| 释义 |
tin-kettle, n.
A kettle of tinned iron.
Often fig. with allusion to its being fastened to a dog's tail to tease and frighten it, or to the noise made by beating it.
1775R. Chandler Trav. Asia M. viii. (1825) I. 28 [Our cook's] tin kettle boiling over a fire in the open air. 1831Carlyle Sart. Res. ii. iii, A Conquering Hero, to whom Fate..has malignantly appended a tin-kettle of Ambition, to chase him on. 1864Trevelyan Compet. Wallah (1866) 172 A new Montgomery..to whose tail fastidious middle life may attach the tin kettle of hostile criticism. 1895B. M. Croker Village Tales (1896) 42 Battered old tin kettle as it was, that despised piano had cost one hundred pounds!
Hence tin-kettle v., trans. to serenade roughly or opprobriously, also to cause (swarming bees) to settle, by beating a tin-kettle; whence tin-kettling vbl. n.; also tin-kettly a., like a tin-kettle.
1875A. J. Ellis tr. Helmholtz' Sensations Tone 119 Their quality of sound is..unmusical, bad, and tin-kettly. 1881A. Bathgate Waitaruna xvii. 234, I was wakened by the din caused by a lot of the diggers tin-kettling the newly-married pair. 1892B. Boake Where Dead Men Lie (1897) 103 What cheering and tin-kettling Had they after at the ‘settling’. 1898N. & Q. 9th Ser. I. 116/2 An inn-keeper was reported to have beaten his wife,..so [his neighbours] ‘tin-kettled’ him right royally. 1900H. Lawson On Track 5 The diggers..gave them a real good tinkettling in the old-fashioned style. Ibid. 20 We'd tin-kettle 'em [bees],..and..they'd settle on a branch. |