| 释义 |
suitcase|ˈs(j)uːtkeɪs|
[f. suit n. + case n.2]
1. A small portmanteau designed to contain a suit of clothes. Hence more generally, a piece of luggage in the form of an oblong case, usu. with a hinged side and a handle, for carrying clothes and other belongings.
1902Times 8 May 15/1 Captain Clive..sent on his suit-case and other luggage by another train. 1942W. Faulkner Go Down, Moses 235 The boy waked him at last and got him and the suitcase off the train. 1981D. M. Thomas White Hotel iv. i. 133 She realized they were travellers, for they were weighed down by rucksacks and suitcases.
2. Phr. to live out of (or from) a suitcase (or suitcases): to move between temporary accommodation, esp. hotels and boarding houses; to be a wanderer, to have no fixed abode.
1946L. Durrell Let. 25 Sept. in Durrell & Miller Private Corr. (1963) 229, I can't tell you what wonderful peace and quiet it is, having a house of your own after so many years living from suitcases in hotels. 1960J. Weightman tr. H. de Montherlant's Sel. Essays 181 To live for years on end out of a small suitcase..seemed so much part and parcel of my everyday life. 1969Photoplay Jan. 69/1 ‘It never occurred to me it would take ten years to settle down,’ Audrey said recently, after ten years of living out of suitcases. 1975C. Egleton Skirmish xiii. 132 He had spent the greater part of his life living out of a suitcase.
3. a. attrib. Designating devices small or compact enough to be fitted into a suitcase, usu. in connection with secret or criminal activities, as suitcase bomb, suitcase radio, etc.
1954Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch 25 Mar. 16 (heading) Now the ‘suitcase A-bomb’. Ibid. 16/2 All of which means that a ‘suitcase atom bomb’ is no longer a figment of the imagination. 1972T. Ardies This Suitcase is going to Explode xiii. 134 Suitcase bombs have been discussed..in public. Ibid. xvii. 188 Very damning stuff—such as the plans for constructing a suitcase nuclear bomb. 1974L. Deighton Spy Story xix. 207 Our boy with the suitcase radio set came in five by five. A powerful signal.
b. Comb., as suitcase farmer N. Amer., a farmer who is resident on his farm for only a small part of the year (see quots.).
1941R. Diller Farm Ownership, Tenancy, & Land Use 2 ‘Suitcase farmer’ is a term used of farmers on the Great Plains who put in a crop of wheat in the fall and come back to harvest it the next summer, after having spent the winter in their permanent homes elsewhere. 1956Saturday Night (Toronto) 13 Oct. 15/1 The wheat-marketing problem means the end of the ‘suitcase farmer’, who has been accustomed to spend only a few weeks on his land each spring and summer for seeding and harvesting. 1970Duckham & Mansfield Farming Syst. World ii. ii. 114 A ‘suit-case’ farmer moves seasonally between his several farms. |