释义 |
‖ œcumene|iːˈkjuːmɛniː| Also ecumene, oik(o)umene. [a. Gr. οἰκουµένη (see ecumenic a.).] The inhabited world as known to the ancient Greeks; the Greeks and their neighbours regarded in the context of development in human society. Also transf., the inhabited world (or a part of it) as known to or embraced by a later civilization.
1911E. C. Semple Influences Geogr. Environment vi. 171 Humanity's area of distribution and historical movement we call the Oikoumene. 1926M. T. Bingham tr. P. Vidal de la Blache's Princ. Human Geogr. 18 Ocean solitudes long divided inhabited countries (oikoumenes). Ibid. ii. 49 Recent conquests by the oikoumene. 1941Antiquity XV. 6 By reinstating the archaeological evidence the continuum of the oikumene, made explicit in the medieval travellers' narratives, could be displayed as an enlargement of one already implied in the Bronze Age by the 24th century B.C. 1946V. Ehrenberg Aspects Anc. World iii. 32 Greeks and Romans alike regarded the inhabited earth, the oecumene, as an area round the Mediterranean. 1953Ann. Assoc. Amer. Geogr. XLIII. 92 Distribution of people in its..global scale, involves dividing the land portions of the earth into permanently inhabited as compared with uninhabited, or temporarily inhabited, parts. The terms ecumene and non-ecumene have been employed to represent these two major sub⁓divisions. 1956A. Toynbee Historian's Approach to Relig. 214 The political partition of the Oikoumenê into sixty or seventy self-governing parochial states. 1962B. Lewis in Lewis & Holt Historians of Middle East xvi. 182 It [sc. the common stock of Muslim universal history] appears chiefly in the general introductory matter, leading up to the establishment of the Islamic oecumene. 1967Economist 18 Nov. 742/2 Should the political scientist make change itself his theme? And if so, in an interdependent world, can the boundaries of his study be less than the oikumene itself? 1967H. R. Friis Pacific Basin ii. 20 Eratosthenes..was like other philosophers before him concerned with the extent of the inhabited world—the oikoumene. 1972D. M. Nicol Last Centuries of Byzantium v. 78 The paterfamilias, the head of the Christian family or oikoumene, was the emperor in Constantinople. |