| 释义 |
dodo|ˈdəʊdəʊ|
[a. Pg. doudo simpleton, fool, as adj. silly.]
An extinct bird, Didus ineptus, belonging to the family Columbidæ, formerly inhabiting the island of Mauritius; it had a massive clumsy body, and small wings of no use for flight; transf. and fig., an old-fashioned, stupid, inactive, or unenlightened person. Phr. (as) dead as the (or a) dodo: see dead a. 32 b.
1628E. Altham Lett. to Sir Edw. Altham 18 June in Proc. Zool. Soc. (1874) 448 A strange fowle, which I had at the Iland mauritius, called by y⊇ portingalls a DoDo. Ibid. [P.S.] Of mr perce you shall receue a iarr of ginger..and a bird called a DoDo, if it live. 1634Sir T. Herbert Trav. 347 Mauritius..here and here only and in Dygarroys, is generated the Dodo [1638 a Portuguize name it is, and has reference to her simplenes] which for shape and rarenesse may Antigonize the Phœnix of Arabia. 1638Ibid. 21 Like the Dodoes wings, more to looke at, then for execution. c1650H. L'Estrange in Sloane MS. 1839. 5, lf. 54 About 1638, as I walked London streets, I [saw] the picture of a strange fowle hong out upon a cloth..went in to see it. It..was a great fowle, somwhat bigger then the largest Turkey Cock.. The keeper called it a Dodo. 1688R. Holme Armoury ii. 289/1 A Dodo, or Dronte..doth equal a Swan in bigness. 1774Goldsm. Nat. Hist. iii. i. vii. ⁋2 Three or four dodos are enough to dine a hundred men. 1832H. T. De la Beche Geol. Man. (ed. 2) 163. 1886 Pall Mall Gaz. 11 Feb. 1/1 The old dodo at Scotland Yard, roused into a state of feverish activity..yesterday converted itself by a tremendous effort into a gigantic turkey-cock. 1896F. Hall in Nation (N.Y.) LXII. 157/2 If he has not indeed gone the way of the dodo and the dinotherium. 1922F. Scott Fitzgerald Let. 18 June (1964) 164 Tom Boyd wrote me that Bridges had been a dodo about some Y.M.C.A. man. 1950A. Wilson (title) Such darling dodos.
attrib.1874L. Carr Jud. Gwynne II. viii. 177 He belongs to the Dodo race of real unmitigated..Toryism. |