| 释义 |
ˈchuck-ˌfarthing
[f. chuck v.2 + farthing.]
A game of combined skill and chance in which coins were pitched at a mark, and then chucked or tossed at a hole by the player who came nearest the mark, and who won all that alighted in the hole. (In modern use probably often applied to pitch and toss, or the like.)
c1690B. E. Dict. Cant. Crew, Chuck farthing, a Parish-Clerk (in the Satyr against Hypocrites) also a Play among Boies. 1712Steele Spect. No. 466 ⁋3, I catched her once..at Chuck-Farthing among the Boys. 1712Arbuthnot John Bull (1755) 23 He lost his money at chuck-farthing, shuffle-cap, and all-fours. 1771Smollett Humph. Cl. III. 11 Oct., He understands..games, from chess down to chuck-farthing. 1840Dickens Barn. Rudge xxxvii, They presently fell to pitch and toss, chuck-farthing, etc.
b. Misapplied to the farthing chucked.
a1834Lamb Lett. iii. To Coleridge 25, I cannot scatter friendship like chuck-farthings.
c. attrib. or as adj. Petty, of paltry value.
1748Richardson Clarissa (1811) IV. 340 At war about some pitiful chuck-farthing thing or other.
d. to play (at) chuck-farthing with: to throw away or risk heedlessly. (Cf. ‘to play ducks and drakes with’.)
1837Syd. Smith Let. Archd. Singleton Wks. 1859 II. 278/1 Playing at chuck-farthing with human happiness. 1883Pall Mall G. 1 Nov., Lord Randolph..declines to ‘play chuck-farthing with the Constitution’. 1888Ibid. 18 Dec. 1/1 What are our Imperialist Ministers doing?..they are playing chuckfarthing with the Empire. |