| 释义 |
all-or-nothing, all or nothing
1. Applied attrib. to a piece of mechanism in a repeating watch (see quot. 1940); also used absol.
1765Ann. Reg. 1764 79/1 The all or nothing piece [in a watch]. 1843Penny Cycl. XXVII. 108/1 (Watch, Repeating) The whole..carried by the all-or-nothing piece TR. Ibid. 108/2 When the quarter-rack is brought back to its original position..the part m will have passed between the end R of the all-or-nothing, which in its passage m will have pressed outwards. 1940Chambers's Techn. Dict. 22/2 All-or-nothing piece, a piece of the mechanism of a repeating watch which either allows the striking of the hours and quarters or entirely prevents it.
2. As phr., indicating that a principle, policy, etc., must be accepted without qualification or not at all; also attrib.
1862Emerson Jrnl. Jan. (1914) IX. 361 My estimate of my own mental means and resources is all or nothing; in happy hours, life..infinitely rich, and sterile at others. 1882W. James Will to Believe (1897) 292 The silly hegelian all-or-nothing insatiateness. 1891W. Wilson tr. Ibsen's Brand v. 290 The Figure. All these fell and pallid spectres can be laid with three words. Brand. Speak them! The Figure. All or nothing! 1936J. C. Powys Maiden Castle (1937) vi. 222 They don't need your damned all-or-nothing truths! 1950B. Wootton Test. Social Sci. iii. 49 Questions which (like nearly all the significant issues in life) cannot but be matters of more or less are constantly answered in terms of yes or no, all or nothing. Ibid. vi. 132 The peculiarity of religious systems is that this threat to security has a peculiar all-or-nothing character. 1957R. N. C. Hunt Guide to Communist Jargon p. xiv, The ‘all-or-nothing’ nature of communist thinking, which leads to the rejection as ‘opportunism’ of whatever stops short of the absolute goal of revolution. 1960in L. Pincus Marriage i. 21 An all-or-nothing response in which the infant feels itself and its world to be entirely good, or entirely bad.
3. = all-or-none (a): see all III. 13.
1922Encycl. Brit. XXXII. 104/2 In the case of the heart muscle, this fact has long been known and was given the name of the ‘law of all-or-nothing’... This law has now been shown to hold for voluntary muscle and for nerve. 1932Times Lit. Suppl. 11 Feb. 93/2 The ‘all-or-nothing’ law of nervous conduction. 1964J. Z. Young Model of Brain ii. 23 We now know that nerve fibres are able to propagate all-or-nothing signals with a high safety factor and without decrement. |