释义 |
▪ I. sortie, n.|ˈsɔːtiː| Also 7 sorti. [a. F. sortie a going out, etc., f. sortir sort v.2] †1. (See quot. 1690.) Obs.
1690? Evelyn Mundus Muliebris 20 Sorti, a little Knot of small Ribbon, peeping out between the Pinner and Bonnet. c1691Songs & Poems Costume (Percy Soc.) 200 Her shabbarons next I'll show, Her sortie, and patches of black. 2. a. A dash or sally by a besieged garrison upon an investing force. Freq. in phr. to make a sortie.
1778H. Walpole Let. 8 Oct. (1967) XXIV. 413 Before their last sortie, one heard nothing but What news of the fleets? 1795Seward Anecd. II. 217 If the enemy..thought fit to make any sortie from the town. 1811Wellington in Gurw. Desp. (1837) VII. 285 In case your sortie should succeed (which will place the war on its legs again in the best manner). 1843Prescott Mexico vi. vi. (1864) 386 To repel the sorties, made..by the militia of the capital. 1874Green Short Hist. viii. §9 A sortie from Dublin had already broken up Ormond's siege of the capital. transf.1827Scott Jrnl. 2 Jan., The rheumatism, exasperated by my sortie of yesterday, has seized on my..knee. 1831Greville Mem. (1875) II. xiii. 119 She was mighty glorious about her sortie upon Lambton. 1859Once a Week I. 455 He made a sortie from the box like a lion rushing into the circus. b. Without article.
1845D. Costello Tour Valley Meuse 156 Subterraneous passages..used for sortie and retreat by the garrison of the castle. c. attrib., as sortie corvette, sortie party.
1887Pall Mall G. 11 Jan. 2/1, I am not..aware that Germany..proposes to employ ‘sortie corvettes’ in the absence of guns or submarine mines. 1896Morrison Child Jago iv, The defeated sortie-party from Jago Court. d. An operational flight by a military aircraft.
1918B. Hall En l'Air viii. 76 My machine was a single-seated Nieuport biplane... I carried 1,000 rounds of ammunition... An air sortie at dawn! 1941Hutchinson's Pictorial Hist. War 19 Mar.–13 May 64/2 The main target of the R.A.F.'s night sorties is the industrial centre of Emden. 1955Times 29 June 10/3 In the five active days of the test the two sides flew 12,347 sorties and simulated the dropping of over 300 atomic bombs. 1969G. Macbeth War Quartet 37 Then Waking..we were up..for New sorties. 1977R.A.F. News 27 Apr.–10 May 11/3 The Phantom has an average sortie capability of more than 1½ hours. e. Photogr. A series of aerial photographs taken during one flight; transf., a photographic session. Also attrib.
1953R. J. C. Atkinson Field Archaeology (ed. 2) i. 24 The unit of classification of prints is the sortie, that is, a series of prints taken on a single flight. Each sortie consists of one or more strips of prints, running approximately in an East-West direction, each print overlapping the next to East and West by about two-thirds of its width. Ibid., Each print..is labelled at the top with the sortie-number. Ibid. 25 Sortie plots may be bought separately at the same charge per plot. 1959N. Mailer Advts. for Myself (1961) 229 One sortie when she was photographed sipping a soda she shaped the second straw into a heart. 1963W. K. Kilford Elem. Air Survey x. 226 When the sortie is complete the film is processed... The relative position of each photograph..of the sortie is plotted. 1969G. C. Dickinson Maps & Air Photographs xv. 246 A set of photographs taken during one flight is usually known as a sortie. Ibid. 247 More detailed information about coverage is contained on index diagrams, known as sortie plots. 3. a. A sally-port. b. An outlet (of a river).
1809D. Thompson Jrnl. 18 Aug. (1950) ii. 31 The Sortie of the [stream] that falls into the [stream] at Deer's Horns Plains. 1848Lytton Harold xii. vii, Three sorties, whence the defenders might sally. 187919th Cent. 1121 The Kalamas has its sortie opposite Corfu. 4. attrib. in Astronautics, designating spacecraft designed to return to earth after a period; so sortie mission.
1972National Observer (U.S.) 27 May 6/4 NASA also plans a ‘sortie module’, a laboratory for six scientists and engineers that would be carried in the orbiter's cargo bay for earth-orbit missions lasting from one to four weeks. 1972New Scientist 6 July 3 NASA has offered Europe the ‘sortie can’—a pressurised laboratory module that is to swing out from the cargo bay of the orbiting shuttle. 1973Times 15 June 27/7 Here the proposal is that Europe would develop a ‘sortie lab’ or ‘spacelab’ module. 1976Lohman & Lee in L. G. Napolitano Space Activity Impact on Sci. & Technol. 108 In a series of flights, these aircraft duplicate the observations which would be conducted in a single sortie mission. ▪ II. ˈsortie, v. Also sorty. [f. prec.] intr. To make a sortie; to sally. Hence ˈsortieing ppl. a.
1871Standard 27 Jan., Pressing on, the sortying party advanced up the heights. 1899Westm. Gaz. 23 Nov. 7/2 Unsuccessful attempts to sortie are supposed to have been made. 1904Daily Chron. 23 May 5/1 To cover the movements of the sortieing force. |