| 释义 |
witch knot
1. a. A tangled knot of hair supposed to be made by witches: = elf-lock.
1598Drayton Heroic. Ep., El. Cobham 112 O that I were a Witch..! I would..knit whole ropes of witchknots in her hayre. 17..Willie's Lady xxxiv. in Child Ballads I. 87 Oh wha has loosed the nine witch knots That was amo that ladie's locks?
b. A knot tied for the purpose of making or averting a spell.
1884A. Lang in M. Hunt Grimm's Household Tales I. p. xlvi, All over the world savages..tie ‘witch-knots’. 1947A. Runeberg tr. E. H. Meyer in Witches & Demons in West-European Folk Belief vii. 95 Witches..twist twigs into witchknots, and leave the fairy rings in the grass after their dances. 1957E. E. Evans Irish Folk Ways xxi. 304 The cow-doctor uses sympathetic magic..by drawing apart over the animal's back the loose ends of a string tied in a complicated witch-knot or ‘bat’,..which comes undone when pulled.
2. A bushy tuft of twigs on a tree: = witches' besom (see witch n.2 5 c).
1806J. Grahame Birds Scot. 51 The simple boy..Mistakes the witch-knots for the cushat's nest. 1880F. P. Pascoe Zool. Classif. (ed. 2) 96 The ‘witch-knot’ found on the birch, and resembling a great mass of twigs like a bird's nest, is an abnormal growth..caused by Phytopti. |