| 释义 |
▪ I. torture, n.|ˈtɔːtjʊə(r), -tʃə(r)|
Also 6–7 tortour, tortor.
[a. F. torture (12th c. in Hatz.-Darm.), ad. L. tortūra twisting, wreathing; torment, torture; f. torquēre, tort- to twist, torment.]
1. The infliction of severe bodily pain, as punishment or a means of persuasion; spec. judicial torture, inflicted by a judicial or quasi-judicial authority, for the purpose of forcing an accused or suspected person to confess, or an unwilling witness to give evidence or information; a form of this (often in pl.). to put to (the) torture, to inflict torture upon, to torture.
1551Acts Privy Counc. (1891) III. 407 Assisting to the sayd Commissioners for the putting the prisoners..to suche tortours as they shall think expedient. 1593Shakes. 2 Hen. VI, iii. i. 131 You did deuise Strange Tortures for Offendors. 1608D. Price Chr. Warre 21 To punish the bad, and to prouide some sharpe and fearful tortors for them. 1653H. Cogan tr. Pinto's Trav. iv. 10 We put the Captain and Pilot to torture, who instantly confessed. 1708Act 7 Anne c. 21 §5 After [1 July 1709] no Person accused of any Capital Offence or other Crime in Scotland, shall suffer, or be subject or liable to any Torture. 1769Blackstone Comm. (1830) IV. xxv. 326 They erected a rack for torture. 1838Thirlwall Greece III. xxv. 393 Pisander moved that the persons..should be put to the torture, that all their accomplices might be known. 1849Macaulay Hist. Eng. i. (1871) I. 16 According to law, torture..could not..be inflicted on an English subject. 1882Gardiner Hist. Eng. (1884) VI. lxv. 359 note 2 Torture had been allowed [in England] by custom as inflicted by the prerogative, but not by law... Torture was inflicted as late as 1640 by prerogative.
†b. transf. An instrument or means of torture.
1601Shakes. All's Well iv. iii. 135 He calles for the tortures, what will you say without em? 1621G. Sandys Ovid's Met. ix. (1626) 178 To teare the torture [letiferam vestem] off, he striues. 1721–2R. Wodrow Suffer. Ch. Scot. ii. xiii. §5 (1837) II. 458/2 His leg being in the torture [i.e. the boot].
2. Severe or excruciating pain or suffering (of body or mind); anguish, agony, torment; the infliction of such.
c1540tr. Pol. Verg. Eng. Hist. (Camden) I. 269 Doe you preferre the horrible tortures of warre beefore tranquillitee? 1593Shakes. Lucr. 1287 And that deepe torture may be cal'd a Hell, When more is felt than one hath power to tell. 1612Woodall Surg. Mate Wks. (1653) 185 Pain and torture of the intestines. 1659H. More Immort. Soul ii. x. §6. 220 Who would bear the tortures of Fears and Jealousies, if he could avoid it? 1734Bp. Petre Let. in E. H. Burton Life Challoner (1909) I. 93 He wasted away by degrees under the torture of the Strangury. 1744M. Bishop Life & Adv. 52 They were in such great Torture, wishing they had never come to Sea. 1797Mrs. Radcliffe Italian ii, He determined to relieve himself from the tortures of suspense. 1878Browning La Saisiaz 353 As in one or other stage Of a torture writhe they.
b. transf. A cause of severe pain or anguish. (In quot. 1859 humorous.)
1612Brinsley Ludus Lit. viii. (1627) 106 The labour of learning..Authours without booke..is one of the greatest tortures to the poore schollers. 1859Habits Gd. Society xi. 300 Never was a more solemn torture created for mankind than these odious dinner-parties. 1873Hamerton Intell. Life ii. i. (1875) 52 An ugly picture was torture to his cultivated eye. 1908R. Bagot A. Cuthbert xxvii, Do not make me put it into words, it is torture!
3. transf. and fig. with various allusions: Severe pressure; violent perversion or ‘wresting’; violent action or operation; severe testing or examination.
1605Bacon Adv. Learn. ii. xvii. §9 All the kernell [is] forced out and expulsed with the torture and presse of the Methode. c1670Hobbes Dial. Com. Laws (1681) 147 This Statute cannot by Sir Edw. Cokes Torture be made to say it. 1691Ray Creation i. (1692) 87 All the Tortures of Vulcan or corrosive Waters. 1818Byron Ch. Har. iv. lxix, The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture. 1855Brewster Newton I. iv. 91 Experimental results, that may put his own views to the torture. 1887Spectator No. 3067. 491/2 Much so-called wit of the present day is nothing more than the systematic torture of words.
4. attrib. and Comb., as torture-chamber, torture-house, torture-monger, torture-rack, torture-room, torture-wheel; torture-scored adj.
1615J. Stephens Ess. & Char. (1857) 133 An Impudent Censurer—Is the torture-monger of Wit, ready for execution before Judgement. 1829Scott Anne of G. x, Building castles with dungeons and folter-kammers, or torture-chambers. 1837Carlyle Fr. Rev. I. i. ii, Torture-wheels and conical oubliettes. a1847Eliza Cook Silence 2 Poverty has a sharp and goading power To wring the torture cry. 1898S. Coleridge Step by Step 4 The guardian of the secret of the torture-house. 1899Westm. Gaz. 9 Feb. 2/1 The torture-instinct (common alone to human and feline).
▪ II. ˈtorture, v.
Also 6 -or, 7 -er.
[f. prec. n.: cf. F. torturer (1480 in Hatz.-Darm.).]
1. trans. To inflict torture upon, subject to torture; spec. to subject to judicial torture; put to the torture. Also absol.
1593Shakes. 2 Hen. VI, iii. i. 376 Say he be taken, rackt, and tortured; I know, no paine they can inflict vpon him, Will make him say, I mou'd him to those Armes. 1594First Pt. Contention (1843) 35 A murtherer or foule felonous theefe..I tortord above the rate of common law. 1611Bible Heb. xi. 35 Others were tortured [16th c. versions racked], not accepting deliuerance. 1632Lithgow Trav. x. 480 Hee thought hee saw a man Torturing [i.e. being tortured]. 1651Hobbes Leviath. i. xiv. 70 What is in that case confessed, tendeth to the ease of him that is Tortured. 1847Mrs. A. Kerr tr. Ranke's Hist. Servia x. 203 Shall I live to see thee slowly tortured to death by the Turks? 1896‘M. Field’ Attila ii. 48 You will not torture? Placidia. We use that to extort confession, not As punishment.
2. To inflict severe pain or suffering upon; to torment; to distress or afflict grievously; also, to exercise the mind severely, to puzzle or perplex greatly. Also absol. to cause extreme pain.
1588Shakes. L.L.L. v. ii. 60 That same Berowne Ile torture ere I goe. 1611Speed Hist. Gt. Brit. ix. xvi. (1623) 842 To consider how Writers torter us with the diuersities of reports. 1715–20Pope Iliad xi. 985 The closing flesh..ceas'd to glow, The wound to torture, and the blood to flow. 1769Junius Lett. xxix. (1797) I. 203 When the mind is tortured, it is not at the command of any outward power. It is the sense of guilt which constitutes the punishment, and creates that torture. 1849Macaulay Hist. Eng. vi. II. 67 Jeffreys was..tortured by a cruel internal malady. 1855Ibid. xii. III. 167 It was rumoured..that he was tortured by painful emotions.
3. fig.
a. To act upon violently in some way, so as to strain, twist, wrench, distort, pull or knock about, etc.
1626Bacon Sylva §137 The Bow tortureth the String continually, and thereby holdeth it in a Continuall Trepidation. 1743Davidson æneid vii. 198 A top whirling under the twisted lash, which boys..exercise and torture in a large circuit. 1822Shelley To Jane—the Recollection, Pines..Tortured by storms to shapes as rude As serpents interlaced. 186.B. Harte My Other Self in Fiddletown, etc. (1873) 120, I stood at the glass in the desperate attempt to torture my hair after the fashion of young Wobbles.
b. To ‘twist’ (language, etc.) from the proper or natural meaning or form; to distort, pervert. Also with into.
1648W. Jenkyn Blind Guide i. 8 To torture Scripture for the defending of his errors. 1682Dryden Mac Fl. 208 There thou mayst..torture one poor word ten thousand ways. 1789J. Moore Zeluco I. ix. 80 What he said was excusable; to endeavour to torture it into mutiny would be absurd. 1803Visct. Strangford Camoens' Poems Notes (1810) 127 It is surprising that this idea has not been more ramified and tortured by the English metaphysical poets of that school. 1840Poe Tales of Mystery (1905) 365 An unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. 1869Baldw. Brown Chr. Policy Life (1880) 281 There might be a sentence here and there which might be tortured to bear that meaning. 1956E. H. Hutten Lang. Mod. Physics vi. 232 It is possible to torture almost any statement into the logical form of an implication.
4. To extract by torture; to extort. rare.
1687tr. Sallust's Wks. (1692) 29 They..by all manner of extortions hale and torture money to themselves. 1818Keats Endym. iii. 256 Like a wretch from whom the rack Tortures hot breath, and speech of agony. |