| 释义 |
▪ I. whitening, vbl. n.|ˈhwaɪt(ə)nɪŋ|
[f. whiten v. + -ing1.]
1. The action, or a process, of making white; bleaching, whitewashing, tinning, etc.; also fig. Also, the fact or process of becoming white.
1601Holland Pliny xxxi. xi. II. 423 An artificiall devise to make spunges looke white;..if the softest..be..bathed..in the fome of salt: after which they ought to be laid abroad in the moon-shine,..that thereby they may take their whitening. 1705Addison Italy, etc. 489 They have..great Commodities for Whitening [= bleaching]. 1713Guardian No. 109 ⁋6 Our Faces debar us from all artificial Whitenings. 1839Ure Dict. Arts 956 Pin manufacture... 9. Whitening or tinning. 1854R. H. Patterson Ess. Hist. & Art (1862) 34 Whitening of the seams—a disagreeable vestiarian phenomenon produced by the surface..of the cloth being rubbed off. 1857Miller Elem. Chem., Org. (1862) xi. §2. 773 After another scraping on the flesh side, or whitening, it [sc. the skin] is ready to be stored away. 1877Paper hanger etc. 69 If the ceiling is a new one, prime with water, soft soap, and a little lime before whitening. 1878Seeley Stein II. 401 That popular agitation, that first whitening of the waves for the storm of the Anti-Napoleonic Revolution. 1891Athenæum 26 Dec. 870/2 It goes too far in its blackening of Macbeth and in its whitening of Lady Macbeth.
2. concr. = whiting vbl. n. 4.
1710Lady G. Baillie Househ. Bk. (S.H.S. 1911) 84 For whittining to the wals 1s. 3d. 1823J. Badcock Dom. Amusem. 29 Derbyshire stone, whitening and plaister of Paris. 1906‘G. Travers’ Growth i. 5 The smell of moisture and bathbrick and whitening.
3. attrib. and Comb.
1797F. Burney Diary, Let. to Mrs. Francis 16 Nov., The silver of our plated [spoons] having feloniously made off under cover of the whitening-brush. 1800Hull Advertiser 7 June 2/3 The warehouses, whitening-house,..whitening and painting mills. 1826Galt Last of Lairds xxxiv. 304 Jenny..was..whitewashing the lintels of the lower windows with an old hearth-brush; her whitening-pot was a handless and cripple tureen. 1875Knight Dict. Mech., Whitening-machine, a machine for removing the red skin or cuticle from the grain of rice.
▪ II. ˈwhitening, ppl. a.
[f. as prec. + -ing2.]
That whitens; making or becoming white.
1641J. Jackson True Evang. T. ii. 143 The bleaching, whitening,..cleansing quality of Christs blood. 1648J. Beaumont Psyche vii. lv, Made not by scorching but by whitening light. 1704Pope Spring 19 Two Swains..Pour'd o'er the whitening vale their fleecy care. 1821Scott Pirate xxxvii, My whitening bones will swing in the gibbet-irons. 1859Hawthorne Fr. & It. Note-bks. (1871) II. 274 Marks of..coming age in many a whitening hair. 1902Buchan Watcher by Threshold, etc. 88 My whitening face must have told them a tale. |