| 释义 |
unˈtunable, a.
[un-1 7 b.]
1. Not tuneful; unmelodious, inharmonious, harsh-sounding.
1545Elyot, Absonus voce, he that hath an vntunable voyce. 1569Sanford Agrippa 185 b, The vnpleasaunte and vntunable roringe of Asses. 1595Spenser Col. Clout 374 Or be the shepheards which do serue her laesie,..Or be their pipes vntunable and craesie. 1655tr. Sorel's Com. Hist. Francion iv. 11 The most untunable musick in the world. 1688in Wood Life (O.H.S.) III. 274 A boy..with a cat under his coat..made her make..an untunable noise. 1748W. Melmoth Fitzosborne Lett. lix. (1749) II. 100 [It] might probably give musick to those lines in Horace, which now seem so untuneable. 1796Burney Mem. Metastasio III. 307 Constructed in measures wholly untuneable. 1841D'Israeli Amen. Lit. I. 100 The Normans could not endure the Saxons' untunable consonants. 1887W. G. Palgrave Ulysses 34 The four church bells..have been ringing a very hospitable, though untuneable, peal.
b. fig. or in fig. context.
1591Shakes. Two Gent. iii. i. 208 In dumbe silence will I bury mine [sc. news], For they are harsh, vn-tuneable, and bad. 1599Sandys Europæ Spec. (1605) B 2 b, I will not heere warble long vpon this vntuneable harsh string. 1610P. Holland Camden's Brit. i. 8 It is wholly patched up of untuneable discords and jarring absurdities. 1645[see unatonable 1]. 1661J. Stephens Procurations 129 That which..in him..seemeth..untunable and out of square and friendly compasse.
2. Incapable of being tuned.
1801Busby Dict. Mus. s.v.
3. Not appreciative of music.
1851Keble Occas. Papers & Rev. (1877) 251 The colours are spread before the blind; the music falls on untunable ears.
Hence unˈtunableness.
1611Cotgr., Desaccord, a jarre, discord, untuneablenesse. 1659H. More Immort. Soul iii. ix. 420 The tenderer Ear cannot but feel..some harshness and untunableness or other, in the best consorts of Musical Instruments and Voices. 1691Norris Pract. Disc. 217 As the untunableness of one or two Instruments dis-recommends the whole Musical Consort. 1756J. Warton Ess. on Pope I. ii. 65 The harshness and untuneableness of modern languages. 1832Westm. Rev. Oct. 357 An age which finds beauties in untuneableness, and believes exact intonation would be an evil and a loss. |