| 释义 |
▪ I. inner, n.1|ˈɪnə(r)|
[f. in v. + -er1.]
One who ‘ins’, takes in, or reclaims land.
1596Lambarde Peramb. Kent (1826) 397 In the yeere 1587 there was an Inning of one thousand acres more, whereof the Inners..enioyed the one halfe and an eight part of the other halfe.
▪ II. inner, a. (n.2)|ˈɪnə(r)|
Forms: 1 innera, innra, inra, 1–3 inre, 3–5 innore, 4 inere 4–5 ynner(e, (4–6 inder), 5 innere, (inhir, ynhir), 4– inner.
[OE. inne(r)r-a, in(n)r-a, -e adj. (compar. of inne, inn, in adv.) = OFris. inra, OHG. innaro, innero (G. innere, innerer), ON. innre, iðre (Sw. inre, Da. indre). With the d in ME. cf. thunder.
The OE. comparison of in was innerra, innemest; analogical modes of ME. or early mod.E. use were inner, innest; innerer, innerest; innermore, innermost; inmore, inmost; mod.Eng. uses inner, inmost and innermost. Inner is only used attributively, and cannot be followed by than, like ordinary comparatives.]
A. adj.
1. Situated more within; more or further inward; interior. Often with a positive force, antithetical, not to in, but to outer: Situated within or inside; inward; internal.
a. lit., of spatial position.
c1000ælfric Voc. in Wr.-Wülcker 149/1 Liber, seo inre hrind. c1000Leg. St. Swiðun, etc. (1861) 110 (Bosw.) Se leo ᵹewat on ðæt inre westen. c1400Lanfranc's Cirurg. 148 He declineþ into þe ynnere [v.r. Innere] partie till þat he peerse þoruȝ þe mydrif. c1400Destr. Troy 749 Þai entrid full evyn into an Inner chamber. 1435Misyn Fire of Love 79 Behald, myn inhir partis has vpbolyd. 1551Recorde Pathw. Knowl. i. Defin., In a triangle al the angles bee called inner angles. 1590Spenser F.Q. i. viii. 30 Those were the keyes of every inner dore. 1613Purchas Pilgrimage (1614) 507 Cinamom is the inner barke of a tree. 1703T. N. City & C. Purchaser 128 Inner-doors in large Buildings ought to be 3 Foot broad and upwards. 1745De Foe's Eng. Tradesman xxvi. (1841) I. 265 Her inner petticoats, flannel and swan-skin from Salisbury and Wales. 1860Tyndall Glac. ii. xiv. 302 He..maintains..the opinion, that ice has always an inner temperature lower than zero. 1884tr. Lotze's Metaph. 345 Of the inner movements of things we know nothing.
b. fig. Of other limits figured as spatial: More intimate; more central; more hidden or secret.
1480Caxton Chron. Eng. ccxxv. 230 The ynner loue of the peple was torned in to hate. 1815Shelley Demon World 96 From nature's inner shrine, Where gods and fiends in worship bend. 1850Tennyson In Mem. xlii, Delights..That stir the spirit's inner deeps. 1875Geo. Eliot Let. ? 2 Feb. (1956) VI. 121 Because we seclude ourselves from acquaintance that makes us only the more glad to have friends, and you are one of the inner circle. 1926H. Crane Let. 20 June (1965) 262 An ‘inner circle’ of literary initiates. a1930D. H. Lawrence Etruscan Places (1932) iii. 78 Here in the tombs everything is in its sacred or inner-significant aspect. 1973Times 28 May 9/1 It smacks too much of the confidential procedures of an inner circle for many churchmen to feel at ease with it.
c. transf. Indistinct or muffled, as if coming from far within. nonce-use.
1830Tennyson Dying Swan i, With an inner voice the river ran.
d. Music. Applied to parts or voices intermediate between the highest and lowest of the harmony (also called middle).
e. Printing. In sheet work, designating the forme containing the type pages from which the inner side of the sheet is printed and including the type page for the second page of the printed sheet.
1755J. Smith Printer's Gram. 229 (caption) The Inner Form of a Sheet in Quarto. 1841W. Savage Dict. Art of Printing 422 Inner form, the form that has the second page in it; it is always worked before the outer form, except there be some particular reason to the contrary. 1888C. T. Jacobi Printers' Vocab. 65 Inner forme, the pages of type which fall on the inside of a printed sheet in ‘sheet’ work—the reverse of ‘outer’ forme. 1892A. Powell Southward's Pract. Printing (ed. 4) xx. 159 The forme containing the first page is always called by printers the outside or outer forme, and that containing the second page the inside or inner forme. 1946A. Monkman in H. Whetton Pract. Printing & Binding v. 61/2 So far as the four-page [imposition] schemes are concerned, therefore, it is only necessary to remember that if the job is to be worked as sheet work, pages 1 and 4 will be the outer forme and pages 2 and 3 the inner forme. 1965Library XX. 14 In Table I..the data on choice of forme are abstracted from the list of books, showing for each the number of inner and outer formes printed first... Here is a grand total of 5,338 sheets [printed 1600–1800], of which 3,902, or 73 per cent were printed inner forme first.
f. inner light: in Quaker use (see light n. 7 b and quot. 1957).
1856R. A. Vaughan Mystics (1860) II. 217 Fox's inner light does not profess to supersede..the internal light of Revelation. 1909Chesterton Orthodoxy v. 135 The Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. 1957Oxf. Dict. Chr. Ch. 692/1 Inner light, the principle of Christian certitude, consisting of inward knowledge or experience of salvation, which is upheld by the Society of Friends.
g. Phonetics. Denoting a sound articulated in a part of the mouth nearer the throat than that designated by the unqualified term.
1867A. M. Bell Visible Speech 62 If the breath within the mouth be compressed behind the articulating organs while an inner closure is held, a distinct, and in some cases, a powerfully percussive effect will be produced on the abrupt separation of the organs. 1888H. Sweet Hist. Eng. Sounds 5 Most of these [point and blade consonants] admit also of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ varieties.
h. Inner Circle: name of one of the lines of the London (underground) railway system.
1869Bradshaw's Railway Manual XXI. 217 Metropolitan District. Incorporated..(29th July, 1864), to construct a series of lines to complete an inner circle of railway north of the Thames. 1882Times 24 July 10/4 The Inner Circle would connect..with the railways south of the Thames. 1884Times 22 Feb. 11/3 As to the Inner Circle line, by the 1st of June, or certainly by the beginning of the second half of the current year, that great work would be finished. 1911Encycl. Brit. XVI. 944/1 This company combines with the Metropolitan District to form the Inner Circle line, which has stations close to all the great railway termini north of the Thames. 1938G. Greene Brighton Rock iv. iii. 177 He could feel his blood pumped from the heart and moving indifferently back along the arteries like trains on the inner circle. 1966J. Chamier Cannonball i. 11 Planes whizzing around a damn sight quicker than the Inner Circle.
i. inner tube: in a pneumatic tyre, a separate tube, inside the cover, which is inflated with air.
1895Montgomery Ward Catal. 556/3 Pneumatic Tires..Inner Tubes complete with valve stem and valve. 1902Encycl. Brit. XXXIII. 535/1 In most tyres for cycles and motor-cars, an inner tube of indiarubber is made separate from the outer cover. 1902A. C. Harmsworth et al. Motors x. 223 Half the number of spare covers and inner tubes are required as compared with the requirements when the wheels are of different sizes. 1904A. B. F. Young Compl. Motorist (ed. 2) ix. 250 The piercing of the outer cover and inner tube by a nail or other puncturing agent. 1912Motor Manual (ed. 14) iii. 106 The inner tube has become nipped between one of the security bolts and the cover. 1923Michelin Guide Gt. Brit. (ed. 7) 883 Covers, inner tubes or pneumatic tyres. 1967N. Freeling Strike Out 42 He had done two hundred kilometres a day, on rough country roads with spare inner tubes slung round the neck.
j. inner Cabinet (or cabinet): an informal term for a group of decision-making people within a ministerial Cabinet or similar group.
1900Westm. Gaz. 13 Nov. 2/2 No one imagines that this Committee of twenty really decides critical matters of high policy. Those are deputed to the ‘inner Cabinet’. 1936H. Nicolson Diary 24 Feb. (1966) 245 J. H. Thomas..says that our group is not consulted; that there is an inner Cabinet which discuss things between themselves. 1970Times 3 Mar. 2 The meeting was also told that Hebdomadal council, the university's ‘inner cabinet’, had appointed a committee to listen to the views of the students' elected representatives. 1972Guardian 11 Jan. 20/1 The TUC ‘inner cabinet’—the finance and general purposes committee.
k. inner product (Math.) [tr. G. inneres produkt (H. Grassmann Die lineale Ausdehnungslehre (1844) p. xi): so named because an inner product of two vectors is zero unless one has a component ‘within’ the other, i.e. in its direction]: the sum of the products of corresponding components of two real vectors (a1, a2,{ddd}, an) and (b1, b2,{ddd}, bn), i.e. the number a1b1 + A2b2 +{ddd}+ anbn; in a complex vector space, the number a1b1 + A2b2 +{ddd}+ anbn , where bi is the complex conjugate number of bi; (see also quot. 1966).
1920T. Muir Theory of Determinants III. i. 7 The theorem on the inner product of two magnitudes each of the mth ‘Stufe’ and consisting of m simple factors. 1922E. H. Neville Prolegomena Analytical Geom. iv. i. 192 Let an ordered set of three numbers be called a triplet, and let the number fp + gq + hr be called the inner product of the triplets (f, g, h), (p, q, r). 1941Birkhoff & MacLane Survey Mod. Algebra vii. 181 Physicists often speak of our inner product as a ‘scalar product’ of two vectors. 1966A. L. Rabenstein Introd. Ordinary Differential Equations vi. 156 The inner product of f(x) and g(x) with respect to the weight function w(x) on the interval (a, b) is defined to be (f, g) = ∫b a w(x)f(x)g(x)dx. Ibid. 157 If the inner product of f(x) and g(x) is zero,..then f(x) and g(x) are said to be orthogonal with respect to the weight function w(x) on the interval a ‹ x ‹ b. 1968E. T. Copson Metric Spaces ix. 139 In order to avoid confusion between multiplication of a vector by a scalar and the scalar product of two vectors, the scalar product of two vectors is often called their inner product. Ibid. 140 A vector space on which an inner product is defined is called an inner product space.
l. inner quantum number (Physics) [tr. G. innere quantenzahl (A. Sommerfeld 1920, in Ann. d. Physik LXIII. 231)]: a quantum number now identified with that of the total angular momentum of an electron, j (J II. 6 c).
1923H. L. Brose tr. Sommerfeld's Atomic Struct. & Spectral Lines vi. 364 If we wish to exclude the forbidden lines by a principle of selection, we must..introduce a new quantum number; we call it the inner quantum number and designate it by ni. 1926Proc. R. Soc. A. CXI. 84 Each term..in general will be a multiple term consisting of several members with different values of the ‘inner quantum number’ j. 1967W. R. Hindmarsh Atomic Spectra ii. 18 The regularities of the multiplet structure of spectra were considered in some detail by Sommerfeld... He introduced an ‘inner’ quantum number to distinguish the various states of a multiplet, and suggested that it may be connected with a property of the electrons in inner shells (the core electrons). The true explanation of the doublet structure of the terms of alkali metal atoms is provided by the concept of electron spin.
m. inner reserve (Finance): a secret reserve not disclosed in a balance-sheet and due to an understatement of certain capital assets.
1930Daily Express 16 Aug. 10/1 Former Inner Reserves are now brought from the Assets in which they were hidden and are grouped in an exposed Reserve on the Liability side of the Sheet. 1955Times 10 May 18/5 Your directors have now decided to transfer a part of these inner reserves in order to increase the contingencies reserve.
n. inner-directed adj. (Sociol.): a term coined by D. Riesman to designate persons whose behaviour and goals are directed by the standards and ideals which they formed early in life; also postulated as a cultural stage in a society. (See quot. 1950.) Cf. other-directed and tradition-directed adjs. Hence inner direction.
1950D. Riesman et al. Lonely Crowd i. 9 The society of transitional population growth develops in its typical members a social character whose conformity is insured by their tendency to acquire early in life an internalized set of goals. These I shall term inner-directed people and the society in which they live a society dependent on inner-direction. Ibid. 16 The inner-directed person becomes capable of maintaining a delicate balance between the demands upon him of his life goal and the buffetings of his external environment. 1959Spectator 4 Sept. 307/2 A criticism renewed by sociology—he [sc. C. Wilson in The Age of Defeat] seems to imply—can help to renew literature by restoring ‘the hero’, and ‘the hero’ will re⁓accredit in real life the image of the ‘inner-directed’ man. 1959Listener 3 Sept. 363/2 Mr. Wilson discerns a similar awareness of the difference between ‘inner-direction’ and ‘other-direction’ in the existentialist writings of Camus and Sartre. 1961M. Singer in B. Kaplan Studying Personality 51 The influence of parents and teachers, so vital in the formation of ‘inner-direction’, is being superseded by the influence of ‘peer-groups’ and the mass media. 1964M. Argyle Psychol. & Social Probl. xv. 186 The life of managers is also changing: as in America the inner-directed individualist is being replaced by the other-directed organization man, who fits in easily with the ideas of others, and subordinates his interests to those of the concern. 1968P. McKellar Experience & Behaviour xi. 288 The capacity to ‘go it alone’ is characteristic of the inner-directed personality. 1972Jrnl. Social Psychol. LXXXVI. 224 Low authoritarian subjects are more inner-directed.
o. inner space [after outer space]: (a) the regions between the surface of the earth and outer space; (b) the regions below the surface of the sea; (c) [cf. sense 2] the part of one's mind or personality that is not normally experienced or within one's consciousness.
(a)1958Times 29 Mar. 7/4 We seem to need..names for the parts where the atmosphere is still a drag, where the Earth's gravitation is dominant... Tentatively it might be suggested that these be called..inner space. 1966I. Asimov Fantastic Voyage i. 10 We would pile him into an X-52 and rocket him through inner space.
(b)1958Times 7 Oct. 10/3 The Seawolf's [sc. a submarine's] captain..had radioed in advance that he considered ‘this voyage has proved the feasibility of protracted flights in ‘inner’ space’. 1969Sci. Jrnl. Apr. 64/2 There is a remarkable similarity between many of the problems faced by the astronaut in ‘outer space’ and those of the aquanaut in ‘inner space’.
(c)1958Sat. Rev. (U.S.) 13 Sept. 28/2 Must this inner space continue to be peopled with imaginative dragons of strange color and dropping off places that confine the moral venture to the shallow water of one's own main⁓land or adjacent islands of narrow self-interest? 1961‘J. Dunlap’ (title) Exploring inner space: personal experiences under LSD-25. 1968A. Diment Bang Bang Birds viii. 143 The Indian and Chinese prophets..knew a thing or two about inner space and the turned-on mind. They did it on contemplation though and not mushroom juice. 1969Daily Tel. 20 Feb. 16/7 It is they..who are the investigators of what J. G. Ballard terms ‘inner space’—the remoter recesses of man's mind under strange stresses.
p. inner city: the central area of a city, esp. regarded as having particular problems of overcrowding, poverty, etc. Also attrib. (see sense 6 below). orig. U.S.
1968Sat. Rev. (U.S.) 16 Nov. 95 The twin concepts of decentralization and community control of the schools developed in response to the failure of schools in the inner city. 1973Black Panther 17 Mar. 11/1 I'm..interested in getting a little more practical and down to present social policies in the cities, in the inner-cities; the continuing and ever occurring crisis in the inner-cities, where large numbers of people are trapped in a cycle of poverty. 1974Times 19 Jan. 10/2 The problems of the inner city—a work area where almost everyone has gone home.
2. a. Said of the mind or soul (as the more inaccessible or secret, or as the more central or essential part of man, or as distinguished from the external or outer world), and of things belonging or relating thereto; hence often = Mental or spiritual.
c900tr. Bæda's Hist. iv. xiii. (1722) 582 On ðam inneran godum ᵹe on ðam uttran. a1050Liber Scintill. ix. (1889) 44 Se inra dema ᵹeþanc swyþor þaenne þa word besceawaþ. a1225Ancr. R. 92 Hwo se ȝemeleasliche witeð hire uttre eien, þurh Godes rihtwise dome heo ablindeð in þe inre eien. a1340Hampole Psalter ix. 20 Þat..þe utter man haf noght maistry of þe inere. 1382–1671 [see 3]. 1590Spenser F.Q. ii. vii. 24 But th' Elfin knight with wonder all the way Did feed his eyes, and fild his inner thought. 1813Shelley Q. Mab vii. 50 The sense By which thy inner nature was apprised Of outward shows. 1854Geo. Eliot tr. Feuerbach's Essence Christianity i. 2 The inner life of man is the life which has relation to his species. 1860J. W. Palmer tr. Michelet's Love 118 A feeling that the woman's inner self will not be reached, her soul not attained. 1874Carpenter Ment. Phys. i. ii. §4 (1879) 120 The Cerebrum,—the instrument of our Psychical or inner life. 1880W. James Coll. Ess. & Rev. (1920) 217 The point of application of the volitional effort always lies within the inner world, being an idea or representation. 1885J. Martineau Types Eth. The. I. i. i. §3. 165 Our own mind we know by what is called the ‘Inner Sense’ or consciousness. 1886Inner self [see climate n. 3 b]. 1899W. James Talks to Teachers ii. 15 There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or of whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life. 1902― Var. Relig. Exper. i. 7 Often they [sc. religious leaders] have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. 1905A. Lang Adv. among Books 122 She [sc. Mrs. Radcliffe] delighted in descriptions of scenery, the more romantic the better, and usually drawn entirely from her inner consciousness. 1915V. W. Brooks World of H. G. Wells v. 106 The force of a work of art does not reside in its ‘inner meanings’. 1927B. Russell Outl. Philos. ii. 20 We all have an inner life, open to our own inspection but to no one else's. 1930Amer. Jrnl. Psychiatry 1019 The former is derived from persona meaning the essential or inner self. 1944Auden For Time Being (1945) 35 The manifestations of the inner life should always remain so easy and habitual. 1952Gerth & Martindale tr. Weber's Anc. Judaism p. xi, He displayed an inner-worldly, stoic attitude in the face of death. 1953R. G. Davis Ten Mod. Masters p. xiv, Even a fairy-tale or fantasy must have its inner logic. 1971Daily Tel. 6 Aug. 9/7 This is a girl with an intense inner life. 1974Listener 17 Jan. 76/1 Each [Buddhist monk]..inhabits his private inner world, and yet they're in harmony with each other.
b. inner speech (form): see quots. Also inner linguistic (or language) form, inner form.
[1885D. G. Brinton in Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc. XXII. iv. 319 Besides the grammatical form of a language, Humboldt recognized another which he called its internal form.] 1888H. A. Strong tr. Paul's Princ. Hist. Lang. xx. 460 The influencing force extends merely to what Humboldt and Steinthal have described as the inner language form (‘innere Sprachform’). Ibid. 471 A language suffers influence in its inner linguistic form principally in the mouths of those who speak it as a foreign tongue. 1901H. Oertel Lect. Study Lang. i. 64 This is the ‘outer speech form’, the external, phonetic aspect of the speech symbols. The ‘inner speech form’ is the definite arrangement of the prelinguistic psychical material into definite groups, the coherence of each group being secured by labelling each with one definite sound-tag. 1930J. R. Firth Speech v. 44 The early discussions on inner speech did not touch the bigger question of the extensive motor accompaniment of thought. 1934Webster, Inner speech, Psychol., use of words or word images in thinking, without audible or visible speaking. Ibid., Inner speech form (trans. of G. innere Sprachform, used by Humboldt and Steinthal), the mental concept or image associated with a word prior to its use or upon hearing or reading it, as the concept of a quadruped associated with the word ‘animal’; abstractly, the quality by which a word evokes such a mental picture. 1970H. C. Shands Semiotic Approaches to Psychiatry 10 Inner speech systems are constructed throughout the developmental period in human beings.
3. Phr. the inner man:
a. The inner or spiritual part of man; the soul or mind. Also, the inner woman.
c1000Ecgbert's Penit. iv. §63 in Thorpe Laws II. 224 Se innra man ðæt is seo sawl. 1382Wyclif Eph. iii. 16 That he ȝyue to ȝou..vertu for to be strengthid by his spirit in the ynnere man [Vulg. in interiorem hominem]. 1398Trevisa Barth. De P.R. iii. i. (1495) 48 Isidore spekyth..of the inner man and vtter man. 1671Milton P.R. ii. 477 This attracts the soul, Governs the inner man, the nobler part. 1857Trollope Barchester T. III. x. 184 She ate and drank, and as the inner woman was recruited she felt a little more charitable. 1858Hawthorne Passages from Fr. & It. Note-Bks. (1871) I. 190 To behave as her inner woman prompts. 1860Farrar Orig. Lang. i. 32 The living product of the whole inner man. 1892Gentlewoman's Bk. Sports I. 44 After refreshing the inner woman, I was all for trying the Sandhills again.
b. humorously (after sense 1): The stomach or ‘inside’, esp. in reference to food.
1856Kane Arct. Expl. II. xx. 204 With my inner man well refreshed with auk-livers, I was soon asleep. 1865Day of Rest Oct. 609 The New Englander, who had been strengthening the inner man during the remarks of the abbé.
4. inner barrister, inner post, inner stern-post, Inner Temple, etc.: see the nouns.
†5. Inner was formerly sometimes written in combination or hyphened with a n., where it would now be written separately; e.g. inner-land, interior country; inner-ward, of a castle (see ward n.2); innerwit, internal knowledge (see wit). Obs.
1495Trevisa's Barth. De P.R. iii. vi. (W. de W.) 52 Felynge bodyly wytte and ymagynacyon arne sytuate in the soule, that he is onid to the body and yeue it lyfe and Inner⁓wytte and vtterwytt to perfeccion of the body. 1613M. Ridley Magn. Bodies 99 No lesse doth the Needle and Compasse upon the continent and inner-land, decline [etc.].
6. Various phrases used attrib.
1908Daily Chron. 22 Jan. 3/3 You may browse at will among the epistles or the notes, feeling that you are always with informed, inner-circle folk. 1909Westm. Gaz. 14 Apr. 10/2 What colour of glass must be used for the front door and inner-court doors? 1927J. Adams Errors in School 32 An idea does not merely mean the inner-world equivalent of an outside object. 1953C. E. Bazell Ling. Form 57 The rare cases of inner-verbal sequence-relevance may be dealt with analogously. 1957C. Hunt Guide to Communist Jargon xxv. 88 According to the Political Dictionary, inner-party democracy is the consistent application of the principles of ‘democratic centralism’, though, to be more accurate, it stands for its democratic as opposed to its dominant centralized aspect. 1960H. Edwards Spirit Healing vii. 63 Spiritual healers have long known that the origin of organic diseases most often lay in inner-self disharmonies. 1961Observer 8 Oct. 10/3 It is doubtful if Mr. Gaitskell himself had thought through the problem of inner-party democracy. 1964F. Bowers Bibliogr. & Textual Crit. iv. ii. 112 Any separate small pile of inner-forme sheets. 1968Sun (Baltimore) 4 July A.16/3 A possible explanation of the inner-city language superiority (which had disappeared by the third grade) was, Mrs. Entwisle thought, the unrestricted time which small inner-city children spend in front of television sets. 1970New York 16 Nov. 42/2 From here the city spreads in a wheel-spoke design through seven inner-city black neighborhoods. 1971Guardian 26 Feb. 6/8 Camden's housing problems have often been in the spotlight for revealing inner-city trends. 1972Ibid. 5 Jan. 5/2 The solution to the problem of the inner city child eludes us.
B. n.
a. That division of a target next outside the bull's-eye: = centre n. 9; or, in some targets, the division immediately outside the centre.
b. ellipt. A shot which strikes this.
1887Daily News 15 July 3/5 Beginning with two inners, he then put together five successive bulls-eyes, and raised his aggregate to within a point of that by which Corporal Soutar won the Bronze Medal last year. 1891C. T. C. James Rom. Rigmarole 19 The bygone shot wasn't a bull's-eye; no, only an ‘inner’.
▸ orig. U.S. Designating a hidden or unrealized aspect of someone's personality, characterized as a specific type of person, as inner geek, inner poet, inner warrior, etc.
Earliest in inner child n.
1955Chicago Sunday Tribune 13 Nov. iv. 7/2, I had unconsciously used just that method of going beyond memory and thus getting into the inner child that I once was. 1982L. S. Leonard Wounded Woman i. 23 There is within us [sc. women]..the positive and creative aspects of the inner archetypal father. 1990R. Bly Iron John (1992) vi. 146 We'll begin with the inner warrior... The warriors inside American men have become weak. 1995J. F. Garner Once upon more Enlightened Time 70 Her parents were off on a retreat to learn to release their ‘inner peasant’. 1998Details Apr. 86/1 They may get name-checked on MTV..but..[they] are still in touch with their inner geeks. 2003N.Y. Mag. 21 Apr. 51/1 (advt.) Whether you have a hankering to write a romance novel..or nurture your inner poet, you can find your voice at Gotham Writers' Workshop.
▪ III. † ˈinner, adv. Obs.
Forms: 1 innor, 3–5 innere, 4 ynnere, 5 inner.
[OE. innor (compar. of inn adv., in) = OHG. innor (MHG. inner).]
More inwards; further in.
c1000ælfric Gram. xxxviii. (Z.) 240 Intra wiðinnan, interius wiðinnan oððe innor. c1205Lay. 29282 Swa þe sparewe innere crap. 1399Langl. Rich. Redeles iii. 195 And lete hem pleye in þe porche, and presse non ynnere. c1450Lonelich Grail l. 299 Thanne forth Iosephe Innere wente. 1460Lybeaus Disc. 1771 Lybeauus inner gan pace. |