time that there were no such persons. There is no temporary quasi-belief or make-believe..as there is in the case of the mirage. 1966D. G. Brandon Mod. Techniques Metallogr. 179 The conduction electrons in a metal occupy a quasi-continuum of energy levels. 1979Sci. Amer. May 108/1 In this region, known as the quasi-continuum, the additional rotational and translational states provide all the ‘fine tuning’ necessary to match the photon frequency with the quantum gap between vibrational levels.
1934Webster, Quasi copula. 1963F. T. Visser Hist. Syntax Eng. Lang. I. ii. 153 We have a similar complete change of status when verbs of this kind function as quasi-copulas, as in ‘this meat eats tough’. 1966Eng. Stud. XLVII. 51 An interesting..problem arises with quasi-copulas i.e. border-line cases where the verb may stand between ‘copula’ and ‘full verb’.
1727–41Chambers Cycl. s.v. Quasi-contract, The reparation of quasi-crimes.
1927C. R. S. Harris Duns Scotus ii. vi. 188 We are..able to arrive at a quasi-definition in which we can describe it [sc. the divine essence] more perfectly than by means of any of its other attributes. 1939Mind XLVIII. 541 And this he does by discerning (between the lines) the frequent interpolations of new quasi-definitions demarcating new distinctions of meaning of the terms involved. 1978Dædalus Summer 28 Let us note three elements. First, a quasidefinition of the marginal man.
1950D. Gascoyne Vagrant 8, I stand still in my quasi⁓dereliction.
1676R. Dixon Two Testaments 30 The reason why God confirmed his Testament..is, because this was an act of his Quasi-dying.
1864Kingsley Rom. & Teut. iii. (1875) 91 Romans, with Greek names who become quasi-emperors.
1905Jrnl. Geol. XIII. 393 The surface ever wearing down, the waste..continually exported by the winds, a nearly level rock-floor,..everywhere slowly lowering at the rate of sand and dust exportation, is developed over a larger and larger area; and such is the condition of quasi-equilibrium for old age. 1964Amer. Jrnl. Sci. CCLXII. 793 As the landscape slowly degrades..rivers have a tendency to remain in quasi-equilibrium. 1978Dædalus Spring 25 Most states of nature are quasiequilibria, the outcome of competing forces.
1909W. M. Urban Valuation v. 127 An aspect..is given a quasi-existence. 1944M. Black in P. A. Schilpp Philos. B. Russell 241 Hamlet and the Snark, the philosopher's stone and the round square, being all characterised by predicates, must all, in some versions of this position, have their being in a multiplicity of distinct limbos, realms of Sosein, Aussersein and Quasisein in which to enjoy their ambiguous status of partial or quasi-existence. 1951Mind LX. 355 The truth-table for ‘quasi-implication’ in Professor Reichenbach's three-valued logic. 1973J. J. Zeman Modal Logic ii. 21 We may refer to such formulas as ‘quasi-implications’.
1947R. de Toledano Frontiers of Jazz 70 Hundreds of musicians, playing in all the jazz and quasi-jazz styles. 1977Time Out 28 Jan. 47 (caption) The already expansive Runt canvas—everything from Philly soul harmonies through wittily timeless psychedelia and inspiring quasi-jazz—has added two more excellent albums.
1926W. J. Locke Stories Near & Far 166 Quasi-marriage bond. 1976National Observer (U.S.) 4 Sept. 13/3 ‘What does it matter what we think?’ says a friend of mine, three of whose sons have opted for quasi marriage.
1893Mind II. 210 That seems to me but an excessively clumsy way of stating in terms of a quasi-miracle the very truth which Stumpf and I express by saying that likeness is an immediately ascertained relation.
1971J. Anderson in A. J. Aitken et al. Edin. Stud. Eng. & Scots 71 Certain ‘quasi-modals’, which satisfy some but not all of the criteria. 1972W. Labov Lang. in Inner City ix. 376 The quasimodals produce many problems which are not fully resolved.
1968C. G. Kuper Introd. Theory Superconductivity xi. 181 A pair of electrons in the immediate vicinity of the Fermi surface can form a bound quasimolecule. 1975McGraw-Hill Yearbk. Sci. & Technol. 115/2 Electron ejection from an atom or a quasimolecule is due to the time-varying electric field acting on the electron as the collision partners pass each other.
1934Planning II. xl. 6 Where monopoly or quasi-monopoly powers are taken there shall be an independent chairman and other independent members of the Industry Board administering the scheme. 1980Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts Mar. 207/1 Once a housebuilder has bid successfully for what little land is available..a quasi⁓monopoly situation is created.
1934Webster, Quasi neutrality. 1962W. B. Thompson Introd. Plasma Physics ii. 9 Because of their inertia, the electrons will oscillate about the initially charged region but with a very high frequency, so that quasi-neutrality is preserved in the mean.
1889Swinburne Stud. Jonson 47 The epithalamium of these quasi-nuptials is fine.
1963F. T. Visser Hist. Syntax Eng. Lang. I. iv. 453 With verbs that do not usually take a direct object..the construction with indefinite it as quasi⁓object is also frequently met with. 1967Quasi object [see incomplete a. 2].
1848Bouvier Law Dict. (ed. 3) II. 401 Quasi partners, partners of lands, goods, or chattels, who are not actual partners, are sometimes so called. 1930M. Clark Home Trade 3 Quasi-partners are those who have played, but no longer play, an active part.
1867G. M. Hopkins Let. 15 Aug. (1956) 41 There are quotations or quasi-quotations fr. the Bible in it. 1943Mind LII. 267 It may be doubted..whether the additional typographical complexity of the device of ‘quasi-quotation’ is worth the bother.
1937W. V. Quine in Jrnl. Symbolic Logic II. 146 An expression beginning and ending in corners is to denote the expression which we obtain, from the expression between the corners, by replacing all Greek letters by the expressions which those Greek letters are intended to denote. The corners may thus be viewed as ‘quasi-quotes’; but they must not be confused with ordinary quotation marks. 1949Mind LVIII. 524 The quasi-quotes would not be needed if ‘⊃’ and ‘∼’ were being used autonymously.
1934Webster, Quasi religion. 1952C. P. Blacker Eugenics 112 Once the importance of eugenics was grasped, once its principles had ‘been accepted as a quasi-religion, the result will be manifested in sundry and very effective modes of action which are as yet untried, and many of them unforeseen’. 1977P. Johnson Enemies of Society xiv. 193 Pseudo-sciences, irrational quasi-religions, and phantasmagoric utopias.
1874W. Wallace tr. Hegel's Logic 21 The quasi-sciences..are founded on an act of arbitrary will alone, such as Heraldry. 1924W. B. Selbie Psychol. Relig. ii. 33 Frazer also regards it [sc. magic] as a quasi-science, in fundamental opposition to religion. 1976Word 1971 XXVII. 77 To me this is quasiscience, if not pseudoscience.
1974P. Wright Lang. Brit. Industry xvii. 162 Quasi-semis, joined by their garages, certainly act as semis, though their Latin quasi sounds so foreign to English speech. 1979W. Lancs. Even. Gaz. 23 Feb. 17 (Advt.), Quasi semi conveniently situated to all schools.
1922Joyce Ulysses 674 What were Stephen's and Bloom's quasisimultaneous volitional quasisensations of concealed identities? 1948Mind LVII. 194 Necessary statements, then, might be called ‘quasi-statements’, to indicate that they neither mention the expressions of which they are composed, nor use them to talk about the non-linguistic world. 1972Jrnl. Symbolic Logic XXXVII. 421 A quasi⁓statement is a statement or a question.
1925C. D. Broad Mind & its Place iii. 99 Even so extreme a dualist about Mind and Matter as Descartes occasionally suggests that a mind and its body together form a quasi-substance. 1943Mind LII. 336 ‘Space’ is the name of an entity, a quasi-substance, though according to Kant a mind-dependent one.
1941Mind L. 389 A mechanism in the modern sense of the term, viz., as a quasi-totality of serial and reciprocating temporal causes. 1977Dædalus Fall 141 History is also connected more generally, more largely to the quasi-totality of the social sciences.
1890W. James Princ. Psychol. I. xii. 475 The nominalists, on their side, admit a quasi-universal, something which we think as if it were universal, though it is not.
1643Sir T. Browne Relig. Med. i. §49 An Empyriall Heaven, a quasi vacuitie.
1957Publ. Amer. Dial. Soc. xxviii. 31 The affirmative quasi-verb better. 1972Language XLVIII. 466 Quasi-verbs..constitute an inflectional category which is rare, or possibly unique, among Indo-European languages.
1815J. Adams Wks. (1856) X. 151 A..plot..to draw me into a decided instead of a quasi war with France.
b. With adjs., more rarely with advbs. or vbs.: Seemingly, or in appearance, but not really; almost, nearly, virtually. quasi-æsthetic, quasi-arithmetical, quasi-automatic (hence quasi-automatically), quasi-classic, quasi-colloquial, quasi-continuous, quasi-crystalline, quasi-deify vb., quasi-divine, quasi-elastic, quasi-Episcopal, quasi-eternal, quasi-ethical (hence quasi-ethically), quasi-Fascist, quasi-feudal, quasi-general, quasi-governmental, quasi-grammatical, quasi-hallucinatory, quasi-historical, quasi-horizontal, quasi-independent, quasi-instantaneous, quasi-judicial, quasi-legal, quasi-logical, quasi-marital, quasi-material, quasi-mathematical, quasi-mechanical, quasi-mechanistic, quasi-metallic, quasi-metaphysical, quasi-military, quasi-miraculous, quasi-molecular, quasi-monastic, quasi-mythical, quasi-neutral, quasi-normal, quasi-official, quasi-optical, quasi-ossianic, quasi-periodic, quasi-permanent, quasi-personal, quasi-philosophical, quasi-physical, quasi-public, quasi-purposive, quasi-religious, quasi-scientific, quasi-simultaneous (hence quasi-simultaneously), quasi-stationary, quasi-technical, quasi-thermodynamic, quasi-totalitarian, quasi-transitive, quasi-universal.
1909W. M. Urban Valuation vi. 152 In certain quasi⁓aesthetic combinations of utilities—as in a festal meal..—a detail..may acquire an extraordinary value. 1963R. M. Hare Freedom & Reason ix. 174 The universal, quasi-aesthetic ideal of not having addicts about the place.
1944Mind LIII. 242 One could of course use as M a quasi-arithmetical calculus whose integers are construed as particulars. 1965Language XLI. 490 A quasi-arithmetical notation for syntactic description.
1890W. James Princ. Psychol. II. xxvi. 523 The intermediary terms of an habitual series of acts leading to an end are apt to be of this quasi-automatic sort. 1963F. T. Visser Hist. Syntax I. ii. 152 Intransitive verbs used to represent the action—as quasi-automatic, or self-originated. Ibid. 159 An interesting sequence of intransitive verbs and ‘transitive’ verbs used quasi-automatically.
1905O. Jespersen Growth & Struct. Eng. Lang. vi. 123 Authors sometimes coin quasi-classic words without finding anybody to pass them on, as when Milton writes ‘our inquisiturient Bishops’ (Areop. 13).
1802–12Bentham Ration. Judic. Evid. (1827) I. 149 Falsehood in this quasi-colloquial shape, as well as in the shape of ordinary discourse.
1890W. James Princ. Psychol. I. xiii. 531 The jingling of the bells on the horses of a horse-car passing the door..and the rumbling of the vehicle itself,..to our ordinary hearing merge together very readily into a quasi-continuous body of sound. 1973Jrnl. Amer. Chem. Soc. XCV. 8301/1 The Raman spectrum of titanium tetraiodide in solution has been obtained previously..by use of 694·3 nm excitation of a quasicontinuous ruby laser.
1946Nature 31 Aug. 297/2 Such scattering [of sound waves] has been ascribed either to the quasi-crystalline structure of a liquid. 1964G. H. Haggis et al. Introd. Molecular Biol. ix. 220 Wilkins, Franklin and others.., by drawing out threads from concentrated DNA solutions with careful control of humidity, have been able to get the molecules into a highly-orientated quasi-crystalline form and to obtain in this way more detailed diffraction patterns.
1826Southey Vind. Eccl. Angl. 394 We neither deify nor quasi-deify the head of our Church.
1941Wyndham Lewis Let. 21 Oct. (1963) 302 The ‘Royal Academy’ seems to them a quasi-divine institution. 1955R. Graves Crowning Privilege 113 The living poet hero is a modernism; I think I am right in saying that Petrarch was the first poet to receive quasi-divine honours during his lifetime.
1899Phil. Mag. XLVIII. 80 The destructive effects of earthquakes are..due to the propagation of quasi-elastic disturbances. 1972Sci. Amer. Oct. 103/3 The observation of pairs of alpha particles with this unique signature emerging from heavy nuclei was taken to indicate the presence of essentially free alpha particles at the nuclear surface. Such scattering is called quasi⁓elastic because the particles are not totally free but are somewhat bound to the target nucleus. 1976Nature 15 July 177/1 In these plots, the vertical lines around A = 32 correspond to the incident 32S ions that have undergone peripheral elastic or quasielastic interactions with the loss or gain of a few nucleons.
1861Kingsley Lett. (1878) II. 80 The independent and quasi-Episcopal position of the rector.
1895Psychol. Rev. II. 124 [Parts of mental contents do not] have an eternal or quasi-eternal individual existence, like the parts of objects. 1932H. H. Price Perception viii. 223 We must not..think that nearness is always an ‘advantage’ (if we may go on using this quasi-ethical language). 1949Mind LVIII. 203 The deductions which welfare economists make are quasi-ethical.
1909W. M. Urban Valuation vii. 214 The feeling..is quasi-ethically qualified. 1938Political Q. IX. i. 133 The new Germany, imperialist Japan and quasi-Fascist Poland must all, at the least, be democratised. 1954Koestler Invis. Writing iv. xxxv. 376 Greece, too, lived under a quasi-Fascist dictatorship. 1960― Lotus & Robot ii. x. 228 Japan was able to..build a quasi-capitalistic state on a quasi-feudal foundation. 1977Dædalus Summer 50 The straitjackets of public regulations, quasi-feudal traditions, financial dependence, and intellectual routine which have so often paralyzed the universities of postwar Europe.
1896W. Caldwell Schopenhauer's Syst. ix. 47 This fact..warrants us in calling his whole philosophy a quasi general overturning of the philosophy of the idea. 1948Mind LVII. 50 If ‘If Nero had been Seneca’ means anything at all, it is a quasi-general proposition which can be analysed either as ‘If Nero had had the character of Seneca’ or ‘If Seneca had been emperor’ or in some similar fashion. 1961Ethical Outlook May–June 93/2 If corporations are not to run away with us, they must become quasi-governmental institutions. 1977P. Johnson Enemies of Society xii. 167 The University Grants Committee, the quasi-governmental body which distributes state cash.
1953H. A. Hatzfeld Crit. Bibliogr. New Stylistics 1 A theoretical, communicable, analytical, quasi-grammatical language of the critic. 1955J. L. Austin How to do Things with Words (1962) vi. 68 ‘I state that’ seems to conform to our grammatical or quasi-grammatical requirements.
1890W. James Princ. Psychol. ii. xx. 220 Optical objects not actually present..being imagined now with a quasi⁓hallucinatory strength. 1979C. E. Schorske Fin-de-Siècle Vienna vii. 330 A quasi-hallucinatory, erotic dream experience.
1880A. H. Sayce Introd. Sci. Lang. ii. vii. 98 Many of the ballads are quasi-historical. 1933Mind XLII. 396 Objective Spirits..regulate individual personality, making personality, by participation, a quasi⁓historical thing, or, as I should perhaps have said, a sui-thing. 1956Nature 21 Jan. 113/2 The salient place in theory taken by horizontal wind divergence..was stressed by showing its relation..with the development of circulations, cyclonic and anti-cyclonic, through the vorticity equation applied to quasi-horizontal motions on a rotating Earth. 1967Oceanogr. & Marine Biol. V. 82 The analysis of the water masses of the southwest Pacific show them to be very clearly stratified,..with the different water masses lying in quasi-horizontal layers.
1933Mind XLII. 385 There is..no point in ‘reifying’ the system, and then treating it as something quasi-independent of its parts, because, in these cases its behaviour is inferable from a knowledge of the parts. 1966S. Beer Decision & Control xv. 381 Cybernetic insights show, in particular, that the totality of the organization ought to be made up of building-blocks that will be called quasi-independent domains.
1958Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer. LXIX. 111/2 In geologic writing..the standards for contemporaneity and instantaneousness are more flexible. Perhaps, H. and G. Termier's (1956) expression quasi-instantaneous (quasi-instantané) could be recommended as a convenient term to indicate instantaneousness in the geologic sense. 1960C. S. Lewis Studies in Words 214 The words in a great poet's phrase..strike the mind as a quasi-instantaneous chord, yet, strictly speaking, each word must be read or heard before the next.
1836Sir H. Taylor Statesman viii. 50 His functions in these cases are quasi-judicial.
1911Webster, Quasi legal. 1951E. E. Evans-Pritchard Social Anthropol. i. 14 The sample includes studies of..quasi-legal institutions..and of the entire social organization..of one or other people. 1965H. Kahn On Escalation ix. 172 The declaration of war is just one of a series of legal and quasi-legal measures..which have a role in escalation situations.
1902W. James Var. Relig. Exper. iv. 106 Philosophers usually profess to give a quasi-logical explanation of the existence of evil. 1960New Biol. XXXI. 135 They form part of an entrancing quasi-logical world, but it has little in common with the pedestrian, irrational world of the empiric.
1959G. D. Mitchell Sociol. 64 His wife's sisters are, therefore, in a relationship to him which Radcliffe-Brown has described as quasi-marital. 1978Times Lit. Suppl. 1 Dec. 1391/4 The eighty-six men assigned to the ‘dysfunctional’ group also lacked any quasi-marital partnership and often expressed regret about their homosexuality, but they were sexually more active and promiscuous.
1876Nation 8 June 369/1 It [sc. liberty] and necessity being alike indemonstrable by any quasi-material process, must be postulated if taken at all. 1924W. B. Selbie Psychol. Relig. xiv. 269 This ‘soul’ was regarded as similar to the body in form and nature, and as having a quasi-material existence of its own.
1870W. S. Jevons in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. CLX. 516 In Boole's system the same groups are indicated by certain quasi-mathematical symbols as follows. 1957C. Vereker Devel. Polit. Theory iv. 147 Men..pursued their own happiness..by a comparison of their experienced and expected pleasures and pains in this quasi-mathematical manner.
1920W. R. Sorley Hist. Eng. Philos. xii. 265 He had started in his thinking with the quasi-mechanical view of a fixed norm of belief existing in the past. 1942Mind LI. 166 The ‘quasi-mechanical’ reproductive and associative processes.
1923T. P. Nunn Education xi. 136 Quasi-mechanistic theory, leading us to think of a man's self as built up of instincts much as a machine is built up of wheels. 1961Chicago Rev. XV. i. 94 Sub-human and quasi-mechanistic powers.
1858Carlyle Fredk. Gt. I. iv. iv. 417 The voice..was of clangorous and penetrating, quasi-metallic nature. 1968C. G. Kuper Introd. Theory Superconductivity xv. 260 One electron per spine atom is in a π-state, and exhibits quasimetallic properties in one dimension.
1890W. James Princ. Psychol. I. v. 138 To urge the automaton-theory upon us..on purely a priori and quasi-metaphysical grounds, is an unwarrantable impertinence in the present state of psychology. 1959New Biol. XXX. 59 So impressive is this ‘organic unity’ that its existence has been claimed to set living matter apart from non-living and has more than once been elevated into a quasi⁓metaphysical postulate.
1895M. Pemberton Impregnable City xvii. 126 Men in quasi-military uniforms..contributed to the impression of the scene. 1964Dentler & Cutright in I. L. Horowitz New Sociol. 425 Undemocratic leadership by a quasi-military elite. 1974tr. Wertheim's Evolution & Revolution 127 It is clear that the term ‘mutiny’ mostly refers to an insurrection within a military or quasi-military apparatus.
1890W. James Princ. Psychol. I. xii. 474 They invent..as the vehicle of the knowledge of universals..an Ego, whose function is treated as quasi-miraculous. 1904Jrnl. Philos. I. 541 An experience that knows another can figure as its representative, not in any quasi-miraculous ‘epistemological’ sense, but in the definite practical sense of being its substitute in various operations. 1968C. G. Kuper Introd. Theory Superconductivity i. 2 In 1951 Onsager conjectured that conduction electrons might form quasi⁓molecular pairs bound by the Fröhlich interaction. 1974Physics. Bull. Oct. 467/1 Fernandez..gave a review of the radiative and other properties of resonant states observed in heavy ion collisions. Usually known as quasimolecular states, these resonances represent states at approximately 30 MeV excitation in the compound system. 1979Sci. Amer. Dec. 125/3 The resulting structure is called a quasi-molecular state.
1938Ann. Reg. 1937 241 President Azaña emerged from his quasi⁓monastic retirement in a villa near Gerona to appoint a new Government. 1964P. F. Anson Bishops at Large iv. 95 The quasi-monastic character of the life.
1890W. James Princ. Psychol. II. xx. 211 Difficulties arise which have made psychologists appeal to new and quasi-mythical mental powers. 1963M. H. Abrams in N. Frye Romanticism Reconsidered 53 Quasi-mythical agents tend to recur.
1905Daily Chron. 11 May 5/1 The Admiral asserts that he is not the only one who has provisioned in neutral or quasi-neutral waters. 1962W. B. Thompson Introd. Plasma Physics iv. 45 Also, from the extremely small value..it is clear that a conductor resembles a plasma in remaining quasi-neutral.
1909O. Lodge Survival of Man i. 4 Actually more inventive sometimes of other and quasi-normal methods of explaining inexplicable facts. 1965Math. in Biol. & Med. (Med. Res. Council) v. 228 The form of this distribution (Figure 2) is negatively exponential, high on the left and tapering away to the right quite unlike the normal and quasi⁓normal distributions with which we deal intuitively in most everyday situations.
1882Mind VII. 186 Hegel's philosophy..must, now that it has become quasi-official, make ready to defend itself as well as to attack others. 1965H. Kahn On Escalation ii. 44 A quasi-official move ordered by a government.
1940Chambers's Techn. Dict. 693/2 Quasi-optical waves (Radio), electromagnetic waves of such short wavelength that their laws of propagation are similar to those of visible light. 1965B.B.C. Handbk. 115 The signals which carry domestic broadcasting programmes are usually designed to be received by ground⁓wave on medium and long waves and within a quasi⁓optical range for television and VHF sound broadcasting.
1956Auden in Listener 26 Jan. 137/1 The Paid Announcer..with his quasi-ossianic prose Cuts in upon the lovers, halts the band, To name a sponsor or to praise a brand.
1895Funk's Stand. Dict., Quasi-periodic, noting a function in which the increase of the variable by a fixed amount is equivalent to the multiplication of the whole function by another function. 1923Proc. R. Soc. A. CIII. 97 These quasi-periodic atmospherics showed considerable diversity of form, the most frequently recurring form was..similar to a uniformly damped sinusoid. 1962W. B. Thompson Introd. Plasma Physics vii. 164 In such situations, the orbit of particles along the magnetic field lines is also quasi-periodic, and again an adiabatic invariant may be formed.
1927B. Russell Outl. Philos. iv. 50 The act of writing produces quasi-permanent material structures. 1967Oceanogr. & Marine Biol. V. 77 The Solomon Divergence is a quasi-permanent phenomenon of the Coral Sea.
1909W. M. Urban Valuation xii. 354 Quasi-personal constructions of the group or the nation. 1934Webster, Quasi-philosophical. 1943Mind LII. 100 If ‘practical’ means ‘relevant to human happiness and misery’ there is hardly anything more practically important than have been certain philosophical or quasi-philosophical ideas. 1960Spectator 22 July 137 Vast quasi-philosophical works of great power.
1881W. James Let. 18 Dec. in R. B. Perry Tht. & Char. W. James (1935) I. 620 One gains an aesthetic pleasure in what you write that is of a quasi physical order. 1953G. E. M. Anscombe tr. Wittgenstein's Philos. Investigations i. 121 You interpret a grammatical movement made by yourself as a quasi-physical phenomenon which you are observing. 1964E. Palmer tr. Martinet's Elem. Gen. Linguistics iv. 131 French has a class of ‘adjectives’ characterized by uses which are quasi-predicative.
1888Bryce Amer. Commw. II. iii. lxxiv. 610 Public or quasi-public organisms.
1907H. Rashdall Theory of Good & Evil II. iii. iv. 373 Biology now finds that it cannot get on without the idea of ‘quasi-purposive’ behaviour in accounting for the growth of the individual organisms. 1943Mind LII. 346 A rationalist may be one who, admitting a hierarchy of being and value, seeks to explain the universe as exemplifying the highest degree of quasi-purposive significance, or he may be one who, like the Positivists [etc.].
1838J. W. Semple Kant's Relig. within Boundary of Pure Reason p. ix, That it concerns us islanders to know the religious or quasi-religious opinions entertained by our next-door neighbours on the Continent, no sane man, I apprehend, can doubt. 1906W. James Coll. Ess. & Rev. (1920) 465 In the writings of this youthful Italian [sc. Papini]..I find..a tone of feeling well fitted to rally devotees and to make of pragmatism a new militant form of religious or quasi-religious philosophy. 1964P. F. Anson Bishops at Large xi. 505 A quasi-religious community known as ‘The Clerks Secular of St. Basil’. 1977P. Johnson Enemies of Society xii. 169 Marxism is a system of quasi-religious prophecy. 1979Dædalus Summer 156 The Ford scheme aroused Dewey's intense and quasi-religious sense of his mission to the democracy.
a1873Mill Three Ess. Relig. (1874) 204 It is sometimes..wrapt up in a quasi-scientific language. 1970G. E. Evans Where Beards wag All xx. 230 Many archaeologists appear purposefully to avoid the kind of folk-life material discussed here because they see in it some threat to their lately acquired quasi-scientific respectability. 1977Listener 15 Dec. 782/3 Meanwhile, the mis-spelling of the quasi-scientific term minuscule, as miniscule is now so common it is close to becoming accepted English.
1922Quasi-simultaneous [see quasi-sensation]. 1946F. E. Zeuner Dating Past xii. 353 Another instance of quasi-simultaneous evolution of classes and orders is provided by primitive vertebrates. 1956Nature 28 Jan. 178/1 It [sc. the radio telescope] may be used to scan through a small angle in the meridian plane, recording five separate declinations quasi-simultaneously.
1930Physical Rev. XXXV. 944 For the occurrence of raditionless transitions it is essential that the material system..be in a quasistationary state of an energy equal to the energy of some aperiodic motion of the system. 1967Oceanogr. & Marine Biol. V. 38 The method first determines the wind-induced elevations of sea-level at a particular place assuming that the changing wind conditions over the North Sea and the English Channel are quasi-stationary.
1906Spectator 7 Apr. 545/1 When metaphysics begin we flounder among quasi⁓technical platitudes. 1961R. B. Long Sentence & its Parts ix. 224 This kind of thing is commoner in quasi⁓technical use than in general use.
1956Nature 25 Feb. 369/1 Thermodynamic, quasi-thermodynamic and non-thermodynamic methods of investigating the electrochemistry of clays. 1965Phillips & Williams Inorg. Chem. I. vii. 235 We shall show how by investigation of the mechanisms of chemical reactions it is possible to break them down into a series of elementary reactions, each of which may be treated by a quasi-thermodynamic approach.
1946W. S. Churchill Victory 80 Controls under the pretext of war or its aftermath which are in fact designed to favour the accomplishment of quasi⁓totalitarian systems..are a fraud which should be mercilessly exposed to the British public. 1953M. Lowry Sel. Lett. (1967) 337 B.C. at the moment has no government at all, though both of them are totalitarian... Or quasi⁓totalitarian.
1927B. Russell Analysis of Matter xii. 118 In the case of similarity, we have a relation which is capable of degrees, and may be called ‘quasi-transitive’—i.e. if A is very like B, and B is very like C, then A must be rather like C. 1963F. T. Visser Hist. Syntax I. ii. 135 (heading) Quasi-transitive verbs. 1974tr. Wertheim's Evolution & Revolution 177 Brinton's unsuccessful attempt to introduce a quasi-universal, cyclical model of revolution..is symptomatic of the danger of any attempt to deal with the genesis and process of revolutions in general. 1977Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts CXXV. 579/1 Most significant of all is the emergence and quasi-universal adoption of the full-fledged nagara śikhara.
c. [through It.] With pronunc. |ˈkwɑːziː|. Used in musical directions: as if, almost, as quasi-parlando, quasi parlato [It., ‘speaking’, ‘spoken’] n. and advb.
1908R. Dunstan Cyclopaedic Dict. Music 325/1 Quasi parlato, as if spoken. 1945Britten & Slater Peter Grimes ii. i. 183 Ellen semplice (quasi parlato) Nothing to tell me, nothing to say. 1959Listener 5 Mar. 432/3 The quasi-parlando which Puccini uses so effectively as a stage language seems on the screen so desperately sluggish in effect..that [etc.]. 1972V. C. Clinton-Baddeley To study Long Silence i. 45 A fine girl..twirling a malacca cane, and singing, quasi parlando, in a fruity baritone. 1975Country Life 13 Nov. 1312/2 Singers do not have to be provided with tunes—in Tristan..they get by with almost continuous quasi parlando.
II.
3. Introducing an etymological explanation or a word: ‘As if it were’. (Abbreviated q., qu.: see Q. II. 1.)
1588Shakes. L.L.L. iv. ii. 85 Master person, quasi Pers-on. c1630Risdon Surv. Devon §82 (1810) 81 Culme, so called, as some say, quasi Calme. 1686Plot Staffordsh. 419 They are more properly call'd Almanacks, quasi Almon-aght. 1826Scott Woodst. Note 3 Rere-suppers (quasi arrière) belonged to a species of luxury [etc.]. 1866Lowell Biglow P. Wks. (1880) 181/2 The Earls of Wilbraham (quasi wild boar ham).
▪ II. quasi, quasie, quass
obs. ff. quassia, queasy, kvass. |