| 释义 |
lady's finger, lady-finger
Pl. occas. ladies' fingers.
1. sing. and pl. The plant Anthyllis vulneraria, the Kidney Vetch.
Also applied dial. to various other plants, as Lotus corniculatus (formerly called lady-finger grass): see Britten and Holland Plant-n.
1670Ray Catal. Plant. Angl. 24 Anthyllis leguminosa... Kidney-vetch, Ladies finger. 1743in W. Ellis Mod. Husbandm. (1750) II. i. xv. 148 Your Lady-finger-grass (or Birds-foot Trefoil..which is the Botanical Name). 1756Watson in Phil. Trans. XLIX. 842 Kidney Vetch, or Ladies Finger. 1848C. A. Johns Week at Lizard 306 Anthyllis vulneraria, variety Dillenii, Lady's-fingers, occurs..all along the coast.
2. Applied to various objects of long and slender form.
a. A kind of cake (cf. finger-biscuit).
1820Keats Cap & Bells xlviii, Steep Some lady's-fingers nice in Candy wine. 1828Lights & Shades II. 196 Honey and ladies' fingers for tea. 1864‘Mark Twain’ in Harte & ‘Twain’ Sk. Sixties (1926) 138 ‘Lady-fingers’..suggestive of..soft dalliance with pastry, ices, and sparkling Moselle. 1906Westm. Gaz. 30 Apr. 10/1 Lady-fingers and ice-cream. a1938T. Wolfe Web & Rock (1939) i. ii. 22 Was..President Taft the easy prey of lady fingers? 1942C. Barrett On Wallaby iii. 39 ‘Nana’ nibbled at a sponge ‘lady's finger’. 1974H. McCloy Sleepwalker vi. 108 We adjourned for tea and ladyfingers at quarter of six.
b. Austral. A kind of grape. Also, a banana.
1892E. Reeves Homeward Bound 90 The very finest ladies'-fingers, sweet-waters, and muscatels. 1893Mrs. C. Praed Outlaw & Lawmaker II. 91 They were sitting..in the banana grove, whither Elsie had gone on pretext of finding some still ungathered ‘Lady's fingers’.
c. U.S. (a) A variety of the potato; (b) One of the branchiæ of the lobster; (c) A variety of apple. (Cent. Dict.)
1876J. Burroughs Winter Sunshine vii. 154 Others are indeed lady apples..like the egg-drop and lady-finger.
d. = okra.
1905W. R. Beattie in U.S. Dept. Agric. Farmers' Bull. no. 232. 12 There are three general types of okra, viz., tall green, dwarf green, and lady finger. 1935M. Morphy Recipes of all Nations 771 Chicken with ‘Ladysfingers’... Put in..a few bamies, or ‘ladysfingers’. This vegetable..is a variety of okra, or gombo [sic], but smaller than the okra of the Southern United States. 1972Y. Lovelock Vegetable Bk. 147 Indians call it [sc. okra] bhindi and, in their restaurants, ladies' fingers, although this is a name applied to many other plants, including grapes, bananas and a kidney vetch. |