| 释义 |
▪ I. ˈrack-rent, n.
[f. rack v.3 4 + rent. Rack-rented is found in 1591.]
A very high, excessive, or extortionate rent; a rent equal (or nearly equal) to the full value of the land.
1607J. Norden Surv. Dial. v. 80 An obseruing and painefull husband..thriueth as well upon his farme of rack rent, as many..Freeholders. 1715Act Reg. Papists in Lond. Gaz. (1716) No. 5455/3 Any Farmer or Tenant at Rack-Rent. 1745Season. Adv. Protest. 18 They steal from their Neighbours, to enable them to pay the Land-Jobber his Rack-Rent. 1818Jas. Mill Brit. India I. ii. v. 184 note, One third to the cultivator, and two thirds to the proprietor, would be accounted a rackrent in England. 1879H. George Progr. & Pov. ii. ii. (1881) 111 They lived on the potato, because rack-rents stripped every thing else from them.
attrib.1778W. H. Marshall Minutes Agric. 4 Dec. 1775 Obs., The rack-rent Gentlemen of landed property. 1834Tait's Mag. I. 17/1 Every year growing worse than the last in this rack-rent country.
transf. and fig.1608Middleton Fam. Love i. ii, Nil muliere levius. Tut, man, every one knows their worth When they are at a rack rent. 1768Woman of Honor II. 178 Subjecting to the rack-rent of avarice and insolence that country of theirs.
For def. read: A very high, excessive, or extortionate rent; a rent equal (or nearly equal) to the annual value of the land; now spec. in English law, a rent of at least two thirds of the annual value of the property. (Further examples.)
1875Public Health Act 38 & 39 Vict. c.55 s.4 ‘Rackrent’ means rent which is not less than two thirds of the full net annual value of the property out of which the rent arises; and the full net annual value shall be taken to be the rent at which the property might reasonably be expected to let from year to year. 1950Times 25 May 11/4 The expression ‘rack rent’ was stated in the definition in section 17 to have the same meaning as in section 343 of the Public Health Act, 1936. 1976S. R. Simpson Land Law & Registration iii. 32 The consideration for it is normally a ‘rack-rent’, which is rent fixed by reference to the full annual value of the site and the premises on it; it no longer means an excessive or ‘stretched’ rent, which is how it originally got its name. 1980Daily Tel. 22 Apr. 25/3 The site, which has been empty for years, had been put out to tender by the city authorities and I understand that Norwich Union's offer is 30 p.c. of rack rent to the city.
▪ II. ˈrack-rent, v.
[f. prec.]
1. trans. To subject (a person) to the payment of rack-rent.
1748Richardson Clarissa (1811) I. xiii. 83 It was a maxim with his family..never to rack-rent old tenants or their descendants. 1879H. George Progr. & Pov. 105 Who rack-rent the cultivators most mercilessly.
absol.1856Lever Martins of Cro'M. 138 He hunted, and drank, and feasted and rack-rented.
2. To let (a farm, etc.) at a rack-rent.
1882in Ogilvie.
Hence rackˈrentable a., capable of being rack-rented; ˈrack-ˌrented ppl. a. (in quot. 1591 app. f. the n.); ˈrack-ˌrenting vbl. n. and ppl. a.
1591Sylvester Du Bartas i. iii. 1154 The needy, hard-rack-rented Hinde. 1663E. Butterfield Let. 1 Feb. in M. M. Verney Memoirs of Verney Family (1899) IV. ii. 43, I hate this rack-renting 'tis worse than usury. 1840J. S. Mill in Edin. Rev. LXXII. 46 Much alteration may be requisite in the system of rack-renting and tenancy at will. 1856Lever Martins of Cro'M. 398 Is it rack-renting..would make them popular? 1875Maine Hist. Inst. vi. 175 They were the first ‘tenants at will’..and..were always theoretically rackrentable. 1893Peel Spen Valley 120 The appeal of the poor rack-rented tenantry. 1897Westm. Gaz. 9 Sept. 7/1 Even the most rack-renting of landlords will find..the impossibility of extortion. 1963Economist 3 Aug. 421/1 The rack-renting of London's tenantry. 1969Listener 12 June 815/3 Communism appeals to hundreds of thousands of peasants who hate corruption, rack-renting and foreign intervention. |