| 释义 |
humpty-dumpty, n. and a.|ˈhʌm(p)tɪ ˈdʌm(p)tɪ|
Also 7 humtee dumtee, -y.
[It is doubtful whether the word is the same in senses 1 and 2: in sense 1 the name may have been concocted out of hum n.1 3; in sense 2 it is evidently formed from hump and dump, though this would naturally give humpy-dumpy (cf. humpy a.), and the intrusive t is not clearly accounted for.]
A. n.
1. A drink made with ‘ale boiled with brandy’ (B.E. Dict. Cant. Crew, a 1700).
1698W. King tr. Sorbière's Journ. Lond. 135 (Farmer) He answer'd me that he had a thousand such sort of liquors, as Humtie Dumtie, Three Threads. 1699[see hugmatee]. 1837Disraeli Venetia i. xiv, They drank humpty-dumpty, which is ale boiled with brandy.
2. A short, dumpy, hump-shouldered person. In the well-known nursery rime or riddle (quoted below) commonly explained as signifying an egg (in reference to its shape); thence allusively used of persons or things which when once overthrown or shattered cannot be restored.
1785Grose Dict. Vulg. T., Humpty-Dumpty, a little humpty dumpty man or woman; a short clumsey person of either sex. 1810Gammer Gurton's Garland Part iii. 36 [Not in Ritson's ed. c 1760, nor in the reprint of that in 1810] Humpty dumpty sate on a wall, Humpti dumpti had a great fall; Threescore men and threescore more, Cannot place Humpty dumpty as he was before. 1843Halliwell Nursery Rhymes Eng. 113 [giving prec. version adds] Note. Sometimes the last two lines run as follows: All the king's horses and all the king's men, Could not set Humpty Dumpty up again. 1848Blackw. Mag. July 39 To try the game of Humpty-Dumpty and to fall. 1872‘L. Carroll’ Thro' Looking-Gl. vi. 114 ‘It's very provoking’, Humpty Dumpty said,..‘to be called an egg—very!’ 1883J. W. Sherer At Home & in India 193 She..could not, by all the miracles of millinery, be made other than a humpty-dumpty. 1896Westm. Gaz. 26 June 3/1 Now that the Education Humpty-Dumpty has tumbled off the wall, and is hopelessly poached for the present year, and all the king's horses and all the king's men can't set him up again, the life has gone out of Parliament.
(In the nursery rime or riddle there are numerous variations of the last two lines, e.g. ‘Not all the king's horses and all the king's men Could [can] set [put] Humpty Dumpty up again [in his place again, together again]’.) B. adj. Short and fat. Also allusively referring to the Humpty-Dumpty of the nursery rime.
1785[see A. 2]. 1828Craven Dial., Humpty-dumpty, short and broad, ‘He's a lile humpty-dumpty fellow’. 1898Westm. Gaz. 9 July 6/3 To set the humpty-dumpty conversion firmly on its legs.
b. Applied to a mechanical rhythm, as in the nursery rime.
1887Saintsbury Hist. Elizab. Lit. iv. (1890) 128 The same humpty-dumpty measure of eights and sixes. |