| 释义 |
Mormon|ˈmɔːmən|
[f. Mormon, the name of the pretended author of ‘The Book of Mormon’: see below. The earlier name was Mormonite.]
1. A member or adherent of a religious body, calling itself ‘The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints’, founded in 1830 at Manchester, New York, by Joseph Smith, on the basis of alleged Divine revelations contained in the ‘Book of Mormon’, which Smith professed to have translated by special inspiration from the original written on gold plates, miraculously discovered by himself.
The feature of the sect which is popularly best known, and which is referred to in allusive uses of the name, is the practice of polygamy: but this is not countenanced by the Book of Mormon, and is now understood to have been abandoned in obedience to the law of the United States.
1830[see Campbellite]. 1837J. M. Peck Gaz. Illinois (ed. 2) 1. 74 There are..a few Mormons..scattered through the state. 1842Caswall City of Mormons 34, I begged him to inform me whether the Mormons believed in the Trinity. 1845G. Struthers in Ess. Chr. Union vii. 372 Mormons, Atheists, Deists,..and other small sects and parties. 1881W. G. Marshall Thro. Amer. viii. 184 Considerable disgrace attaches to a Mormon if he lives a bachelor life. 1922Lit. Digest 10 June 40/1 Because a few of the inmates of the Hollywood film colony have ‘married from time to time’, they are less to be censured as Mormons than pitied as morons. 1928R. Campbell Wayzgoose i. 26 Muses Nine, Those strapping girls whose love, to say the least, Would make a rabid Mormon of a priest. 1963K. S. Latourette Christianity in Revolutionary Age V. ii. 14 In the Rocky Mountain area and on the west coast the Mormons were prominent.
fig.1906Spectator 3 Feb. 175/2 In distinction from the barnyard duck, who is a regular Mormon, the mallard is monogamous.
2. attrib. passing into adj.
1842Caswall City of Mormons 6 Houses..occupied, I was told, by Mormon emigrants. 1843Marryat M. Violet xliii, The whole of Texas becomes Mormon. 1884J. Hall Chr. Home 42 We have on the one side the Mormon problem to face, and on the other the divorce problem. 1913J. London Valley of Moon 430 He had been provost marshal when the Mormon trouble flared up. 1920Encycl. Relig. & Ethics XI. 83/1 The first principle is set forth by the chief Mormon theologian, Parley P. Pratt. 1942W. Stegner Mormon Country 65 He had sprung clear across the Great Basin deserts to locate the Mormon Station. 1948[see Mormon cricket, below]. 1966Encycl. N.Z. III. 64/2 The many similarities between Maori traditions and Mormon teachings. 1968Encycl. Brit. XIII. 795/2 Space, time, matter and the universe in Mormon theology are limitless by nature. 1975Times 20 Sept. 2/5 The fires at..the high school and the Mormon church [in Kirkcaldy], caused little damage.
3. Special Combs.: Mormon battalion (now Hist.), a company of soldiers from Mormon communities in Iowa enlisted for service in the Mexican war; Mormon Bible, the Book of Mormon; Mormon Church, the name by which the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints is commonly known; Mormon City, Salt Lake City, Utah; Mormon cricket, a longhorn grasshopper, Anabrus simplex; Mormon fly, a hesperiid butterfly, Atrytone hobomok; Mormon State, in the U.S., a State in which Mormons are predominant, usu. applied to Utah; Mormon trail, the trail followed by Mormon migrants to Utah in 1847; Mormon war, disorders arising between Mormon communities and their neighbours, and spec. the fighting between Utah Mormons and the federal troops in 1857–8; Mormon weed U.S., the Indian mallow, Abutilon theophrasti.
1848Santa Fé (New Mexico) Republican 27 June 1/4 Capt. Hunt of the *Mormon battalion, has left the Ciudad de Los Angelos for the Salt Lake. 1929L. H. Creer Utah & Nation iii. 32 While crossing the Sierras, he met the returning members of the Mormon Battalion.
1838Whittier in W. P. & F. J. Garrison Life W. L. Garrison (1885) II. 221 A discussion of the merits of animal magnetism, or of the *Mormon Bible, would have been quite as appropriate. 1845Southern Lit. Messenger XI. 476/1 These facts were withheld from the world for the nine years which intervened from the first publication of the Mormon Bible. 1882J. W. Buel Metrop. Life Unveiled 349 These three men have subscribed to an oath which will be found in all Mormon bibles.
1838Niles' Reg. 13 Oct. 103/3 We, and all the *Mormon church,..entertain the same feelings and fears toward the Indians. 1948Newsweek 12 Jan. 38/2 Once a basic tenet of the Mormon Church, the doctrine of plural marriage was formally abandoned in 1890. 1957W. Mulder Homeward to Zion xi. 289 In 1887 the Edmunds-Tucker Act..disincorporated the Mormon Church itself.
1878J. H. Beadle Western Wilds 39 We got to the *Mormon City all beat out. 1942Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §46/1 Mormon City,..Salt Lake City, Utah.
1896J. B. Smith Economic Entomology iv. 97 At the base of the Rocky Mountains, extending up into the foothills..the ‘*Mormon cricket’, Anabrus simplex, occasionally multiplies so greatly that it migrates to the plains below, destroying everything in its path. 1934Sun (Baltimore) 1 May 13/1 The devastating ‘mormon’ crickets, which came into prominence in 1848, when they threatened the first colonists in Utah with starvation, have appeared in a half dozen spots of Southern Idaho to carry on the destruction they started last year. Black creatures two inches long when full grown, they eat everything in sight. 1948U.S. Dept. Agric. Yearbk. 274/2 The early Mormon settlers knew no satisfactory way of fighting the Mormon cricket. 1959E. Tunis Indians 109/1 Grasshoppers and big mormon crickets were driven into trenches from which they could be gathered in baskets. 1972Swan & Papp Common Insects N. Amer. 75 Mormon cricket: Anabrus simplex... Dark brown, black, or green; stout-bodied, wings absent. 1975Islander (Victoria, B.C.) 26 Jan. 15/3 Densest pheasant populations occur in areas offering bonanza supplies of grasshoppers, Mormon crickets or some other..insect.
1845N. F. Moore Diary 26 Aug. (1946) 46 Our boat and everything about it is now covered with *Mormon flies as they are called, being, I am told, peculiar to this neighborhood. 1847C. Lanman Summer in Wilderness v. 34 They are called the Mormon fly and I was told were found on these rapids alone. [1909Cent. Dict. Suppl. 828/3 Mormon... In entom., an American hesperiid butterfly, Atrytone hobomok, which occurs from eastern Canada to the Mississippi valley.]
1882C. M. Chase Editor's Run in N. Mexico 109 Axtell..went so far as to lay plans..to get the territory admitted into the Union as a *Mormon state. 1893L. Wagner More about Names 35 Utah, otherwise The Mormon State, is called by the Mormons themselves Deseret. 1920Encycl. Relig. & Ethics XI. 89/1 The economic salvation of the Mormon State arose..from the money spent in Utah by the Forty-Niners. 1948Mencken Amer. Lang. Suppl. II. 640 Utah calls itself the Beehive State,..but the designation Mormon State is far more popular, and seems likely to stick.
1850Ann. Iowa (1910) 3rd Ser. IX. 453 Here we struck the old *Mormon trail. 1868‘Mark Twain’ in Galaxy May 631 The post route..changed partly to the old Mormon trail. 1949Kansas Hist. Q. Feb. 39 The War Department decided..to improve the Mormon trail from Omaha as far as New Fort Kearney.
1833in D.A. s.v., The *Mormon War. 1834Knickerbocker Aug. 159/2 The Mormon War... The war between the citizens of Jackson county, Missouri, and the disciples of the Book of Mormon. 1846Quincy (Illinois) Whig 3 Feb. 2/4 He was a Major in the last ‘Mormon War’. 1857San Francisco Plaindealer 10 Dec. 2/2 The Mormon war will furnish abundant material for Buncombe speeches. 1942C. C. Rister Land Hunger 8 Upon the outbreak of the ‘Mormon War’, Dave and his older brother Jack, rode away..to join the army.
1872Trans. Ill. Dept. Agric. IX. p. ix, Mr. James H. McConnell..has..prosecuted experiments with the Indian Mallow (Abutilon Avacennae) variously known as ‘stump weed’, ‘velvet leaf’, ‘butter print’, ‘*Mormon weed’, etc. 1907A. B. Lyons Plant Names (ed. 2) 8 Abutilon... American Hemp, Indian Hemp, Mormon-weed, Pie-marker, Pie-print, Sheep-weed.
Hence ˈMormondom, Mormons collectively, the territory of the Mormons, Mormon usages; Morˈmonic a., resembling the Mormons, polygamous; ˈMormonish a., pertaining to or characteristic of Mormons or their beliefs; ˈMormonry rare = Mormondom.
1846Quincy (Illinois) Whig 19 Mar. 3/3 It would be desirable by all quiet citizens that they should be able to discover a complete evacuation of everything Mormonish in Nauvoo, before they hazard purchases in that place. 1852Oregon Statesman (Oregon City) 6 Jan. 2/6 Your course looks as Mormonish as anything I ever saw. 1860Mayne Reid in Chamb. Jrnl. XIV. 359 He would not be the only parent who..has so sacrificed upon the unhallowed altar of Mormondom. 1860Harper's Mag. Nov. 857/2 We may be a trifle more fastidious than they are in Mormondom, but we have a notion that all the ‘bad words’ ought to be skipped when the ladies are around. 1873Mormondom [see Dixie2 2]. a1886H. S. Brown Autobiog. (1887) 114 Salt Lake City is the capital of Mormondom. 1904Blackw. Mag. June 812/1 Other domesticated male animals are so mormonic in their ideas that they recognise no distinction of any kind between their own kittens, puppies, calves, &c., and their neighbours' children. 1920Encycl. Relig. & Ethics XI. 86/2 That Joseph Smith..was the real master of Mormondom is borne out by..accounts of him in the height of his power. 1930Amer. Mercury Jan. 6/1 The next step was an accident, one of a series that has displayed God's providence to Mormonry. 1957W. Mulder Homeward to Zion xi. 289 The ‘iniquitous’ Cullom bill..stirred Mormondom to its center. |