| 释义 |
distribution|dɪstrɪˈbjuːʃən|
[a. F. distribution, earlier -cion (13th c. in Hatz.-Darm.), ad. L. distribūtiōn-em, n. of action f. distribuĕre to distribute.]
The action of distributing.
1. a. The action of dividing and dealing out or bestowing in portions among a number of recipients; apportionment, allotment.
1382Wyclif Heb. ii. 4 God witnessynge by sygnes, wondris..and distribucions [1388 departyngis] of the Hooly Gost. 1413Pilgr. Sowle (Caxton 1483) iv. xxxiv. 82 They taken hede of alle makynge suche distribucions, so that eueriche haue that hym oweth. 1538Starkey England ii. ii. 183 The inequalyte of dystrybutyon of the commyn offyceys. 1662Stillingfl. Orig. Sacr. i. v. §8 Joseph..made a new distribution of the whole Land. 1729Butler Serm. Wks. 1874 II. 36 All shall be set right at the final distribution of things. 1770Junius Lett. xxxix. 198 The crown..will lose nothing in this new distribution of power. 1894Times 21 Dec. 11/5 The annual distribution of prizes and certificates to the pupils.
b. Pol. Econ. (a) The dispersal among consumers of commodities produced: this being, as opposed to production, the business of commerce. (b) The division of the aggregate produce of the industry of any society among its individual members, as in ‘the unequal distribution of the fruits of industry’.
1793tr. A. R. J. Turgot (title) Reflections on the formation and distribution of wealth. 1848–65Mill Pol. Econ. Contents i. ii. §6 Labour employed in the transport and distribution of the produce. Ibid. Prelim. Remarks (1872) 12/2 The diversities in the distribution of wealth are still greater than in the production. Ibid. 14/2 The laws of Production and Distribution..are the subject of the following treatise. Ibid. ii. i. §3 A system of community of property and equal distribution of the produce. Mod. By the system of middlemen which now prevails the cost of distribution is disproportionately great compared with that of production.
2. a. The action of spreading abroad or dispersing to or over every part of a space or area; the condition or mode of being so dispersed or located all over an area; sometimes without implying actual dispersal from a centre.
† In older Physiology (esp. before the discovery of the circulation of the blood), applied to the dispersal of the assimilated food to all parts of the body.
1589Puttenham Eng. Poesie iii. xxv. (Arb.) 309 Helping the naturall concoction, retention, distribution, expulsion, and other vertues, in a weake and vnhealthie bodie. 1620Venner Via Recta v. 90 It is..hard of concoction, and of very slow distribution. 1727–51Chambers Cycl. s.v., The distribution of the food throughout all the parts of the body, is one of the wonders in nature. 1860Tyndall Glac. i. iii. 31 This distribution of temperature must..have some influence on the shape of the [hail] stone. 1875Ure's Dict. Arts III. 657 (Printing-machine) There are three or four small rollers of distribution..by [a] compound movement they are enabled..to effect a perfect distribution of the ink along the table. 1877Huxley Anat. Invert. 19 Certain areas of the earth's surface are inhabited by groups of animals and plants which are not found elsewhere..Such areas are termed Provinces of Distribution. 1885Davidson Logic of Definition x. 296 This Order..has such and such a geographical distribution. 1889A. R. Wallace Darwinism 340 How animals and plants have acquired their present peculiarities of distribution.
b. The occurrence of linguistic elements in a language, in terms of their characteristic position or context (see quots.).
1933Bloomfield Lang. v. 81 Non-distinctive features occur in all manner of distributions. 1951Z. S. Harris Meth. Struct. Ling. ii. 15 The distribution of an element is the total of all environments in which it occurs. 1953C. E. Bazell Ling. Form 6 And if distribution is (as will generally be granted) the surest clue to semantics, it is neither a semantic unit, nor the basis of semantic analysis. 1964R. A. Hall Introd. Ling. v. 26 By distribution, we mean the conditions under which the various elements (allophones, allomorphs, etc.) occur.
3. a. The orderly dividing of a mass or collective body into parts with distinctive characters or functions; the orderly arrangement of the parts into which any whole is divided; division and arrangement; classification.
1605Bacon Adv. Learn. i. vi. §5 (1873) 45 So in the distribution of days we see the day wherein God did rest and contemplate his own works, was blessed. 1668Hale Pref. to Rolle's Abridgm. 6 The Common-Law..wants method, order, and apt distributions. 1712J. James tr. Le Blond's Gardening 201 Care should be taken in this Distribution, that the Fountains be disposed in such manner, that they may be seen almost all at a time. 1790Burke Fr. Rev. Pref. 4 A commodious division and distribution of his matter. 1856Emerson Eng. Traits, Relig. Wks. (Bohn) II. 96 The distribution of land into parishes.
b. concr. A division.
1829Southey O. Newman vii, Omitting The minor distributions (which are many And barbarous all) suffice it to name these..the Pequods first; The Narhagansets [etc.].
c. Statistics. The way in which a particular measurement or characteristic is spread over the members of a class.
1854Amer. Jrnl. Sci. & Arts 2nd Ser. XVII. 396 The very cause which determined the distribution of the atomic weights according to a numerical law. 1886Jrnl. Anthrop. Inst. XV. 351 (title) The comparative distribution of Jewish ability. 1895, etc. [see frequency distribution s.v. frequency 6 b]. 1959Chambers's Encycl. XIII. 150/1 Further examples..are distributions according to income, volume of trade, height and weight. 1971Nature 18 June 416/3 The NSF survey gives the following distribution of graduate students by area of science..: physical sciences 18 per cent.., social sciences 21 per cent [etc.].
4. Logic.
†a. In the earlier English writers used for what is now called division, i.e. the logical division of a genus (a logical whole) into the several species included under it; less properly, the partition of a whole into the integral or constituent parts contained in it. Obs.
1588Fraunce Lawiers Log. i. xiii. 56 b, A distribution is when the whole is distributed into his partes. 1628T. Spencer Logick 143 When we say, a man hath two parts, soule and bodie: Living Creatures are reasonable, and vnreasonable, then we make a distribution. 1698Norris Pract. Disc. (1707) IV. 194 Then he would have given us a full distribution of Immorality, to which all the instances of it might be reduced. 1725Watts Logic i. vi. §10 The word distribution is most properly used, when we distinguish an universal whole into several kinds of species.
b. More recently, after Scholastic usage of Latin distribuere, distributio: The application of a term to each and all of the several individual instances included in its denotation or extension; the acceptation of a term in a general sense including every individual to which it is applicable.
Said of a term qualified explicitly or implicitly by such marks of universality (signa universalia) as all, each, every, any, etc.; the one simple common term being treated as ‘distributed’ over all its significates; e.g. in every man, the term man is spread out over, or dispersed among, this, that, and every other individual man.
This use of distributio (which turns on the question discussed in Plato, Parm. 130 seqq.), first appears in the Schoolmen of the 13th cent., as Shyreswod, and especially Petrus Hispanus (1226–1277), of whose Summulæ the 7th chapter deals with the properties of terms, including Distribution, as an appendix to the exposition of the Organon, and with special reference to the solution of sophisms. The term apparently came into English logic through the medium of Aldrich: see distribute v. 6.
(The speculation in Latham's Johnson s.v. Distributed is wholly gratuitous, and ignores the history of the word.)
[c1250Petrus Hispanus Summulæ vii. 5. 1 Distributio est multiplicatio termini communis per signum universale facta, ut cum dicitur ‘omnis homo’, iste terminus ‘homo’ distribuitur sive confunditur pro quolibet suo inferiori.] 1827Whately Logic i. §5 ‘All food’, or every kind of food, are expressions which imply the distribution of the term ‘food’; ‘some food’ would imply its non-distribution. 1849Mansel Aldrich's Logicæ iii. §3. 4 note, Distribution is not an Aristotelian term. It forms part of what the Schoolmen call parva logicalia; a kind of appendix to analyses of the Organon; containing matters, some evolved from..Aristotle, others complete innovations..The syllogistic rules concerning distribution are of course implied in Aristotle's account of each figure, though not enumerated separately, as common to all. 1864Bowen Logic v. 126 The distribution of the Subject depends upon the Quantity of the Judgment. 1887Fowler Elem. Deduct. Logic (ed. 9) iv. 34 The distribution or non-distribution of an attributive, as ‘human’, ‘red’, etc., follows that of the corresponding common term, ‘human being’, ‘red thing’, etc.
5. Rhet. (See quots.)
1553T. Wilson Rhet. (1567) 95 a, It is also called a distribution, when we deuide the whole into seuerall partes, and saie we haue fower pointes, wherof we purpose to speake, comprehending our whole talke within compasse of the same. 1727–51Chambers Cycl., Distribution, in rhetoric, is a kind of description; or a figure whereby an orderly division and enumeration is made of the principal qualities of a subject.
6. Arch. The arrangement of the several parts of a building, esp. of the interior divisions or apartments. (Cf. disposition 1 d.)
[1624Wotton Archit. 120 Distributio is that vsefull Casting of all Roomes for Office, Entertainement, or Pleasure, which I haue handled before.] 1727–51Chambers Cycl., Distribution of the plan, denotes the dividing, and dispensing the several parts, and members, which compose the plan of a building. 1876Gwilt Encycl. Archit. §2489 Distribution and disposition are the first objects that should engage the architect's attention, even of him whose great aim is to strike the attention by ornament, which can never please unless its source can be traced to the most convenient and economical distribution of the leading parts.
7. Printing. The action or process of distributing type: see distribute v. 5.
1727–51Chambers Cycl., Distribution, in printing, the taking a form asunder, separating the letters, and disposing them in the cases again, each in its proper cell. 1875Ure's Dict. Arts III. 651 Distribution is performed four times faster than composition.
8. Steam-engine. ‘The steps or operations by which steam is supplied to and withdrawn from the cylinder at each stroke of the piston; viz., admission, suppression or cutting off, release or exhaust, and compression of exhaust steam prior to the next admission’ (Webster 1864).
9. attrib., as distribution board Electr., an insulated panel carrying terminals, fuses, etc., for controlling a number of subsidiary electrical circuits; distribution map (see quot. 1951).
1907Installation News Apr. 11/2 The ordinary type of distribution board where the switches and fuses are enclosed under one cover. 1933Archit. Rev. LXXIV. 202 Most buildings are now wired on the ‘distribution board’ method which collects all fuses together. 1947J. & C. Hawkes Prehist. Brit. vii. 177 For all work of this kind..the prehistorian uses distribution-maps. In these the find-spots..are plotted on a map. 1951Oxf. Jun. Encycl. IV. 254/1 In recent years new kinds of maps have been developed to show such things as the distribution of rainfall, temperature, population, crops, and other things of importance and interest. These are called distribution maps, or statistical maps.
Add:[9.] distribution function Math., (a) the number of distinct ways in which a given number of objects can be distributed according to a particular partition (partition n. 6 b); (b) any non-decreasing function which takes non-negative values and tends to a maximum of 1, esp. when considered as the integral of a corresponding probability density function.
1889Proc. London Math. Soc. XIX. 223 The *Distribution Function of n objects into parcels (p1 q1 r1..) is the expression [etc.]. 1924Astrophysical Jrnl. LIX. 313 The distribution function for velocity has been established. 1935Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. XXXVIII. 48 The proper method in dealing with distribution functions and their convolutions..is the method of Fourier transforms. 1980A. J. Jones Game Theory i. 49 A distribution function on [0, 1] is a non-decreasing real valued function F such that 0≤F(x)≤1 and F(1) = 1. |