| 释义 |
horseman|ˈhɔːsmən|
Pl. -men.
1. One who rides on horseback, a rider; one skilled in riding and managing a horse.
c1400Ywaine & Gaw. 401 Another noyse than herd i sone, Als it war of horsmen. 1583Hollyband Campo di Fior 277 O there is a good horseman: O brave rider. 1673S. C. Art of Complaisance 131 To pass simply for a good horseman, or a fine dancer. 1780Harris Philol. Enq. Wks. (1841) 542 These Spanish Arabians..were great horsemen, and particularly fond of horses. 1849Macaulay Hist. Eng. viii. II. 349 These letters..were sent by horsemen to the nearest country post towns on the different roads.
†b. spec. A mounted soldier. Obs.
c1205Lay. 26641 Heo letten alle þa horsmen i þan wude alihten. c1302in Pol. Songs (Camden) 189 Sixtene hundred of horsmen asemblede o the gras. 1382Wyclif Rev. ix. 16 The noumbre of the hoost of horsemen twenty thousynd. 1548Hall Chron., Hen. VIII 28 Among the Frenchmen were certain light horsmen called Stradiotes. 1655Stanley Hist. Philos. iii. (1701) 116/1 Notwithstanding he had also a Horse-man's Cuirass. 1855Macaulay Hist. Eng. xxi. (1880) II. 529 A horseman in the uniform of the Guards spurred through the City, announcing that the King had been killed.
c. A knight. (tr. L. eques, Gr. ἱππεύς.)
1596Dalrymple tr. Leslie's Hist. Scot. I. 13 In Galloway ar horsmen, Barounes, and vthiris noble men mony. 1807Robinson Archæol. Græca iv. ii. 337 Both at Athens and Sparta ἱππεῖς, horsemen, composed the second order in the commonwealth. 1849Grote Greece ii. lxxii. (1862) VI. 347 The Knights or Horsemen, the body of richest proprietors at Athens, were the mainstay of the Thirty.
d. horseman's bed (in Ireland), a tenement of a certain size. horseman's hammer, a hammer-shaped mace, a mediæval weapon. horseman's weight, the weight by which a jockey is weighed, applied to the legal stone of fourteen pounds.
1672Petty Pol. Anat. (1691) 107 As to these town-lands, plough-lands, colps, greeves..horseman's beds, etc., they are at this day manifestly unequal. 1828J. M. Spearman Brit. Gunner 413 Also, 14 pounds make 1 stone, horseman's weight, and 8 pounds 1 stone, in the London markets.
2. A man who attends to horses.
1882Howells in Longm. Mag. I. 55, I heard myself indicated in a whisper as ‘one of the horse-men’. 1889N.W. Linc. Gloss. (ed. 2), Horseman, the man who attends upon and travels with a stallion. 1898R. Haggard in Daily News 28 Sept. 6/5 The agricultural labourer..works from six to six..horsemen and cattlemen work longer.
3. A variety of fancy pigeons: see quot. 1867.
1735J. Moore Columb. 31 The oftener it is thus bred [from a Carrier] the stouter the Horseman becomes. 1741Compl. Fam.-Piece iii. 512. 1867 Tegetmeier Pigeons vii. 79 In many of the older treatises an inferior variety of the Carrier was described under the name of the Horseman.
4. Ichthyol. A sciænoid fish of the genus Eques found on the coasts of Central America.
5. See also light-horseman.
Light Horsemen and Heavy Horsemen, slang names for certain Thames thieves.
1849Marryat Valerie xviii, ‘There's a lighter adrift’, said I. ‘The Light Horsemen have cut her adrift.’ Ibid., Light Horsemen—that's a name for one set of people who live by plunder... Then we have the Heavy Horsemen—they do their work in the daytime, when they go on board as lumpers to clear the ships. |