| 释义 |
ˈthree-ˈdecker
[f. three-deck: see decker2.]
1. a. A three-decked ship; formerly spec. a line-of-battle ship carrying guns on three decks.
1792A. Young Trav. France 181 The bason of Toulon, with ranges of three deckers, and other large men of war. 1795[see decker2]. 1797Encycl. Brit. (ed. 3) XVII. 403/1 In three-deckers it [the fire hearth] is..on the middle deck. 1855Tennyson Maud i. i. xiii, If..the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam.
b. fig. Applied to a thing (or person) of great size or importance.
1835E. FitzGerald Lett. (1889) I. 34 Pray do write to me: a few lines soon are better than a three-decker a month hence. 1836E. Howard R. Reefer xlv, Three deckers—words of Latin or Greek derivation. 1877Black Green Past. xxiv, He went over to Mrs. Blythe,..and sat down by that majestic three-decker. 1886Dowden Shelley (1887) I. iii. 115 Some great three-decker of orthodoxy.
2. transf. Something consisting of three ranges or divisions: spec.
a. Nickname for the three-storied pulpit formerly in use, consisting of the desk for the clerk, the reading desk, and the pulpit proper, one above another.
b. A skirt with three flounces.
c. A three-volume novel.
d. A three-storey building. U.S. local.
1852A. Mozley in Christian Remembrancer July 92 In the midst of the church stands, elaborately carved, the offensive structure of pulpit, reading-desk, and clerk's desk; in fact, a regular old three-decker in full sail westward. 1874J. T. Micklethwaite Mod. Par. Churches 56 The Georgian three-decker, the few surviving examples of which are now such objects of scorn. 1894Kipling in Sat. Rev. 14 July 44/1 The old three-decker. And the three-volume novel is doomed. 1895Westm. Gaz. 26 Apr. 2/1 The long-winded novel of our forefathers—what you may call the old three-decker of fiction. 1909Daily Chron. 3 May 7/4 That graceful form of skirt, which consists of three flounces (known sometimes to the irreverent as a ‘three-decker’). 1910Gathorne-Hardy Mem. 1st Earl Cranbrook I. 115 In the place now occupied by the present one [chancel arch] the old ‘three-decker’ stood [in 1858]. 1942Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §83/1 Three- (or more) decker, a building of three, or more, stories. 1961L. Mumford City in History xv. 465 Vast wooden firetraps called three-deckers in New England, happily blessed with open-air porches. 1978J. Carroll Mortal Friends ii. iii. 151 The flat, the top floor of a Southie three-decker, was large enough.
3. attrib. (in senses 1 b and 2).
1860O. W. Holmes Prof. Breakf.-t. ii, A boy..with a three-decker brain. 1890John Bull 5 Apr. 229/1 In the latter part of the eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth centuries..great ‘three-decker’ pulpits blocked up the chancels. 1898Daily News 29 Sept. 3/4 The ‘three-decker’ skirt is supplemented by a three-decker cape. 1904Daily Chron. 27 Apr. 7/4 The winding rope attached to the three-decker cage parted, and it dropped a distance of 2,000 ft. 1926G. Ade Let. 8 Sept. (1973) 110 While some of us have been building chicken coops.., Mr. Dreiser has been creating sky-scrapers. He makes the old three-decker novel look like a pamphlet. 1981N. & Q. June 271/1 The widespread circulation of Evangelical tracts and sermons helped to create a sympathetic readership for the voluminous three-decker novel. |