| 释义 |
▪ I. format, n.
(ˈfɔːmæt, ‖ fɔrma)
[F. format, (according to Littré ad. L. (liber) formātus, (a book) formed in such or such a way).]
1. a. Shape and size of a book, e.g. octavo, quarto, etc.
1840Moore Mem. (1856) VII. 272 To bring out the ‘History’..in a better shape than that vile Lardnerian format. 1883Sat. Rev. 5 May LV. 580 The book..is not undeserving of the pretty square format in which it appears. Mod. Prospectus, Format and paper of present Prospectus.
b. transf.
1936O. S. Puckle tr. von Ardenne's Telev. Reception ii. 42 The photograph shows the evenness of the illumination and the almost perfect rectangularity of the picture format. 1962Listener 1 Feb. 224/1 The low relief and the often square format of the canvas also establish the pictures as firmly constructed panels. 1971Daily Tel. 13 Oct. 6/7 The Brick Development Association proposed a single metric brick format which was adopted by the industry. It was slightly smaller than the imperial format: 225 mm × 112·5 mm × 75. 1971D. Potter Brit. Eliz. Stamps iii. 32 The first vertical format double-size stamp was issued.
2. a. A style or manner of arrangement or presentation; a mode of procedure.
1955Times 3 June 9/2 It is a tribute to the attractive format..that one does not realize that the report runs to 83 pages. 1957N.Y. Times 29 Dec. iv. 3/2 It is so fundamental that the President must never appear before the American people in a minor role that the choice of this format is inexplicable. 1958Spectator 1 Aug. 167/1 The principal performer..had to write the scripts herself, and when..she attempted to heed criticism and alter the format, she was told that the show, however bad, must go on. 1958Listener 23 Oct. 648/2 Goldberg has developed from the sectional, chopped-up forms of de Kooning to a large centralized format. 1963Amer. Speech XXXVIII. 165 The slang items in this study are subdivided into two major groupings... The format followed supplies first the denotative word or phrase which was used to elicit the slang responses. Next, [etc.]. 1967Times 6 Jan. 15/1 The usefulness of the I[ndustrial] R[eorganization] C[orporation] will be in its ability to help the two sides agree upon a new supply format. 1970Daily Tel. 19 Nov. 14/4 This programme format, consisting of a report followed by a public meeting arranged for television, never seems to me satisfactory. 1971Homes & Gardens Oct. 175/2 The noise generated by tape play-back systems..is the most serious drawback of the small cassette format.
b. Computers. A particular arrangement of data or characters in a record, instruction, word, etc., in a form that can be processed or stored by a computer.
1955Computers & Automation Jan. 16/2 Logical operations of verifying format, insuring proper placement of significant characters,.. are all performed in less than ½ second. 1959Jrnl. Assoc. Comput. Mach. VI. 325 One such typical program..might involve the conversion and rearrangement of data from the format in which it is stored on external units to a format compatible with internal use, e.g. the conversion of characters from decimal to binary form. 1963B. F. Green Digital Computers in Research v. 84 An associated format statement..specifies the precise manner in which the quantities appear in the input or output medium. 1968Amer. Documentation Jan. 74/2 A format routine converts scanner output to element form for entry in the central data file. 1970Nature 4 July 7/2 A scheme for coding rock and mineral names into a format suitable for computers.
▪ II. format, v.|ˈfɔːmæt|
Pa. tense and pa. pple. formatted; pres. pple. formatting.
[f. the n.]
trans. To arrange or put into a format: used chiefly in connection with Computers (see format n. 2 b). Also ˈformatted ppl. a., ˈformatting vbl. n.
1964CIS Gloss. Automated Typesetting (Composition Information Services, Calif.) 14 Book formatting. 1965Adv. Computers VI. 7 These systems have come to be known as formatted file systems, since the input data are arranged into various formats for ease of storage and retrieval. 1968Guardian 23 Sept. 9/2 We formatted this Top 100 Sounds, covering the top sounds both east and west of the Atlantic. 1969Computers & Humanities IV. 98 Little or no composition control data or formatting punctuation is encoded with the input data. Ibid. 99 We format pages internally and then pass them to an output module tailored to a specific output device. 1970A. Cameron et al. Computers & O.E. Concordances 48 A concordance, however, if formatted along appropriate lines..can shorten this mind-wearying labour tremendously. 1970McGraw-Hill Yearbk. Sci. & Technol. 160/1 The principal formatting function in the graphic arts is justification, which is frequently coupled with hyphenation. |