| 释义 |
immensity|ɪˈmɛnsɪtɪ|
In 5 -itee.
[a. F. immensité (14th c. in Hatz.-Darm.) or ad. L. immensitās, n. of quality f. immensus immense.]
The quality or condition of being immense.
1. Immeasurableness, boundlessness, infinity.
c1450Mirour Saluacioun 1384 He filled heven and erthe with his inmensitee. 1603Holland Plutarch's Mor. 1033 Infinity and immensity of excesse and defect. 1630Prynne God no Impostor 34 Whose vast immensities..doe farre transcend our..finite vnderstandings. 1662Stillingfl. Orig. Sacr. iii. ii. §10 It is repugnant to the immensity of God. 1690Locke Hum. Und. ii. xiii. §4 This Power of repeating, or doubling any Idea we have of any distance..without being ever able to come to any stop or stint..is that which gives us the Idea of Immensity. 1803–6Wordsw. Intimations viii, Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy Soul's immensity. 1874Symonds Sk. Italy & Gr. (1898) I. i. 11 The universe..becomes important to them in its infinite immensity.
2. Vast magnitude; vastness, hugeness.
1652A. Wilson in Benlowes Theoph. To Author, Her poor little Orb appears to be A very Point to their Immensitie. 1790Castles in Phil. Trans. LXXX. 347 The immensity of their number. 1883Fortn. Rev. May 613 The immensity of the disaster increased the intensity of the disgrace.
b. An immense quantity or deal.
1778F. Burney Diary 3 Aug., I have an immensity to write. 1834H. Martineau Farrers vii. 116 They say that an immensity of money will be raised by this income tax. 1862Carlyle Fredk. Gt. ix. viii. (1872) III. 135 Having drunk immensities of Hungary wine. 1888Rye Records 99 note, A very slight expenditure of labour would save an immensity of searchers' time.
3. That which is immense.
a. absolutely, Infinite being or existence; infinity; infinite space.
a1631Donne Holy Sonn., Annunciat. ii. (R.), Thou..shutt'st in little room Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb. 1688Prior Ode Exod. iii. 6 The mysterious gulf of vast immensity. 1695Blackmore Pr. Arth. ii. 598 Immensity is wrapt in Swadling Bands. 1753Hanway Trav. (1762) I. iv. lvii. 262 Who fills immensity with his presence. 1843Carlyle Past & Pr. iv. iii, This Worker..has to..collect the monitions of Immensity. 1860Tyndall Glac. ii. i. 239 Immensity is filled with this music.
b. An (or the) immense extent of something; a thing of immense or unmeasured extent.
1794Mathias Purs. Lit. (1798) 265 It's tendency is to the ocean, to which it pays it's last tribute, and is finally lost in that immensity. 1821Byron Cain ii. ii. 390 Did ye not tell me that..what I have seen, Yon blue immensity, is boundless? 1853Kane Grinnell Exp. xlii. (1856) 382 This solid immensity of varied ice. 1879F. Harrison Choice Bks. (1886) 3 A pathless immensity beyond our powers of vision or of reach.
c. pl. Beings or things that are immense or infinite.
1839Bailey Festus xxii. (1848) 280 A spirit nobler..Than all these bright immensities. 1843Carlyle Past & Pr. iv. iii, He who can and dare trust the heavenly Immensities, all earthly Localities are subject to him. |