| 释义 |
soap opera colloq. (orig. U.S.).
[f. soap n. + opera.
So called because some of the early sponsors of the programmes were soap manufacturers. For the use of opera, cf. horse opera s.v. horse n. 28 a.]
1. a. A radio or television serial dealing esp. with domestic situations and freq. characterized by melodrama and sentimentality; this type of serial considered as a genre.
[1938Christian Cent. 24 Aug. 1011/1 These fifteen-minute tragedies..I call the ‘soap tragedies’..because it is by the grace of soap I am allowed to shed tears for these characters who suffer so much from life.] 1939Newsweek 13 Nov. 44/2 Transcontinental Network bubbled up out of the ‘soap operas’. 1948Time 11 Oct. 40/3 The Beast in Me also includes such matter as Humorist Thurber's grimly unhumorous ‘Soapland’ (studies in contemporary soap opera). 1953M. Dickens No More Meadows iv. 180 More and more soap operas had hit the air to sell detergents and deodorants and headache pills. 1978J. Irving World according to Garp xvi. 321 Hoping that the visceral reality of Garp's language..somehow rescued the book from sheer soap opera. 1980Times Lit. Suppl. 24 Oct. 1210/5 Some advertising campaigns [on ITV] have become mini soap-operas.
b. transf. and fig.
1944R. Chandler Lady in Lake v. 36, I haven't heard a word from Muriel in the whole month... I don't have any idea at all where's she's at. With some other guy maybe. I hope he treats her better than I did... Thanks for listening to the soap opera. 1958Spectator 19 Sept. 369/2 Eugene O'Neill's wordy autobiographical play is an endlessly tragic soap-opera, a sort of Mrs. Dale's Diarrhœa. 1962[see huff n. 1]. 1971‘A. Burgess’ MF ii. 25 The act of robbery..near 39th Street... This was daily soap-opera of the streets.
2. attrib.
1942W. Stegner Mormon Country 347 They deal with impressionable virgins caught in the net of polygamy and agonizing worse than any soap-opera heroine through endless difficulties. 1951M. McLuhan Mech. Bride (1967) 157/1 Soap-opera serials are short on action, long on situations. 1958Punch 9 July 59/2 The revival of ‘The Royalty’ (BBC) is the latest development in the soap⁓opera world, on a Channel that has no soap to sell. 1978S. Brill Teamsters ix. 349 Most of the soap-opera intrigue of innuendo and in-fighting was not terribly subtle.
Hence soap-opeˈratic, -opeˈratical adjs., of or characteristic of a soap opera.
1963New Yorker 1 June 66 ‘The L-Shaped Room’... A sentimental piece of work, but so justly and successfully sentimental that it nearly always avoids seeming soap-operatic. 1975Country Life 20 Mar. 742/3 A few weeks ago the BBC concluded a soap-operatical version of the loves of Georges Sand. 1979Boston Globe 18 May 39 From her soap-operatic point of view, Watergate was not a national tragedy but rather was the personal pathos of a woman with nothing to give a husband in need. |