| 释义 |
ˈhotbed, ˈhot-bed
1. A bed of earth heated by fermenting manure, and usually covered with glass, for raising or forcing plants.
1626Bacon Sylva §401 The Bed we call a Hot-Bed. 1664Evelyn Kal. Hort. 64 Fine and tender Seeds that require the Hot-bed. 1719London & Wise Compl. Gard. 217 The bright curled Lettuces..do well upon Hot-Beds, and especially under Bell-Glasses, or Glass Frames. 1879D. J. Hill Bryant 117 Numerous hotbeds assist the tender plants in spring.
2. fig. A place that favours the rapid growth or development of any condition, esp. of something evil.
1768Bickerstaff Hypocrite i. i, The seeds of wickedness..sprout up every where too fast; but a play-house is the devil's hot-bed. 1771Smollett Humph. Cl. 8 Aug. Let. ii, Edinburgh is a hot-bed of genius. 1827–48Hare Guesses ii. (1873) 559 Those hotbeds of spurious, morbid feelings, sentimental novels. 1851Kingsley Yeast iii, These picturesque villages are generally the perennial hotbeds of fever and ague. 1883S. C. Hall Retrospect II. 397 Both Houses of Parliament were hot-beds of corruption.
3. ‘A platform in a rolling-mill on which rolled bars lie to cool’ (Raymond Mining Gloss. 1881).
4. U.S. slang. A bed, usu. in a flop-house, used continuously, day and night, by different people for limited periods. Also, the flop-house in which such beds are found.
1945L. Shelly Jive Talk Dict. 26/1 Hot bed, cheap flop house. 1953Pohl & Kornbluth Space Merchants (1955) vii. 77 The dorm was jammed with about sixty bunks... Since production went on only during daylight hours, the hot-bed system wasn't in use. My bunk was all mine. 1968P. Oliver Screening Blues vi. 253 In city streets where hot-bed apartments and kitchenettes were the only dwelling units available to Negroes,..the automobile parked in the street became the front parlour. 1970C. Major Dict. Afro-Amer. Slang 67 Hotbed,..in a flophouse a public bed for the price of 25 cents per eight hours.
5. attrib. (in senses 1 and 2).
1810Crabbe Borough, Relig. Sects (L.), First comes the hotbed heat, and while it glows, The plants spring up. 1848Kingsley Saint's Trag. Notes 250 Hot-bed imaginations.
Hence hotbed v. trans. (nonce-wd.), to force as in a hotbed.
1892Sat. Rev. 9 Apr. 411/2 Men forced and hot-bedded into honours without any genius for study. |