| 释义 |
▪ I. weet-weet, int. and n.1
[Echoic.]
1. int. |ˈwiːtˈwiːt|. An imitation of the cry of certain birds, esp. the sandpiper and chaffinch. Also n. as the name for this cry.
1808–13A. Wilson Amer. Ornith. (1831) III. 170, I could still hear their low note of weet weet, as they approached near to the vessel below me. 1831Howitt Seasons (1837) 106 The weet-weet and pink-pink of the chaffinch. 1843Zoologist I. 221 The ‘weet weet’ of the sandpiper.
2. n. |ˈwiːtwiːt|. Used as a name for the sandpiper.
1852Macgillivray Brit. Birds IV. 350 Actitis. Weet-weet. Ibid., The Weet-weets are small migratory birds, which frequent the sandy and muddy margins of lakes, rivers, and estuaries. Ibid. 351 Actitis Hypoleucos. The White⁓breasted Weet-weet. Ibid. 356 Actitis macularia. The Spotted Weet-weet. 1862Johns Brit. Birds 625 Weet-weet, the Common Sandpiper.
▪ II. ‖ weet-weet, n.2|ˈwiːtwiːt|
[Native Australian: see quot. 1878.]
An Australian toy (see quot. 1878), contrived to be capable of being thrown to a great distance.
1878R. B. Smyth Aborigines of Victoria I. 352 The plaything (Fig. 170) called by the natives of the Yarra Wi-tch-wi-tch, We-a-witcht, Weet-weet, or Wa-voit, is one of the most extraordinary instruments used by savages... The head—in shape like two cones placed base to base—is about four inches and a half in length and one inch in diameter; and the stem, not quite two-tenths of an inch in diameter, is about twenty-one inches in length. 1886Daily News 20 Dec. 5/3 The Australian toy called the weet-weet which can be thrown for several hundred yards, bounding off the ground at frequent intervals all the way. 1910T. A. Joyce Handbk. Ethnogr. Coll. Brit. Mus. 117 A peculiar toy is the weet-weet or ‘kangaroo-rat’, which the practised player can throw to enormous distances.
▪ III. weet-weet, v.
[f. weet-weet int.]
intr. To cry ‘weet, weet’.
1845S. Judd Margaret i. ii. (1871) 7 A sand-piper glided weet weeting along the shore. |