| 释义 |
▪ I. culling, vbl. n.1|ˈkʌlɪŋ|
[f. cull v.1 + -ing1.]
1. a. The action of selecting or picking.
c1440Promp. Parv. 107 Cullynge, or owte schesynge, separacio, segregacio. 1663Flagellum, or O. Cromwell (1672) 70 The House being thus purged, as they called it..the remaining Juncto of his Culling..passed an Ordinance for Tryal of the King. 1878Newcomb Pop. Astron. ii. v. 225 This culling-out is called Selective Absorption.
b. The action of the verb (sense 4).
1938Times 14 Feb. 20/1 Losses incurred through death and culling are commonly in the region of 30 per cent. 1958Times 1 Nov. 9/4 Litters are bred on more sparing lines than formerly, which means that there are fewer surplus hounds, and the job of ‘culling’ or drafting is all the more difficult. 1964C. Willock Enormous Zoo vi. 102 The experimental shooting of hippo—culling is the polite conservation term for it—had begun. 1978Orcadian 31 Aug. 1/2 There was no British firm that could take on the two-year contract for the culling work. 1986Daily Tel. 28 Apr. 11/8 In staghunting and deer culling, the sex of the prey is selected carefully.
2. concr. The proceeds or residue of culling; a selection; pl. portions drafted out.
1692A. Walker Acc. Icon Basilike 32 (L.) That the Lord Fairfax would take anything out of the cabinet, and send up the cullings to the parliament. 1780D. Brodhead in Sparks Corr. Amer. Rev. (1853) II. 449 The remaining Continentals are the cullings of our troops, and I cannot promise anything clever from them. 1865Reader 5 Aug. 144/3 A passage like the following reads more like a culling from the Oxford ‘Lives of the Saints’.
3. Farming. See quots. and cf. cull n.3 2, culler 2. Also attrib.
1611Cotgr., Brebis de rebut, an old or diseased sheepe thats not worth keeping; wee call such a one, a drape, or culling. 1627Drayton Nymphidia vi. 1496 (L.) My cullings I put off, or for the chapman feed. 1652S. Clarke Lives (1677) 334 To leave the cullen sheep in a hard condition. a1796Vancouver in A. Young Ess. Agric. (1813) II. 284 An assemblage of the refuse stock, and cullings of the adjacent..counties. 1879G. F. Jackson Shropshire Word-bk., Cullings, the residue, as of a flock of fatted sheep, of which the best have been picked out.
4. Comb. culling-iron, a long-handled slender hammer, with which the mature oysters are separated from the object on which they have been deposited.
1891Scribner's Mag. Oct. 482.
▪ II. † ˈculling, vbl. n.2 Obs. or dial.
[f. cull v.2]
Embracing, ‘cuddling’.
1490Caxton Eneydos xviii. 69 By oure kyssynge and swete cullynge. 1601Holland Pliny I. 231 Such a culling and hugging of them they keep. |