| 释义 |
flatland|ˈflætlənd, ˈflætlænd|
Also flat land.
1. A region of flat land. orig. U.S.
1735Springfield Rec. II. 505 In the Said Ledge Hill then over Rocky flatland we found a Small white marked & Renewed it. 1836J. Hall Statistics of West 31 That [water] which overflows the flat lands, will be stagnant, or flow gently backward in eddies. 1892A. E. Lee Hist. Columbus, Ohio I. 697 The rain poured down in sheets, inundating the flat-land. 1907W. H. Koebel Return of Joe 167 A couple of thousand feet below us was spread the stretch of flatland. 1934J. L. Myres in E. Eyre Europ. Civilization I. 89 Westward towards the Atlantic from the lofty core of Central Asia, the north-west quadrant of the Old World land-mass extends in three great belts, a Northern and a Southern Flatland, separated by a..Mountain-zone... The two flatlands consist of relatively steady blocks of old crust. 1959Times 18 June (Suppl., Queen in Canada) p. vii/7 The flatlands of Prince Edward county. 1961Guardian 25 March 6/4 Its rich wheat fields..do show what can be done in the Sardinian flatlands. 1970Guardian 18 July 1/8 Newark sprawls across the industrial flatlands that lie across the Hudson River from New York.
2. (With capital initial.) An imaginary land in space of two dimensions (see quot. 1884).
1884Abbott Flatland i. §1 (ed. 2) 3, I call our world Flatland..Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above it or sinking below it. 1892W. W. R. Ball Math. Recr. x. 191 We may picture the inhabitants of flatland as moving..on the surface of a plane or between two parallel and adjacent planes.
Hence ˈFlatlander, an inhabitant of Flatland.
1884Abbott Flatland (ed. 2) Pref. |