| 释义 |
ˈmud-hole
Also mudhole, mud hole.
[f. mud n.1 + hole n.]
1. a. A hole containing mud or in which mud collects, esp. as forming a defect or obstacle in a road or highway.
1760in Documentary Hist. Amer. Industr. Society (1910) I. 310 As soon as one Gets out..he Is In a large due or in a mud hole. 1784A. Ellicott in C. V. Mathews Andrew Ellicott (1908) 26 The ground [was] covered with Snow which hid the Mud-Holes. 1857P. Cartwright Autobiogr. xx. 314, I thought of a desperate mudhole about a quarter of a mile ahead;..many wagons had stuck in it. 1911E. M. Clowes On Wallaby xi. 291 The water-holding frog found in the central deserts, which can blow its body out with a sufficiency of fluid to support it for a year or more in a dried-up mud-hole. 1937Discovery May 148/1 There are many different kinds of baths available, supplying various mineral waters; boiling mud holes innumerable; waterfalls over which hot water flows side by side with cold; [etc.]. 1948Coast to Coast 1947 71 Those tourist people came and looked at his boiling spring and his bubbling mudhole. 1973Sci. Amer. Apr. 88/3 They find themselves in an alley where they sink into a bottomless mudhole.
b. transf. and fig.
1784in Pennsylvania Mag. Hist. & Biogr. (1877) I. 51 The general curse of the country, disunion, rages in this little mudhole [sc. Uniontown, Pa.]. 1890Cent. Dict., Mud-hole, a salt-water lagoon in which whales are captured. [Whalers' slang, California.] 1938S. V. Benét Thirteen o'Clock 317 We've all of us been on your back long enough... I know of twice you pulled Jerry Pye out of the mudhole. 1958J. Carew Black Midas x. 231 The thought of returning to the mud-hole where I was born made me shy away.
2. A hole at the base of a boiler, condenser, or other apparatus through which sediment can be removed.
1841W. Templeton Locomotive Engine 16 The mud holes..are for the purpose of removing the sediment and scale that constantly accumulate at the bottom of the water spaces. 1893Langmaid & Gaisford Elem. Less. Steam Machinery xiii. 123 To allow access to the inside of the boiler, for examining and cleaning, manholes and mudholes are provided. |