| 释义 |
hostility|hɒˈstɪlɪtɪ|
[ad. late L. hostīlitās, f. hostīlis hostile; perh. through F. hostilité (15–16th c. in Hatz.-Darm.).]
1. a. The state or fact of being hostile; hostile action exercised by one community, state, or power against another; esp. such as involves war.
1531Elyot Gov. i. xxiv, With outwarde hostilitie or martiall businesse. 1548Hall Chron., Hen. VI 172 Ye feare of outward hostilitie, and foren invasion. 1665Manley Grotius' Low C. Warres 101 Now these private Quarrels were broke out into open Hostility. 1706E. Gibson Assize Serm. Croydon 15 Open acts of sedition and hostility. 1876Mathews Coinage ii. 16 Prusias dared the hostility of the Romans by giving a shelter at his Court to Hannibal.
b. pl. Hostile acts; acts of warfare, war.
1613Purchas Pilgrimage (1614) 837 Howsoever they exercise hostilities, and mutuall disagreements. 1699Bentley Phal. 488 Declar'd no War..nor committed the least Hostilities. 1781Ld. Cornwallis Let. Washington 17 Oct., I propose a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four hours. 1855Prescott Philip II, viii. (1857) 141 A suspension of hostilities was agreed on.
c. hostilities, -y only: used in the Navy to describe a seaman enlisted only for the duration of a war, or such an enlistment.
[1917‘Taffrail’ Off Shore 81 Even in our small ships we carry some of the ‘hostility men’.] 1942,1961[see H.O. s.v. H III]. 1946J. Irving Royal Navalese 7 Once again the ‘Hostility Only’ man took his silent stand beside the slender handful of us professional seamen. 1948Hansard Commons 17 Mar. 2083 Recruiting on a hostilities only engagement was not open in the branch of their choice in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. 1973Times 31 Jan. 16/7 He enrolled in the Royal Navy as a ‘hostilities only’ rating.
2. transf. and fig. Opposition or antagonism in action, thought, or principle.
1632J. Hayward tr. Biondi's Eromena 63 There being not betweene us any cause of hostility. 1704J. Harris Lex. Techn. s.v. Duellist, Explicate all the Phænomena of Nature from the Doctrine of Alkali and Acid, and the supposed Hostility that there is between them. 1849Macaulay Hist. Eng. iii. I. 400 The hostility excited by a grotesque caricature of virtue did not spare virtue herself. |