| 释义 |
ˈfool's-cap, ˈfoolscap
1. A cap of fantastic shape, usually garnished with bells, formerly worn by fools or jesters.
1632Massinger City Madam iv. iv, A French hood too..A fool's cap would show better. 1680R. Mansel Narr. Popish Plot Addr. C ij, Some or other will take the Fools⁓cap off from their heads, and put it upon ours. 1789Wolcott (P. Pindar) Ode xiv. Wks. 1812 II. 247 The Muse shall place a Fool's-cap on their sculls. 1839Longfellow Beware v, It is a fool's-cap for thee to wear.
b. A dunce's cap.
1831Blackw. Mag. Feb. 409 Mr. Sadler crowns our prodigy on the spot..with a paper fool's cap. 1876Grant Burgh. Sch. Scotl. ii. v. 207 Smart castigation is, in our opinion, much preferable to fool's cap, imprisonment [etc.].
Comb.1831Blackw. Mag. Feb. 410/1 Our fool's-cap-crowned Reviewer. 1823Byron Juan xi. lxxxii, A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown On a fool's head.
2. The device of a ‘fool's cap’ used as a watermark for paper.
It has been asserted that the fool's cap mark was introduced by Sir John Spielmann or Spilman, a German who built a paper-mill at Dartford in 1580; but we have failed to find any trustworthy authority for this statement. The Brit. Mus. copy of Rushworth's Hist. Coll. (1659) is marked with this device. The watermark called by Sotheby (Princ. III.) a ‘fool's cap’, and said by him to occur in some copies of Caxton's Golden Legend, seems not to be correctly so called. The catalogue of the Caxton Exhibition (1877) states that examples of the fool's cap, dating from 1479, are found in a German collection there exhibited. There is no foundation for the often-repeated story that the Rump Parliament ordered a fool's cap to be substituted for the royal arms in the watermark of the paper used for the journals of the House.
1795Denne in Archæologia XII. 121 The Fool's cap is not in either the Paston Letters or Mr. Ord's Plates. The date of that device in Mr. Fisher's is as late as 1661.
3. A long folio writing- or printing-paper, varying in size (see quots. 1871, 1888).
A document of 1714, shown to us by Mr. R. B. Prosser, is written on paper bearing the fool's cap watermark, and measuring 161/4 × 13 in. In 1795 the mark was obsolete: see quot. in b.
a1700B. E. Dict. Cant. Crew, Fool's-Cap, a sort of Paper so called. 1711Act 10 Anne c. 18 §37 For all Paper called..Fine Fools Cap. 1843Lefevre Life Trav. Phys. I. i. ii. 28 One side of a sheet of foolscap. 1871Amer. Encycl. Print., Foolscap, a folded writing-paper, usually 12 by 15 inches, or 12½ by 16. 1888Jacobi Printer's Voc., Foolscap, a size of printing paper 17 × 13½ inches; writing paper 163/4 × 13½ inches.
b. attrib. as foolscap paper, foolscap sheet, etc.; also, foolscap folio, octavo, quarto, said of a volume consisting of sheets of foolscap size folded in the manner specified.
1795Denne in Archæologia XII. 121 The Fool's cap paper has for its mark Britannia. 1818Byron Beppo lxxv, Fellows In foolscap uniforms turn'd up with ink. 1820Southey Lett. (1856) III. 177 Verses which I used to send you by the foolscapsheetful. 1886Ruskin Præterita I. 409 An essay nine foolscap pages long. 1887Times 27 Aug. 11/4 In a foolscap volume of 260 pages. |