| 释义 |
cit arch.|sɪt|
Also 7–8 citt.
1. a. Short for citizen; usually applied, more or less contemptuously, to a townsman or ‘cockney’ as distinguished from a countryman, or to a tradesman or shopkeeper as distinguished from a gentleman; Johnson says ‘A pert low townsman; a pragmatical trader’.
a1644Cleveland Rupertismus (1659), Let Isaac [i.e. Ld. Mayor Pennington] and his Citts flay off the plate That tips their antlers for the Calf of State. 1674Marvell Ballad, O ye addle-brain'd cits! 1735Pope Donne's Sat. iv. 144 Why Turnpikes rose, and now no Cit nor clown Can gratis see the country, or the town? 1771Johnson Th. Falkl. Isl. Wks. X. 63 The cits of London and the boors of Middlesex. 1841Catlin N. Amer. Ind. (1844) II. liv. 185, I intend to..send it to New York for the cits to read. 1881Besant & Rice Chapl. of Fleet i. viii, The low hills of Highgate, Hampstead, and Hornsey, the paradise of cits.
b. Used as feminine: (but cf. citess.)
1706Estcourt Fair Examp. i. i. 9 Mrs. Whims. Poor ignorant Citts, that never knew what the Fashions were in our Lives. 1751Johnson Rambler No. 116 ⁋10 The country ladies despised her as a cit.
c. ? Citizenship, citizen character.
a1745Swift Wks. (1841) II. 56 The knighthood of an alderman spoils his cit.
d. Comb., as cit-like, cit-looking, adj.
a1763Shenstone Œcon. 1 The world, the cit-like world Bids thee beware. 1848W. K. Kelly tr. L. Blanc's Hist. Ten Y. I. 500 Their cit-like importance. 1828Blackw. Mag. XXIII. 364 Decent cit-looking elderly gentlemen.
2. pl. Civilian clothes; ‘civvies’. U.S. Mil. slang.
1829in O. E. Wood West Point Scrap Bk. (1871) 47 My uniform I've taken off, My ‘cits’ I've just put on. 1895C. King Fort Frayne vi. 86 Will was..vaguely longing to get out and air his new ‘cits’. 1907Chicago Tribune 8 May 2 They were in full dress uniform. Later they were joined by Maj. Judson of the engineers in ‘cits’. |