| 释义 |
implosion|ɪmˈpləʊʒən|
[n. of action from implode; cf. explosion.]
1. The bursting inward of a vessel from external pressure.
1880W. B. Carpenter in 19th Cent. Apr. 615 A sealed glass tube containing air, having been lowered (within a copper case) to a depth of 2,000 fathoms, was reduced to a fine powder almost like snow, by what Sir Wyville Thomson ingeniously characterised as an implosion.
2. Phonetics. (See quot.)
1877Sweet Handbk. Phonetics §224 The implosion consists in closing the glottis simultaneously with the stop position, and then compressing the air between the glottis stoppage and the mouth one.
3. fig. (as the opposite of explosion).
1960J. G. Ballard in D. Knight 100 Yrs. Sci. Fiction (1969) 350 The population of Sumatra, for example, has declined by over fifteen per cent in the last twenty years... Do you realize that only two or three decades ago the Neo-Malthusians were talking about a ‘world population explosion’? In fact, it's an implosion. 1964M. McLuhan Understanding Media i. vii. 71 The rush of students into our universities is not explosion but implosion. Ibid. ii. x. 92 Our speed-up today is not a slow explosion outward from center to margins but an instant implosion and an interfusion of space and functions. |