| 释义 |
ˈdog's body, dog's-body, dogsbody
1. A sailor's name for dried pease boiled in a cloth; see also quot. 1924.
1818‘A. Burton’ Adv. J. Newcome ii. 76 I'll get you the Dog's-body Squeezer. 1858Gen. P. Thompson Audi Alt. II. lxxviii. 33 What ungrateful sailors call by the harsh epithets of ‘junk’ and ‘dog's body’. 1924R. Clements Gipsy of Horn 38 Sea-biscuits soaked into a pulp with water and sugar, are known as ‘dogs-body’.
2. A junior person, esp. one to whom a variety of menial tasks is given; a drudge, a general utility person. colloq.
1922T. E. Lawrence Lett. (1938) 365 I'll have got used to being a dog's body. 1925Fraser & Gibbons Soldier & Sailor Words 80 Dogsbody, a Midshipman. A humorous semi-sarcastic colloquialism for any junior officer, R.N. E.g., ‘He's only a dogsbody sub’. 1928Daily Express 3 Apr. 13/2 A midshipman is known..in the service as a ‘snottie’... If he is a junior midshipman he is also a ‘dog's body’. I defy anyone to be accurate and sentimental about a snottie who is a dog's body. 1932H. Simpson Boomerang ix. 184 His post of dog's-body..left him no leisure at all. 1934M. Hodge Wind & Rain ii. i. 57 Oh, no. I don't understand anything! I'm just ‘a dog's body’. 1942M. Dickens One Pair of Feet vii. 116 People who told me I should be a house-parlourmaid ‘on Privates [sc. private wards]’ had over-estimated. I was Dogsbody. 1950L. A. G. Strong Which I Never v. 169 As Assistant Stage Manager and general dog's body, she was grossly overworked and supremely happy. 1955H. Spring These Lovers fled Away vii. 205 My status was never defined. I was everybody's dog's-body. Ibid. xvii. 481 Introduced to a secretary whose dog's-body she was to be. 1967Listener 14 Sept. 332/3, I was a sort of general dogsbody to begin with—assistant stage-manager, and what have you. |