| 释义 |
ˈdive-dapper Obs. exc. dial.
Also 6 dive-doppel, 6–7 dive-dopper.
[The form dive-doppel is app. a dim. of divedop, -dap; the form in -dapper, -dopper, is assimilated to agent-nouns in -er.]
A small diving waterfowl; a dabchick; = didapper; also applied to other diving water fowls.
1559Becon Display. Popish Mass Prayers, etc. (1844) 276 Then once again kneel ye down, and up again, like dive-doppels, and kiss the altar. 1592Shakes. Ven. & Ad. 86 Vpon this promise did he raise his chin, Like a diuedapper peering through a waue. 1605Drayton Man in Moone 187 And in a Creeke where waters least did stirre, Set from the rest the nimble Divedopper. 1659D. Pell Impr. Sea 383 note, The black dive-dappers in the salt-waters. 1783Ainsworth's Lat. Dict., A didapper, or dive dapper, mergus. 1885[see dive-dap].
b. Applied, ludicrously, to a person.
1607Middleton Trick to catch Old One iv. v. Wks. (Bullen) II. 340 Behold the little dive dapper of damnation, Gulf the usurer. 1654Trapp Comm. Ps. xxix. 3 Yet your dive-dappers duck not at this rattle in the air.
Hence ˈdive-dopping ppl. a. (nonce-wd.), diving or ducking like a dabchick.
1615J. Stephens Satyr. Ess., Informer (1857) 193 He is worse then an Otter-hound for a dive-dopping Ale-house keeper: and hunts him out unreasonably. |