| 释义 |
ˈtop-ˈhamper
[f. top n.1 + hamper n.2 2.]
Naut. Weight or encumbrance aloft: orig. said of the upper masts, sails, and rigging of a ship; later, also, weight or encumbrance on the deck, as in a steamer, ironclad, etc.
1791Jrnl. Barth. James (Navy Rec. Soc.) 207 The ship being very uneasy from the loss of so much top hamper. 1800Naval Chron. IV. 52 The objects of this invention are:..The great reduction in top-hamper, height, and size of masts. 1829Marryat F. Mildmay xiv, To disengage this enormous top hamper, was to us an object more to be desired than expected. 1840R. H. Dana Bef. Mast xxxi. 114 To see our noble ship dismantled of all her top-hamper of long tapering masts and yards. 1857Maury in Corbin Life (1888) 135 She was a side-wheel steamer, with not a little top hamper, and therefore an ugly thing to manage in such a situation. 1870Daily News 16 Sept., One cannot but suspect that the enormous top hamper, consisting of 4 25-ton guns with her immense turrets, had something to do with her heeling over.
b. transf. and fig. An encumbrance on the top or upper part of anything; something that makes it ‘top-heavy’; the ‘head-piece’.
1861Smiles Engineers II. 269 Though the top-hamper of houses had long been removed, and the piers patched and strengthened at various times, the [London] bridge was becoming every year less and less adapted for accommodating the increasing traffic to and from the City. 1881G. W. Cable Mme. Delphine viii, The returned rover was a trifle snarled in his top-hamper. 1894Sala Things I have seen I. iv. 147 The luggage..was piled..on the roof of the machine; and the whole tophamper was covered with a thick tarpaulin. 1905W. P. Ker Ess. Mediæval Lit. i. 11 Many of Hakluyt's men..carry more rhetorical top⁓hamper than Ohthere. |