| 释义 |
Wessex|ˈwɛsɪks|
[OE. West Seaxe West Saxons.]
1. The name of a kingdom in south-west England in Anglo-Saxon times, used by Thomas Hardy as the name of the county in which his stories are set (corresponding approximately to Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, and Wiltshire) and since used as a name for south-west England or this part of it.
1868W. Barnes Poems of Rural Life in Common Eng. Pref., As I think that some people, beyond the bounds of Wessex, would allow me the pleasure of believing that they have deemed..my homely poems in our Dorset mother-speech to be worthy of their reading, I have written a few of a like kind, in common English. 1874Hardy in Cornh. Mag. Nov. 624 Greenhill was the Nijnii Novgorod of Wessex; and the busiest..day of the whole statute number was the day of the sheep-fair. 1876Examiner 15 July 794/1 The Wessex man knows that these passages have in them the real ring, all equally true to life and scenery. 1938Proc. Prehistoric Soc. IV. 52 The work..was..undertaken with a view to examining the cultures of the geographical area usually comprised in the term ‘Wessex’ in the period immediately following the Beaker phase. 1979N. & Q. June 193/2 All [volumes] share a chronology of the life and works, Hardy's General Preface to the Wessex Edition, and notes on Wessex and Wessex names.
2. attrib. = saddleback n. 4 h.
1919, etc. [see saddleback n. 4 h]. 1919[see killer 4 b]. 1978A. Williams Backyard Pig Farming iv. 27 There used to be a Wessex Saddleback originating in Dorset; it had black back legs.
3. Archæol. Of, pertaining to, or designating an Early Bronze Age culture in southern England, c 2000–1500 b.c., represented by grave-goods of native and European provenance.
1938S. Piggott in Proc. Prehistoric Soc. IV. 52 Many elements..here described as typical of the Wessex Culture of the Bronze Age are..found in associations which are late and outside the main culture-area. 1954Antiquity Mar. 28 The axes..of this broad-butted type,..characteristic..of Piggott's Wessex Culture. 1963E. S. Wood Collins Field Guide Archaeol. i. iv. 64 The Wessex nobility seem to have come from Germany. 1975Times Lit. Suppl. 14 Mar. 282/1 The unlikelihood of Mycenaean influence on Stonehenge and the ‘Wessex culture’ of southern England. 1983P. A. Crowl Prehist. Britain i. 33 The Wessex urns..lacking the refinement one would have expected of this..culture. |