| 释义 |
fifth column
[tr. Sp. quinta columna; cf. column n. 10.]
Orig. the column of supporters which General Mola declared himself to have in Madrid, when he was besieging it in the Spanish Civil War, in addition to the four columns of his army outside the city (see 1936 quots.); hence, allusively, a body of one's supporters in an attacked or occupied foreign country, or the enemy's supporters in one's own country. Also attrib. and transf. Hence fifth-columnist, freq. loosely, a traitor, a spy. Also fifth columnism.
[1936N.Y. Times 16 Oct. 2/2 Police last night began a house-to-house search for Rebels in Madrid... Orders for these raids..apparently were instigated by a recent broadcast over the Rebel radio station by General Emilio Mola. He stated he was counting on four columns of troops outside Madrid and another column of persons hiding within the city who would join the invaders as soon as they entered the capital. ] Ibid. 17 Oct. 9/4 Prudence counsels the government to forestall as far as possible the activities of this ‘fifth column’.1938E. Hemingway (title) The Fifth Column. 1939War Illustr. 21 Oct. p. ii/3 This looks to me like the Nazis' ‘fifth column’ in Belgium ready for the invasion. 1940W. S. Churchill Into Battle (1941) 222 Parliament has given us the powers to put down Fifth Column activities with a strong hand. 1940Economist 20 Apr. 723/1 Now that the news is beginning to reach the outside world of the..extent and..efficiency of the Nazi plot by which the key positions in Norway's cities and harbours were sacrificed to the invader..the other neutrals are attempting..to cope with the problem of their own ‘Fifth Columns’. 1940G. B. Shaw Platform & Pulpit (1962) 291 If you call Stalin a bloodstained monster you must be shot as the most dangerous of Fifth Columnists. 1941E. Snow Battle for Asia 354 Factions..sabotaged the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies in ways which elsewhere would be called Fifth Columnism. 1941A. Huxley Grey Eminence vii. 146 His enemies..accused him of using his missionaries as French agents and anti-Hapsburg fifth-columnists. 1942Mind LI. 166 Hence Prof. Collingwood arrives at the startling conclusion that psychologists are a group of fifth column conspirators, whose real aim is to destroy western civilisation from within. 1958New Statesman 26 Apr. 538/3 After denouncing the Free World's readiness to let Communist fifth columns flourish undisturbed in its midst, he rails [etc.]. 1958Times Lit. Suppl. 15 Aug. p. xxviii/4 Sensational elements began to infiltrate like fifth-columnists into the work of serious novelists. 1967W. Soyinka Kongi's Harvest 66 I've put him through the standard tests. He's no fifth columnist. 1971Daily Tel. 6 Apr. 1 Most of them had confessed to entering East Pakistan as fifth columnists. |