| 释义 |
ˈsniffer
[sniff v.]
1. a. One who sniffs (lit. and fig.).
1864Realm 1 June 8 Sniffer and snorter. 1889Pall Mall G. 30 Jan. 3/1 Those who are deaf and those who are sniffers.
b. spec. One who sniffs a drug or toxic substance. Cf. glue-sniffer s.v. glue n. 6. orig. U.S. slang.
1920E. S. Bishop Narcotic Drug Problem iii. 23 The heroin ‘sniffer’ of idle and curious adolescence. 1928Amer. Mercury Aug. 485/2 The Baron was..a ‘sniffer’ himself. 1942J. Henry Henry's Famous Cases iv. 40 Cocaine addicts are known as ‘sniffers’. 1968Guardian 22 Mar. 11/1 Doreen was also a ‘sniffer’. This is the name given to people who inhale a mixture of ether and methylated spirits and become ‘blocked’. 1981Daily Tel. 24 Apr. 3/1 A glue sniffer is under the influence of a drug for the purposes of the 1972 Road Traffic Act, magistrates decided yesterday when a self-confessed ‘sniffer’ denied being unfit to drive through drink or drugs while in charge of a motorcycle.
2. slang. The nose.
1858[see pile-driver 2]. 1962R. Cook Crust on its Uppers ii. 34 They'll..look down their sniffers at you.
3. a. Any device for detecting gas, radiation, etc. colloq.
1945Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch 10 Oct. 2/5 The hydrogen content in copper wire annealing furnaces..is now continuously indicated by a new sensitive apparatus called a sniffer nose. 1946Sun (Baltimore) 21 June 10/3 Louis E. De La Fleur..demonstrated a small hand-borne radio fixer, known as a ‘sniffer’. He said that it was so accurate that he had been able..to locate an outlaw transmitter in a New York apartment house where hundreds of legal radios and electrical devices were putting out potential inteference. 1950Listener 5 Jan. 12/1 These tiny Geiger counters first came to public attention last spring in New York... Uranium can turn up anywhere so there is no reason why, if you had a ‘sniffer’, as they are called, you should not start prospecting here in Great Britain. 1968Guardian 5 Sept. 2/7 Perch a radar sensor on the tail..: insert a diesel fume ‘sniffer’. 1972‘J. Lange’ Binary 170 The sniffer..had been developed for use in Vietnam and had been adapted for customs operations... If the sniffer said plastic explosive was behind the door, he had to believe it. 1979F. Pohl Jem iii. 26 The car was..an indispensable necessity in what he did for the agency; twice a day, other employees of the agency went over it with electronic sniffers and radio probes to make sure it had been neither bombed nor bugged.
b. Usu. sniffer dog. A dog trained to detect specific odours, esp. those of drugs or explosives. colloq.
1964N.Y. Times Mag. 23 Aug. 62/3 Sniffer, police dog. 1975A. Beevor Violent Brink iii. 66 We are using..sniffer dogs at ports and airports so as to increase our chances of catching the explosive coming in. 1977Air Mail Spring 7/1 In the first two months ‘sniffer’ dogs and handlers trained by the RAF Police Dog Training Flight had helped British Customs and Excise officers detect {pstlg}125,000 worth of smuggled drugs. 1979Daily Tel. 17 Apr. 1/6 Forty-five ‘sniffer’ dogs were flown into Yugoslavia from Switzerland and set to work to smell out casualties from debris in towns around Kotor Bay. 1982Times 3 Sept. 10/5 Sniffer-dogs for drugs.
▸ Computing. Also with capital initial. A proprietary name for: a program or device for monitoring network traffic, sometimes used improperly to obtain restricted information such as passwords or e-mails (cf. packet sniffer n. at packet n. and adj. Compounds 2). More fully sniffer program.
1986InfoWorld (Nexis) 28 July 15 The Sniffer..is a protocol analyzer for developers of network hardware, operating systems, and application software. 1994Sunday Times 6 Feb. 15 The hackers have developed sophisticated programs called ‘sniffers’ which discover passwords, unlock mail messages and can glean critical credit card details that make fraud almost impossible to detect. 1995Seattle Times 16 July c3/4 He ran a ‘sniffer’ program that recorded users' keystrokes, allowing him to capture, among other things, the login and password of an Eskimo North user. 2003UnWired May 27/2 If you're wary of whipping out your precious laptop in strange places, carry iDetect's WFS-2 Wi-Fi Sniffer, a credit-card-sized pocket device with LEDs that light up in the presence of a network. |