| 释义 |
shroff, n.|ʃrɒf|
Also 7 sheroff, -affe, -iffe, sharoffe, sherrafe, shraff, shrofe, 7–8 sheraff.
[Anglo-Indian corruption of saraf.]
A banker or money-changer in the East; in the Far East, a native expert employed to detect bad coin.
1618in Foster Engl. Factories Ind. (1906) 8 The sheraffs are poore and begerly. 1621Ibid. 265 Wee cannot put of oure ryalls but as that onely sharoffe please to take them. Ibid. 352 Shrofes. 1625Purchas Pilgrims ii. 1431 Twelve Sheriffes that is men to buy and sell Pearles, Diamonds, and other pretious Stones, and to exchange Gold and Silver. 1698Fryer Acc. E. India & P. 52 Amongst whom were Shroffs, or Money-changers. 1776Trial of Nundocomar 22/2 It is the custom of Shroffs to get the body of the bond wrote by their Gomastahs, and they sign it with their own hands. 1816‘Quiz’ Grand Master ii. 18 The breakfast soon dispatch'd, they're off, To borrow money from a shroff. 1888Kipling Departm. Ditties (ed. 3) 81 Deeply indebted to the village shroff. 1904North-China Herald 27 May 1121/3 A shroff employed by Messrs. Musterberg & Co.
attrib.1882‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton 58, I have heard of as much as fifty taels (about $70) being paid to an important Shroff-shop for such a transaction.
Hence shroff v. trans., to examine (coin) in order to separate the genuine from the base; also absol.; whence ˈshroffing vbl. n. and ppl. a.; shroffing school, a school in which the art of detecting false coin is taught.
1757Clive in Beveridge Hist. India (1862) I. 592 [In vain did Clive represent that] the money could not be divided till it was shroffed. 1860T. L. Peacock Gryll Grange xviii, Two stock-jobbing Jews, and a shroffing Parsee. 1878H. A. Giles Gloss. Ref. 129 (Yule) Shroffing schools are common in Canton, where teachers of the art keep bad dollars for the purpose of exercising their pupils. 1882‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton 55 The process of shroffing which it [money] underwent before being deposited in the treasury. 1906Sat. Rev. 14 Apr. 451/1 The potential revenues of China are immense, but they are ‘shroffed’..by every hand through which they pass. |