| 释义 |
Gothic, a. and n.|ˈgɒθɪk|
Forms: 7 Gotic, Gotiq(ue, Gothicke, Gottic, Gothiq, 7–8 Gothique, 7– Gothic.
[ad. L. gothic-us, f. Gothī (see Goth). Cf. F. gothique.]
A. adj.
1. a. Of, pertaining to, or concerned with the Goths or their language.
1611Bible Transl. Pref. 5 Vlpilas is reported..to haue translated the Scriptures into the Gothicke tongue. 1776Gibbon Decl. & F. x. I. 244 Cassiodorus gratified the inclination of the conquerors in a Gothic history. 1845Stoddart Grammar 192/1 The Gothic substantive leik, body. 1892Wright (title) A Primer of the Gothic Language.
b. = mozarabic.
1867tr. Guéranger's Life St. Cecilia xviii. 164 The Gothic Church of Spain, whose Liturgy was compiled by St. Leander, Archbishop of Seville. 1874Month Feb. 223 The old Gothic or Mozarabic rite. 1911E. B. O'Reilly Heroic Spain 235 The Christians who were under Moorish rule..kept to the old Gothic ritual.
†2. Formerly used in extended sense, now expressed by Teutonic or Germanic.
1647N. Bacon Disc. Govt. Eng. i. xl. 96 Nor can any Nation upon earth shew so much of the ancient Gothique Law as this Island hath. a1690G. Etherege Poems Wks. (1888) 378 A tawdry ill-bred ramp, Whose brawny arms and martial face Proclaim her of the Gothic race. 1721Swift Let. to Pope 10 Jan. Wks. 1841 II. 551/2 As to Parliaments, I adored the wisdom of that Gothic institution which made them annual. 1735–8Bolingbroke On Parties 102 Maintaining the Freedom of our Gothick Institution of Government. 1832Palgrave Eng. Commw. I. 500 There is no Gothic feudality unless the parties be connected by the mutual bond of Vassalage and Seigniory. 1846McCulloch Acc. Brit. Empire (1854) I. 395 The Gothic blood would seem to have been preserved pretty pure in all the country to the north and east of the Severn and the Exe. 1857Maurice Ep. St. John xx. 336 He raised up the Gothic or Teutonic race.
absol.1685Dryden Albion & Alb. Pref., This language [Italian] has in a manner been refined and purified from the Gothic ever since the time of Dante.
3.
†a. Belonging to, or characteristic of, the Middle Ages; mediæval, ‘romantic’, as opposed to classical. In early use chiefly with reprobation: Belonging to the ‘dark ages’ (cf. sense 4). Obs. [Cf. F. les siècles gothiques.]
1695[see 4]. 1710Shaftesbury Charact. (1727) I. iii. 217 [The Elizabethan dramatists] have been the first of Europeans, who since the Gothick Model of Poetry, attempted to throw off the horrid Discord of jingling Rhyme. 1762Hurd Lett. Chiv. & Rom. 56 He [Spenser] could have planned, no doubt, an heroic design on the exact classic model: Or, he might have trimmed between the Gothic and Classic, as his contemporary Tasso did..Under this idea then of a Gothic, not classical poem, the Faery Queen is to be read and criticized. 1765H. Walpole (title) The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story. ― Let. to Cole 9 Mar., A very natural dream for a head filled like mine with gothic story. 1771Beattie Minstrel i. xi, There liv'd in gothic days, as legends tell, A shepherd swain. Ibid. i. lx, Here pause, my gothic lyre, a little while. 1773Johnson Let. to Mrs. Thrale 21 Sept., A castle in Gothick romance. 1782Cowper Table Talk 564 He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose, And, tedious years of Gothic darkness past, Emerged all splendour in our isle at last.
b. A term for the style of architecture prevalent in Western Europe from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, of which the chief characteristic is the pointed arch. Applied also to buildings, architectural details, and ornamentation. (Also transf. of the wing of an aeroplane).
The most usual names for the successive periods of this style in England are Early English (or First Pointed), Decorated, and Perpendicular, q.v.
Our quotations seem to show that the term was taken in the first instance from the French, and employed to denote any style of building that was not classical (Greek or Roman), but used by many writers as if derived immediately from sense 2.
1641Evelyn Diary Aug., This..towne..hath one of the fairest Churches, of the Gotiq design, I had seene. 1664Wood Descr. Bampton Castle in Wood's Life (O.H.S.) II. Plate 1, The cheife gate-house where is a ruined entrance, and an old gothick window over it. 1713Wren in Parentalia (1750) 297 This we now call the Gothick Manner of Architecture (so the Italians called what was not after the Roman style). 1739C. Labelye Short Acc. Piers Westm. Br. 44 Narrow Gothic Arches, supported by monstrous Piers. 1742B. Langley Anc. Archit. Restored Dissert. i, Every ancient Building which is not in the Grecian Mode is called a Gothic Building. 1750S. Wren in Parentalia 273 They had not yet fallen into the Gothick pointed-arch. 1783Ralph Rev. Public Buildings Lond., [The tower of St. Michael's, Cornhill, is] in the Gothic style of architecture. 1801Telford & Douglas Acc. Improvem. Port London 17 The whole external form of the bridge is to be composed of Gothic tracery. a1839Praed Poems (1864) I. 69 Some time-honoured Gothic pile. 1880M. E. Braddon Just as I am vii, The cosy chair beside the Gothic fire⁓place. 1881Raymond Mining Gloss., Gothic groove, a groove of Gothic arch section in a roll. 1959J. L. Nayler Dict. Aeronaut. Engin. 121 Gothic wing, a wing whose plan form is like a Gothic window. 1961Flight LXXX. 966/2 The Super Caravelle wing is of gothic delta plan form with considerable leading edge camber.
c. nonce-use. Concerned with Gothic buildings.
1875–7Ruskin Morn. in Florence (1881) 48 As our Gothic Firms now manufacture a Madonna.
d. Gothic Revival = revival 1 d. Also attrib. So Gothic Revivalist.
1869C. L. Eastlake Hints Household Taste (ed. 2) i. 32 The earliest promoters of the Gothic revival appreciated the superficial effect of such features... The glories of the ‘fretted vault’ were not unfrequently imitated in lath and plaster. 1934A. Huxley Beyond Mexique Bay 114 The Gothic revival in England was a product of the Oxford Movement. 1950Oxoniensia XV. 118 Jackson witnessed the evolution of the Gothic Revival. Ibid., They, the Gothic Revivalists, had got the old dead style on its legs and propped it up, but they could not make it walk. 1958R. Liddell Morea iii. ii. 243 A Gothic revival school building was a relic of the British protectorate. 1963H. Read Contrary Experience iii. ix. 276 The Gothic Revival was almost a spent force when Ruskin began to publish The Stones of Venice in 1851.
4. Barbarous, rude, uncouth, unpolished, in bad taste. Of temper: Savage.
1695Dryden Du Fresnoy's Art Paint. 93 All that has nothing of the Ancient gust is call'd a barbarous or Gothique manner. 1710Shaftesbury Charac. (1733) I. iii. 274 We are not so Barbarous or Gothick as they pretend. a1715Burnet Own Time (1753) V. 222 His [Chas. XII] temper grew daily more fierce and Gothick. 1732Berkeley Alciphr. v. §13 This Gothic crime of duelling. 1749Fielding Tom Jones vii. iii, ‘Oh more than Gothic ignorance,’ answered the lady. 1782F. Burney Cecilia iv. ii, What he holds of all things to be most gothic, is gallantry to the women. 1812Shelley Lett. Prose Wks. 1888 II. 384 Enormities which gleam like comets through the darkness of gothic and superstitious ages. 1833Chalmers Const. Man ii. i. (1835) I. 173 Such a gothic spoliation as this. 1841J. T. J. Hewlett Parish Clerk I. 111 Dinner, which was eaten at the gothic hour of one o'clock.
5. Writing and Printing.
†a. Used for some kind of written character (? resembling black letter).
1644Evelyn Diary 18–21 Mar., Some English words graven in Gotic characters. 1658Ibid. 27 Jan., He could perfectly reade any of the English, Latine, French, or Gottic letters.
b. In England, the name of the type commonly used for printing German, as distinguished from roman and italic characters. (Formerly, and still in non-technical use, equivalent to black letter.)
1781Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry Diss. iii. III. p. iv, This edition..is in the Gothic letter. 1824J. Johnson Typogr. II. i. 10 Black Letter. This letter, which is used in England, descended from the Gothic characters: it is called Gothic, by some; and Old English, by others. 1888Jacobi Printers' Voc., Gothic, an antique character of type similar to black letter. 1895W. A. Copinger in Trans. Bibl. Soc. II. ii. 111 Gothic type was the first in use..Roman character not being introduced till 1467.
c. Applied in the U.S. to the type called in England grotesque (also sans-ceriph, and, by some type-founders, doric; formerly stone letter).
6. In combination with an adjective formed on a proper name: Gothic and; Gothic in connection with; as Gothic-Finnish, Gothic-Sarmatian, Gothic-Scandinavian.
1928C. Dawson Age of Gods iv. 84 The Gothic-Sarmatian kingdom from the Crimea to the lower Danube. 1931A. Senn in Jrnl. Eng. & Germ. Philol. XXX. 143 (title) A contribution to Gothic-Finnish relations. 1965Language XLI. 36 The theory of a Gothic-Scandinavian linguistic community distinct from the West Germanic languages.
B. quasi- n. or n.
That which is Gothic. a. The Gothic language. b. A Gothic building. c. Gothic architecture or ornamentation.
1644Evelyn Diary 27 Feb. The style of magnificence then in fashion, which was with too greate a mixture of the Gotic. 1726Leoni Alberti's Archit. Life 4 Ornaments, which..have I know not what in them of Gothick. 1757Serenius Eng. & Swed. Dict. (ed. 2) Pref. 2 There are very few that have professedly treated the ancient Gothick. 1762–5H. Walpole Vertue's Anecd. Paint. (ed. 2) I. 116 Imitations of the Gothic. Ibid. 120 The builders of Gothic. 1825Lockhart in Scott's Fam. Lett. (1894) II. 308 Then to..the Castle Chapel—the best by far of all modern Gothics. 1841Lever C. O'Malley lxxxii. 395 Gazing steadfastly on the fretted gothic of the ceiling. 1858Max Müller Chips (1880) II. xx. 192 Gothic, as a language, is more ancient than Icelandic. 1915Irish Eccl. Record July 50 Some of these new Gothics were designed by a priest. 1916Ibid. Sept. 209 The fine old walls..gave place to the Gothics.
Hence Goˈthicity, the quality of being Gothic; ˈGothicky a. colloq., Gothic-like; † ˈGothicly adv., in a Gothic manner, barbarously.
1777W. Dalrymple Trav. Sp. & Port. xl, The apartments are low..and Gothicly furnished. 1863Ecclesiologist XXIV. 290 The absolute Gothicity of the general idea. 1889Athenæum 16 Feb. 221/1 The crisp, sharp, and firm ‘Gothicity’ of the direct followers of the Van Eycks. 1893K. D. Wiggin Cathedral Courtship 36 She's going to build a Gothicky memorial chapel somewhere.
Add:[3.] e. Of or pertaining to goth music or its followers: see *Goth n. 3.
[1981Melody Maker 4 July 9/6 Bauhaus are forced to rely on pure theatricality to further their reputation as Gothic-horror outlaw weirdos.] 1983New Musical Express 24 Dec. 7/3 Why is this gothic glam so popular? 1986Q Oct. 74/2 Love & Rockets used to be three quarters of Bauhaus..and are obviously finding life as gothic has-beens hard going. 1988Sunday Tel. 6 Mar. 21/7 ‘The Gothic people will be pleased that black is still in,’ remarked Miss Fackrell, who teaches hair and beauty studies. Gothic people? They are all the young folk who go around wearing black, apparently.
▸ Of or designating a genre of fiction characterized by suspenseful, sensational plots involving supernatural or macabre elements and often (esp. in early use) having a medieval theme or setting.
The novel typically regarded as the first of this genre, The Castle of Otranto (1765) by Horace Walpole, is subtitled ‘a Gothic story’ (cf. 1765 A. 3a) in reference to its medieval setting; in this and similar early uses it is often difficult to distinguish between this sense and sense A. 3a.
1825Scott Lives Novelists I. 139 To this improvement upon the gothic romance there are so many objections, that we own ourselves inclined to prefer..the narrative of Walpole. 1853G. S. Hillard Six Months in Italy (1854) II. x. 233 The shapes and conceptions of Gothic fiction—the sheeted ghost gliding from the churchyard..—the groan mingling with the wind that sweeps through the aisles of a ruined chapel. 1889E. Gosse Hist. 18th. Cent. Lit. ix. 301 This Gothic novel positively frightened grown-up people to the extent of making them unwilling to seek their beds. 1928Cent. Mag. May 61/2 The evolution of the dime novel from the sixteenth century novella through the Gothic horror story of Monk Lewis or Mrs. Radcliffe. 1990R. Critchfield Among British iv. 259 Britain is still supreme in the spy thriller, the detective story, the bestselling Gothic novel, and the bodice-ripper romance. |