| 释义 |
Iron Age
Also iron age.
[See iron a. 3 f]
1. The last and worst age of the world according to Greek and Roman mythology, succeeding the Golden, Silver, and Brazen Ages. Hence allusively, An age or period of wickedness, cruelty, oppression, debasement, etc.
a1592H. Smith Wks. (1867) II. 41 In these days, and in this iron age, it is as hard a thing to persuade men to part with money, as to pull out their eyes, and cast them away. 1656B. Harris tr. Parival (title) The Historie of this Iron Age. 1693T. Creech in Dryden's Juvenal (1697) 323 Worse than the Iron Age, and wretched Times Roul on. 1772Fletcher Logica Genev. 188 Does not this exceed Ovid's descripton of the iron-age? 1900J. A. H. Murray Romanes Lect. 36 The golden age of Latinity had passed into a silvern, and that into a brazen and an iron age.
2. Archæol. That period in the history of mankind or of any race in which iron weapons and implements were or are used (subsequent to the stone age and bronze age). Hence transf., a period characterized by the general use of iron.
1879Lubbock Sci. Lect. v. 164 The Iron Age is the period when this metal was first used for weapons and cutting instruments. 1890W. J. Gordon Foundry 107 The Iron Age has passed; this is the Age of Steel. We shall see immediately that even our ‘tin’ pots and kettles are now made of steel.
¶ In the following perh. = mass of irons.
1607Tourneur Rev. Trag. iv. i. Wks. 1878 II. 101 Make thee a perpetuall prisoner And laye this yron-age upon thee. |