| 释义 |
ˈsnake-head
Also snakehead.
[snake n.]
1. a. The North American plant Chelone glabra.
1845–50A. H. Lincoln Lect. Bot. App. 88/2 Chelone glabra (snake-head). 1846–50A. Wood Class-bk. Bot. 400 Snake⁓head. Salt-rheum Weed... A plant of brooks and wet places,..with flowers shaped much like the head of a snake.
b. The snake's head or common fritillary.
1884G. Allen Philistia I. 146 ‘Has your brother ever sent you any of the fritillaries?’ ‘What? snake-heads?’
2. U.S. (See quots. and cf. snake's-head 3). Now Hist.
1845Yankee (Boston) 9 Aug. 3/4 Mr. John F. Wall..was near being killed..by what is technically called a snakehead. 1848Bartlett Dict. Amer. 315 Snake-head,..the end of an iron rail, which sometimes is thrown up in front of the car wheels, and passes through the cars. 1848–71W. M. Gillespie Man. Road-making 305 Most American roads with longitudinal timbers have been laid with plate rails, so thin that their ends sometimes spring up so as to form ‘snake-heads’.
3. A representation of a snake's head. Also attrib.
1865Kingsley Herew. iii, Two ships..whose long lines and snake-heads..bore witness to the piratical habits of their owner. 1887Archit. Soc. Dict. VII. 96/2 Snake head Molding.
4. A tropical marine or fresh-water carnivorous fish of the family Channidæ, esp. one of the genus Ophiocephalus, found in Africa or Asia, usually mottled grey, brown, or black in colour.
1891in Cent. Dict. 1905D. S. Jordan Guide Study of Fishes II. xxi. 370 Snake-head mullets..seem to us nearer the labyrinthine fishes. 1961E. S. Herald Living Fishes of World 244/2 Snakeheads will live for many hours and sometimes days out of water. |