| 释义 |
tick-tack-toe
[tick-tack n.; cf. tip-tap-toe s.v. tip-tap, tit-tat-toe s.v. tit n.2]
a. A children's game played on a slate, consisting in trying with the eyes shut to bring the pencil down on one of the numbers of a set, the number hit being scored.
1884Mag. of Art Feb. 135/2 He saw those children playing tic-tac-toe. 1899Crockett Anna Mark xii, Playing at quoits, tops, marbles, tic-tac-toe, jacks, knuckle-bones.
b. U.S. = noughts and crosses (see nought n. 7 c; ought n.3); also the cross-shaped frame in which this game is played; also fig.
1960S. Plath in Sewanee Review LXVIII. 604 The jacket is patterned with brown squares the size of cigarette packs, each square boldly outlined in black. You could play tick-tack-toe on it. 1975Nat. Geographic Apr. 500 (caption) Tick-tack-toe of a new apartment complex rises amid mud-and-wattle houses in Zanzibar town. 1976N. Thornburg Cutter & Bone xi. 266 A tick-tack-toe form filled with zeros. 1978G. Vidal Kalki i. 8 Just past the tall sick palms at the edge of the pool, the exhaust of a half-dozen jets was making a kind of tick-tack-toe in the dusty brown sky over Los Angeles. 1980Dædalus Spring 46 A computer designed only to issue the company's pay-checks might stalemate me perpetually in tic-tac-toe. |