释义 |
ˈSunday-school 1. a. A school in which instruction is given on Sunday: esp. such a school for children held in connexion with a parish or a congregation; such schools are now intended only for religious instruction, but originally instruction in secular subjects was also given. Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, was the originator in England of the Sunday-school as an adjunct of a church congregation.
1783Gloucester Jrnl. 3 Nov., Some of the clergy,..bent upon attempting a reform among the children of the lower class, are establishing Sunday schools, for rendering the Lord's day subservient to the ends of instruction, which has hitherto been prostituted to bad purposes. 1783R. Raikes Let. 25 Nov. in Gentl. Mag. (1784) LIV. i. 411/2 The success..has induced one or two of my friends to..set up Sunday schools in other parts of the city, and now a whole parish has taken up the object. 1784Wesley Wks. (1872) IV. 284 Before Service I stepped into the Sunday-school which contains two hundred and forty children, taught every Sunday by several masters. 1791J. Learmont Poems 53 'Tis nae i' power o' Sunday Schools..To fleg Vice out o' her strang holes. 1820Gentl. Mag. XC. i. 430/2 Sunday Schools, instruments of disaffection. 1848Thackeray Van. Fair li, I would rather be a parson's wife, and teach a Sunday School than this. 1885W. H. White M. Rutherford's Deliv. iii, He taught in the Sunday-school, and afterwards, as he got older, he was encouraged to open his lips at a prayer-meeting. attrib.1792Looker-On 24 Mar. 36, I really once detected her knitting stockings, for prizes to the Sunday-school girls. 1836Partington's Brit. Cycl. Lit., etc., III. 855 A Sunday school society was formed in 1785... In 1803, the first Sunday school union was formed in London. 1841Penny Cycl. XXI. 44/1 Sunday-school teachers as a class possess many excellent points of character. 1901W. R. H. Trowbridge Lett. her Mother to Eliz. xx. 96 There was a Sunday-school feast at Braxome. b. transf. A school in which instruction in Socialist principles is given on a Sunday.
1901Young Socialist Apr. 2 We ought to..muster as large an army as possible of young soldiers of our cause... This is already being done in our Socialist Sunday Schools. 1922J. Buchan Huntingtower x. 198 Wee Jaikie went to a Socialist Sunday School last winter. 1930A. P. Herbert Water Gipsies xv. 217 Ernest assumed that it would be a treat for Jane to spend her Sunday afternoon at a proletarian Sunday School. 1978Times 5 May 15/5 As long ago as 1918 to 1925 I attended a William Morris Sunday School in an English industrial city. 2. Used attrib. or as adj. with allusion to the sanctimoniousness, sentimentality, or strict morals held to be inculcated by Sunday-schools: primly moral.
1843Dickens Mart. Chuz. (1844) xxvii. 333 ‘Not the truth?’ cried Tigg... ‘Don't use that Sunday-school expression, please!’ 1894G. B. Shaw Let. 4 July (1965) I. 448 Ober Ammergau was a miserable, genteelified, Sir Noel Patonesque Sunday School piece of illustrated Bibleism: Bayreuth is very different. 1931Amer. Mercury Nov. 352/2 Gone Sunday-School, said of a circus that has abolished the grift. Ibid. 354/2 Sunday-school show, a show on which gambling games for the public have been prohibited. 1952S. Kauffmann Philanderer (1953) iii. 54 No, it doesn't matter how good he is; how good he tries to be, human good, not Sunday-school good. That's what matters. 1973Time 25 June 6/2 Like the circus before it, the carnival is today largely a ‘Sunday school’ operation. Hence ˈSunday-ˌschooling rare, Sunday-school teaching.
1847Helps Friends in C. i. viii. 158 In such a thing as this Sunday schooling,..a judicious man..would endeavour to connect it with something interesting. |