| 释义 |
Anglo-Saxon, n. and a.|ˌæŋgləʊˈsæksən|
Forms: 1 Angul-, Angel-, Ongol-seaxan n. pl., 7– Anglo-Saxon, -saxon, 9 Anglosaxon.
[Prob. in 9th c., as certainly in 17th, ad. L. Anglo-Saxones, -Saxon-icus, in which Anglo-, comb. form of Anglus, -ī, is used adverbially, as in similar L. and Gr. compounds, as sacro-sanctus sacredly sanctioned, Ἰνδο-σκυθία Indian Scythia, Scythia of the Indus, συρο-ϕοῖνιξ, L. Syrophœnix, Phœnician of Syria. Cf. also Gallo-græci, and in later use Mœso-Gothi Goths of Mœsia. Hence Anglo-Saxones, Angel-seaxan = English Saxons, Saxons of England or of the Angul-cynn (gens Anglorum, Bæda), as distinguished from the Ald-Seaxan (Antiqui Saxones, Bæda) or Old-Saxons of the continent. The earliest L. forms were Angli Saxones, Saxones Angli (two words ‘English Saxons’), whence Angli-Saxones, and finally Anglo-Saxones, Anglosaxones. App. of continental origin; in OE. use, rare in the Eng. form; not uncommon in Latin documents down to 1100.]
I. English Saxon, Saxon of England: orig. a collective name for the Saxons of Britain as distinct from the ‘Old Saxons’ of the continent. Hence, properly applied to the Saxons (of Wessex, Essex, Middlesex, Sussex, and perhaps Kent), as distinct from the Angles.
a. n. (the only contemporary use).
[c775Paulus Diaconus iv. xxiii, Vestimenta..qualia Angli Saxones habere solent. Ibid. iv. xxxvii, E Saxonum Anglorum genere duxit uxorem. c885Charter, Cod. Dip. V. 134 Ego ælfredus, gratia Dei, Angul-Saxonum rex.] 934Chart. C.D. V. 218–9 Ic æthelstán, Ongol-Saxna cyning and Brytænwalda eallæs þyses iᵹlandes. 955Chart. C.D. II. 303 He hafað ᵹeweorðad mid cynedóme Angulseaxna Eádred cyning and cásere totius Britanniæ.
b. adj. absol. In this Dictionary, the language of England before 1100 is called, as a whole, ‘Old English’ (OE.); Anglo-Saxon, when used, is restricted to the Saxon as distinguished from the Anglian dialects of Old English; thus we may say that eald was the Anglo-Saxon (i.e. West Saxon and Kentish) form of the normal OE. ald (retained in Anglian), whence, and not from eald, we have mod.Eng. old.
II. Extended to the entire Old English people and language before the Norman Conquest.
For these there was apparently at first no collective name; subsequently, the name Englisc (Anglish, English) was extended from the dialect of the Angles (the first to be committed to writing) to all dialects of the vernacular, whether Anglian or Saxon; and Angul-cynn (Angle-kin, gens Anglorum), and later still, during the struggle with the Danes, ‘English’ and ‘Englishman,’ to all speakers of the vernacular in any dialect Angle or Saxon. After the Norman Conquest, the natives and the new incomers were at first distinguished as ‘English’ and ‘French,’ but, as the latter also became in a few generations ‘English’ politically and geographically, men's notions of ‘English’ changed accordingly, so that the 12th c. chroniclers could no longer apply the word distinctively to the people of Edward the Confessor and Harold, for whom therefore they recalled the name ‘Saxon,’ applicable enough to the West Saxon dynasty, but incorrect when extended to the whole Angle-kin over whom they ruled. At the hands of the Latin chroniclers, often foreigners, to whom the historical relations of Saxons and Angles were not very obvious, a similar extension of meaning had been given to Anglo-Saxones. But this name did not reappear in English till after 1600, when, with the revival of OE. learning, historians and philologists again felt the need of distinguishing English ‘Saxon’ from the Saxon of Germany. The modern use dates from Camden, who himself used Anglo-Saxon-es, -icus, in Latin, and English Saxon in his vernacular works. His translator adapted the Lat. as Anglo-Saxon, which gradually displaced ‘English Saxon,’ first as n., and finally as adj. also. But it was applied, as Saxon had been for 500 years erroneously applied, to ‘Old English’ as a whole. This has led in turn to an erroneous analysis of the word, which has been taken as = Angle + Saxon, a union of Angle and Saxon; and in accordance with this mistaken view, modern combinations have been profusely formed in which Anglo- is meant to express ‘English and..’, ‘English in connexion with..’, as ‘the Anglo-Russian war’; whence, on the same analogy, Franco-German, Turko-Russian, etc. See Anglo-.
a. n.
[1586–1607Camden Brit. 94 Nunc..Anglo-Saxones ad differentiam eorum in Germania, vocatos. Ibid. 128 Maiores nostri Anglo-Saxones Wittena-ᵹe-mott, .i. Prudentum Conuentus..vocârunt.] 1610Holland Camden's Brit. 177 The Anglo Saxons our ancestors termed it Wittena-ᵹe-mott, that is, an assembly of the wise. Ibid. i. 127 (title) English Saxons; (marg. title) Anglo-Saxons. [1605Camden Rem. (1614) 20 The English-Saxon tongue came in by the English-Saxons out of Germany.] 1726Tindal Rapin's Eng. (1757) I. i. 90 They were generally called Saxons, yet they had sometimes the compound name of Anglo-Saxons given them. 1735Thomson Liberty iv. (T.) Ere, blood-cemented, Anglo-Saxons saw Egbert and Peace on one united throne. 1846Wright Mid. Ages I. i. 2 Public attention..was first drawn to the writings of the Anglo-Saxons at the time of the reformation. a1861Palgrave Norm. & Eng. (1864) III. 596, I must..substitute henceforward the true and antient word English for the unhistorical and conventional term Anglo-Saxon, an expression conveying a most false idea in our civil history. 1867Freeman Norm. Conq. (1877) I. 548, I speak therefore of our forefathers, not as ‘Saxons,’ or even as ‘Anglo-Saxons,’ but as they spoke of themselves, as Englishmen.
b. adj. (absol. The Old English language.)
[1586–1607Camden Brit. 121 In Anglo-Saxonicis legibus nusquam comparet. 1610Holland Camden's Brit. 168 In the English-Saxon lawes, it is nowhere to be seene. 1605Camden Rem. (1614) 21 The English-Saxon conquerors, altred the tongue which they found here wholly. Ibid. 70 Folc, the English-Saxon woorde for people. 1715E. Elstob (title) The Rudiments of Grammar for the English Saxon Tongue. 1726Ayliffe Parerg. 11 Under all the English Saxon Kings.] 1726Tindal Rapin's Eng. (1757) I. iii. 157 The Anglo-Saxon kings were naturally very restless. 1783Bailey, Anglosaxon, the Saxon language as it was spoken in England. 1876Sweet Anglo-Sax. Reader xi, The oldest stage of English before the Norman Conquest is now called ‘Old English,’ but the older name of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is still very generally used. 1955Quirk & Wrenn O.E. Gram. 1 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the term Anglo-Saxon..was the commonest name for the language; but, although still sometimes used by scholars it has gradually been replaced in the last hundred years by the more scientific term Old English.
III. Used rhetorically for English in its wider or ethnological sense, in order to avoid the later historical restriction of ‘English’ as distinct from Scotch, or the modern political restriction of ‘English’ as opposed to American of the United States; thus applied to (1) all persons of Teutonic descent (or who reckon themselves such) in Britain, whether of English, Scotch, or Irish birth; (2) all of this descent in the world, whether subjects of Great Britain or of the United States. a. n.
1853Gen. P. Thompson Audi Alt. Part. (1858) I. xv. 51 Sometimes they stand on the right and the necessity for the European to live by plunder; and sometimes..they concentrate their claim upon the Anglo-Saxon. 1904Conrad Nostromo ii. vi. 180 It is part of the truth of things which hurts the—what do you call them?—the Anglo-Saxon's susceptibilities.
b. adj.
Quot. 18711 should perhaps be placed in sense II. b.
1832R. Choate in Deb. Congress 13 June 3515 The whole circle of the..arts, trades, and branches of manufacture, which characterize the..industry of the Anglo-Saxon race of men. 1840Gen. P. Thompson Exerc. (1842) V. 314 The chief reason stated for the recognition of the pirates, is that they are of the Anglo-Saxon race. 1846Spirit of Times (N.Y.) 6 June 177/3 The Anglo-Saxon ‘never can acknowledge the corn’ to the cross of negro and Indian. 1855Macaulay Hist. Eng. III. 143 The Puritan part of the Anglosaxon colony had little right to complain. 1871‘L. Carroll’ Through Looking-Glass vii, He's an Anglo-Saxon Messenger—and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes. 1871Spect. 22 Apr. 467 England's best alliance would be the free confederation of the English race in every part of the world. Change ‘English’ for ‘Anglo-Saxon,’ and in that sentence lies the policy of the future. 1875W. James Coll. Ess. & Rev. (1920) 16 But the thing which to our Anglo-Saxon mind seems so outlandish is that crowds of dapper fellows, revelling in animal spirits and conscious strength, should enroll themselves in cold blood as his [sc. Schopenhauer's] permanent apostles. 1888Kipling in Lett. of Marque (1891) xvi. 119 A snowy-bearded chowkidar..threw himself into Anglo-Saxon attitudes. 1924R. Graves Mock Beggar Hall 63 Yet commonsense, the Anglo-Saxon flair Seems weakest on its vaunted practical side. 1956A. Wilson (title) Anglo-Saxon Attitudes.
IV. Used for ‘the English language’. ‘(Of) the English language (of the modern period)’ U.S.; freq. with the implication ‘plain, unvarnished, forthright’. colloq.
a. adj.
1859‘J. Downing’ Thirty Years out of Senate 10 The best and truest exposition of the peculiar Yankee dialect of the Anglo-Saxon language that there is extant. 1863C. Lyell Antiquity of Man xxiii. 466 Among the [Germans of Pennsylvania]..I found the newspapers full of terms half English and half German, and many an Anglo-Saxon word which had assumed a Teutonic dress, as ‘fencen’, to fence, instead of umzäunen. 1927in Amer. Speech (1928) III. 376 Several Laborites were suspended in the House of Commons..to the accompaniment of..the hurling of bald Anglo-Saxon epithets traditionally classed as unparliamentary. 1927Sat. Rev. Lit. 23 Apr. 772/4 All nine of the tabooed Anglo-Saxon monosyllables. 1958Spectator 31 Jan. 133/2 The Bishop was reported in reputable newspapers as having said (and in more Anglo-Saxon terms) that he had been reliably informed of the truth of this fact.
b. n.
1866J. C. Gregg Life in Army xv. 137 Occasionally a word of honest, hearty Anglo-Saxon, or a ‘bit of the brogue’, to remind you that you are not in Naples, but in New Orleans. 1872H. A. Wise Seven Decades of Union 141 He [sc. Senator Leigh of Virginia] was a purist in his Anglo-Saxon. 1917in Amer. Speech (1929) IV. 271, I like your stilted style best Jack. When you descend to the Anglo Saxon you get too much in dead earnest. 1926Amer. Speech I. 265/1 Specimens of the jargon daily spoken by witnesses believing they talk pure Anglo-Saxon. 1927Yale Rev. Jan. 414 Tell me what you forget and I will tell you what you are, says the psycho-analyst. But I can do this, too, and in plain Anglo-Saxon. The man who insists on telling me what he forgets is a fool. 1947K. Malone in Word Study Oct. 2/2 In current speech Anglo-Saxon often means plain English. In this use, the word has Latin for antonym. |