| 释义 |
ˈdead-hand
Also dead hand.
1. a. = mortmain (of which it is a translation).
[c1380Wyclif Wks. (1880) 131 Þei wolle not cesse til alle be conquerid in-to here dede hondis.] 1612Bp. Hall Serm. v. 64 What liberal revenues..were then put into Mortmain, the dead-hand of the Church! 1670Blount Law Dict. s.v. Ad quod damnum, The Land so given, is said to fall into a Dead hand. For a Body Politick dies not, nor can perform personal service to the King, or their Mesne Lords, as single Persons may do. 1879Morley Burke (1880) 162 Forty-thousand serfs in the gorges of the Jura, who were held in dead-hand by the Bishop of Saint-Claude. 1880A. J. Wilson in Macm. Mag. 469 That benevolence of the ‘dead hand’, which corrupts and blights all its victims.
b. fig. An oppressive and retarding influence. Cf. mortmain sense c.
[1871Scribner's Monthly Nov. 19/1 The dead hand of Wesley has been stronger than the living hand of any pope.] 1935Discovery Oct. 301/2 This cannot fairly be described as the ‘dead hand’ of the National Trust. 1955Times 29 June 11/2 He would have fought the Government dead hand which fantastically enforces small papers ten years after the war. 1971Daily Tel. (Colour Suppl.) 25 June 13/3 Eisenhower's dead hand on space was an obvious electoral issue for the two incoming presidential candidates to seize on.
2. colloq. An expert (at doing something).
1848Thackeray Bk. Snobs vii, He is a dead hand at piquet. 1862G. O. Trevelyan Interludes in Verse & Prose (1905) 181 A young member of the Secretariat, a dead hand at a minute. 1888‘R. Boldrewood’ Robbery under Arms I. xv. 194 First-rate work it was, too; he was always a dead hand at splitting.
Hence dead-ˈhanded a., oppressively old-fashioned or out-dated.
1928D. H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley xviii. 333 It was stupid, dead-handed higher authority that made the army dead. |