| 释义 |
ˈwait-a-bit
[tr. Cape Du. wacht-een-beetje.]
Usually attrib. with thorn, thorn-tree, etc. a. A name given to various S. African plants and shrubs with humorous reference to their hooked and clinging thorns; e.g. various species of mimosa.
1785G. Forster tr. Sparrman's Voy. Cape G.H. I. 236 A new species of callophyllum, which from its catching..fast hold of the traveller with its hooked prickles..is commonly called here wakt een betje, or wait a bit. 1850R. G. Cumming Hunter's Life S. Afr. (ed. 2) I. 152 This variety of mimosa is waggishly termed by the Boers ‘vyacht um bige’, or wait-a-bit thorns; as they continually solicit the passing traveller not to be in a hurry. 1857Livingstone Trav. iii. 61 The ‘wait-a-bit thorn’, or Acacia detinens. 1899Bertrand Kingd. Barotsi 48 Various species of thorn, of which the most formidable is the ‘wacht-een-beetje’, appropriately interpreted as the ‘wait-a-bit’, a crooked, steely, regular fish⁓hook of a thorn, that stops and tears everything that comes in its way. 1913C. Pettman Africanderisms, s.v. Wacht-en-beetje, The familiar Zizyphus mucronata, W., is popularly known all through Kaffraria and the Eastern Districts as the ‘wait-a-bit thorn tree’.
b. Applied by travellers to different plants of similar character in other parts of the world.
1865Tristram Land of Israel 202 The principal tree was the zizyphus spina-Christi..with long pointed and rather reflex thorns, very strong,—a true wait-a-bit tree. 1894Dennys Dict. Malaya 415 Wait-a-bit. A name conventionally applied to a species of rattan armed with powerful curved thorns. |