| 释义 |
meddlesome, a.|ˈmɛd(ə)lsəm|
[f. meddle v. + -some.]
Given to meddling or interfering. Meddlesome Matty (or Meddlesome Mattie): a nickname for a meddlesome person (allusively, from quot. 1814).
1615G. Sandys Trav. 238 A people..talkative, meddlesome, dissentious. 1743Blair Grave i. 179 Honour! that meddlesome officious Ill, Pursues thee ev'n to Death. 1814A. & J. Taylor Orig. Poems (ed. 11) II. 3 (title) Meddlesome Matty. [Not in 1805 ed.] 1861Pearson Early & Mid. Ages Eng. 141 The story is a fair instance of the meddlesome legislation of those times. 1874Green Short Hist. viii. §5. 505 The Queen, frivolous and meddlesome as she was, detested him [Strafford]. 1889W. S. Playfair Midwifery (ed. 7) II. iii. ix. 4 The time-honoured maxim that ‘meddlesome midwifery is bad’. [1923D. H. Lawrence Kangaroo xi. 230 Jaz is a meddlesome-Patty.] 1927Times 17 Aug. 11/5 My warning was addressed to those who would make of the League ‘a kind of international Meddlesome Matty’. 1938A. G. Macdonell Autobiogr. of Cad xxi. 259 Every reformer finds his obstructionists... In both cases Meddlesome Matties were to blame. 1960D. Holman-Hunt My Grandmothers & I iv. 92 Good gracious, child, what a meddlesome matty you are.
Hence ˈmeddlesomely adv., ˈmeddlesomeness.
a1677Barrow Serm. Wks. 1716 I. 209 Meddlesomeness is commonly blameable. 1858Carlyle Fredk. Gt. x. iv. (1872) III. 246 A Hofkriegsrath..poking too meddlesomely into his affairs. 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) III. 325 A meddlesomeness, and interference, and rising up of a part against the whole of the soul. |