| 释义 |
ˈflat-head
A. n.
1. a. One who has a flat head; spec. a member of a North American Indian people named from their supposed practice of flattening their children's heads artificially.
The people now commonly known by this appellation is the Selish or Hopilpo; but ‘they do not flatten the heads of their children, and appear never to have done so; the name Flathead being at first applied to them by mistake’ (Encycl. Amer. 1886).
1837Gen. P. Thompson Exerc. (1842) IV. 225 There are flat-heads there [Sierra Leone] as in other countries. 1837W. Irving Capt. Bonneville I. 121 The Flathead levelled his piece, and brought the Blackfoot to the ground. 1841Catlin N. Amer. Ind. (ed. 2) II. 110 The Chinooks..correctly come under the name of Flat Heads, as they are almost the only people who strictly adhere to the custom of squeezing and flattening the head. 1862D. Wilson Preh. Man (1876) II. xxi. 221 The strange practice of American Flatheads far to the north-east of the Altai chain.
b. A fool, simpleton. dial. and slang.
1862C. C. Robinson Dialect of Leeds 50 Ah tell'd him 'at he hedn't t'sense 'at he wur born wi'—a big flathead. 1884‘Mark Twain’ Huck. Finn xxiii. 229 Greenhorns, flatheads! 1902Westm. Gaz. 31 May 2/1 ‘G'n, ye little flathead,’ he said admonishingly, ‘folks don't get headaches here.’ 1922Wodehouse Let. 29 Dec. in Performing Flea (1953) 19 Your stuff is really too good for the ordinary magazine, so that when you don't have a plot which is all right for the flatheads anyway, editors are apt to turn you down. 1941Baker Austral. Slang 29 Flathead, a simpleton or fool. 1966New Statesman 6 May 654/2 Gobbledygook is the defence of the American intellectual aware of the hostile mockery of the surrounding flatheads.
2. Australia. The local name for a fish of the genus Ceratodus.
1832J. Bischoff Van Diemens Land ii. 32 The market of Hobart Town is supplied with small rock cod, flat-heads, and a fish called the perch. 1852Mundy Our Antipodes viii. 195 A good basket of schnappers and flatheads.
3. U.S. ‘A snake which flattens its head, as a species of Heterodon’ (Cent. Dict.).
1888Bergen in Pop. Sci. Monthly XXXIII. 660 The blow-snake of Illinois is variously known in other localities as hog-nose, flat-head, viper, and puff-adder.
4. Arch. An ornament of an archivolt with a flat uncarved surface.
1883J. W. Mollett Dict. Art & Archæol., Flat-heads, an ornament peculiar to the Romano-Byzantine period, which decorates archivolts.
B. attrib. Having a flat head or top.
1874Knight Dict. Mech. I. 878/1 Flat-head Nail, a forged nail with a round, flat head. 1891Scribner's Mag. Sept. 311/1 The flat-head houses of Brooklyn. |