| 释义 |
ready-made, ppl. a. phr., a., and n.
[f. ready a. 16 + made: orig. a participial phrase used only as a predicate, in later use regarded as a comb. and hyphened (even in predicative use).]
†1. Made ready, prepared. Obs.
c1440Jacob's Well 22, I se helle opyn, & my place redy made þere. 1547Boorde Introd. Knowl. (1870) 185 They haue euer..tymber readye made to make a hondred gales or more. 1588Whitehorne tr. Machiauel's Art Warre vii. 102 b, Y⊇ fortifications being readie made.
2. a. Of made or manufactured articles: In a finished state, immediately ready for use; now spec. of articles which are offered for sale in this state, in contrast to others of the same kind which are made to order.
[1390Gower Conf. III. 312 Whanne he sih and redy fond This cofre mad.] 1535Coverdale Ezek. xxvii. 19 Dan, Iauan, and Meusal haue brought vnto thy markettes, yron redy made. 1568Grafton Chron. II. 355 Neyther is there in Scotland..leather to make harnesse for their horse, as Saddels, Bridels, &c. But they haue all these thinges readie made out of Flaundyrs. 1631Weever Anc. Funeral Mon. 498 To each one, a Gowne and a hood ready made. 1687A. Lovell tr. Thevenot's Trav. i. 33 A Coffee-hane (so they call the place where they sell it [coffee] ready made). 1768–74Tucker Lt. Nat. (1834) II. 515 They expect to buy understanding and sentiments, as they do wares, ready made, at a shop. 1853Sir H. Douglas Milit. Bridges 337 To move the bridge, ready-made, to its place. 1860Mrs. Carlyle Lett. III. 20, I fell to cutting out that jacket last Monday,..better to have bought one ready-made. 1875in Ruskin Fors Clav. lix. notes V. 321 Never buy cheap ready-made clothing of any kind whatsoever.
b. In phrases used attributively.
1844Alb. Smith Adv. Mr. Ledbury vi. (1886) 20 [He] repaired to a ready-made clothes establishment in the Palais Royal. 1874Burnand My time xviii. 151, I used..[to] admire the garments in a ready-made clothes shop.
3. a. Hence applied to any thing or person which exists in a finished or complete form, either naturally or as the result of some process; freq. used with depreciatory force, in allusion to the inferiority of certain ‘ready-made’ articles of trade.
1738Swift Polite Conv. 102 A good Wife must be bespoke, for there is none ready made. 1801Moore To ― Poems 88 You will be An angel ready-made for heaven! 1890Spectator 7 June, We all nowadays..elect our leaders instead of taking them ready-made.
b. In attributive use.
1777P. Thicknesse Year's Journey II. lii. 153 The principal manufacture of the city [sc. Paris]; i.e. ready-made love. 1797Burke Regic. Peace iv. Wks. IX. 44 A shop of ready-made Bankruptcy and Famine. 1813Shelley Q. Mab iii. 41 Some ready-made face Of hypocritical assent. 1869J. Martineau Ess. II. 64 He carries about with him certain ready-made formulas. 1871Freeman Norm. Conq. (1876) IV. xvii. 64 Their own Richard's Castle was a ready-made outpost of the Norman King.
4. Pertaining to, dealing in, ready-made articles.
1809Malkin Gil Blas vi. i. ⁋7 The ready-made warehouse, where I bought these dresses. 1853Lowell Moosehead Jrnl. Pr. Wks. 1890 I. 39 True enough, thought I, this is the Ready-made Age.
5. n.
a. A ready-made article; esp. a ready-made garment or suit of clothes. Also transf. and fig.
1831M. Edgeworth Let. 29 Mar. (1971) 501 Then she is so fond of..her own family. She seems as if she was a ready-made for Fanny. 1882Standard 18 Dec. 8/3 Traveller wanted for the Ready-mades for the Midland Counties. 1898Daily News 9 May 3/6 Stocks of cloths, especially ready-mades. 1905Daily Chron. 22 Nov. 10/2 Wholesale manufacturers and confectioners rejoice greatly as they see their trade in Christmas ‘ready mades’ annually swelling. 1933C. St. J. Sprigg Fatality in Fleet St. vii. 86 He looked like a film Cossack jammed into an East End ready-made. 1967Economist 10 June 1142/1 The typical Italian clothing shop cannot afford to carry a big enough range to demonstrate the advantages of readymades.
b. The term introduced by Marcel Duchamp (1887–1967), French artist, to denote representatives of a dadaistic art-form created by him, in which simple manufactured objects are exhibited as works of art; the art-form itself.
[1915M. Duchamp in A. Schwarz Marcel Duchamp (1969) 54 Précises les ‘Readymades’. En projetant pour un moment..à venir.. ‘d'inscrire un readymade’.] 1935D. Gascoyne Short Survey of Surrealism ii. 28 Such was Marcel Duchamp's disgust for ‘art’ that he invented a new form of expression, which he called Ready-Made. A Ready-Made was any manufactured object that the artist liked to choose. 1958Times 20 May 3/7 The ‘ready-mades’ in which Marcel Duchamp parodied the exhibition work of art, signing his name on such manufactured objects as a wash-basin or a snow shovel. 1968N.Y. City (Michelin Guide) 17 Marcel Duchamp..created his provocative ‘ready-mades’, which consist of simple..objects, which the artist exhibits as works of art (having intervened only to give them names); thus, he displayed..A Fountain, which was..a can bought in a department store. 1972C. W. E. Bigsby Dada & Surrealism ii. 11 The ready-mades were simply objects which he [sc. Marcel Duchamp] himself had selected as being commonplace. |