| 释义 |
museum|mjuːˈzɪəm|
Also 7–8 musæum, 8 muséum; 9 pl. musea, now usu. museums.
[a. L. mūsēum, ad. Gr. µουσεῖον a seat of the Muses, f. µοῦσα muse n.1 Cf. F. musée masc., Sp., Pg., It. museo.]
1. a. Hist. (with capital M.) The university building erected at Alexandria by Ptolemy Soter.
1615G. Sandys Trav. 111 That famous Musæum founded by Philadelphus. 1869Rawlinson Anc. Hist. 236 The ‘Museum’, or university building, comprised chambers for the Professors.
†b. gen. A building or apartment dedicated to the pursuit of learning or the arts; a ‘home of the Muses’; a scholar's ‘study’. Obs.
c1645Howell Lett. (1655) I. vi. xx. 265 To my Honoured Friend and Fa. Mr. Ben Johnson. I thank you for the last regalo you gave me at your Musæum, and for the good company. 1675in Willis & Clark Cambridge (1886) III. 42 A Legacy of five hundred pounds towards the building a Musæum, or commencement house. 1706Phillips (ed. Kersey), Museum, a Study or Library; also a College or Publick Place for the Resort of Learned Men. 1757E. Griffith Lett. Henry & Frances (1767) II. 82 It gives me uneasiness, in my musæum, when any sentiment or criticism occurs to me, that I cannot immediately communicate it to you. 1760C. Johnston Chrysal (1783) I. xvi. 92 He waited on the Virtuoso, and..was immediately admitted to an audience in his musæum.
2. a. A building or portion of a building used as a repository for the preservation and exhibition of objects illustrative of antiquities, natural history, fine and industrial art, or some particular branch of any of these subjects, either generally or with reference to a definite region or period. Also applied to the collection of objects itself.
Although a ‘museum’ may include a library (as does the British Museum) or a picture gallery, the word is not in ordinary Eng. use applied to an institution of which either of these is the sole or the most prominent feature. On the continent the corresponding word is often used with reference to a collection of works of painting or sculpture, and when so used is rendered ‘museum’ in English.
1683Phil. Trans. XIII. 108 Mr. Ashmole's Musæum at Oxford. 1706Phillips (ed. Kersey) s.v., The Museum or Ashmole's Museum, a neat Building in the City of Oxford. 1710Hearne Collect. (O.H.S.) III. 35 Mr. Lhuyd of the Muséum. 1771Smollett Humph. Cl. 2 June, Let. ii, I have seen the British Museum; which is a noble collection. 1778F. Burney Evelina (1791) I. xxiii. 129 [He] changed the subject to Cox's Museum, and asked what we thought of it? 1816T. D. Whitaker Loidis & Elmete 124 It would perhaps be difficult for all the musea of the kingdom to find half a dozen originals [of the wax impressions of seals] of the same date. 1863Lyell Antiq. Man 10 Swords and shields of that metal, now in the Museum of Copenhagen. 1893M. Howe Honor 320, I was expected to give ten thousand to the Art Museum. 1936S.P.E. Tract xlv. 176 There are..a few English words whose meaning in the United States corresponds more closely to that of their French counterparts than to their meaning in England; e.g...museum. 1950[see gallery n. 6]. 1975Times 27 Sept. 14/6 The first railway museum in Britain was opened..at York in 1928.
b. attrib. and Comb., as museum-goer, museum interest, museum specimen, museum-value; museum piece, an object suitable for exhibition in a museum; also transf. (usu. with derogatory sense).
1930Times Educ. Suppl. 23 Aug. 362/2 April is the general ‘peak’ month for museum-goers. 1971Daily Tel. 11 June 16 An admission charge would not of course greatly deter the habitual museum-goer.
1933P. Godfrey Back-Stage xiv. 180 The attempt of recent years to stage a music-hall revival has unearthed a few shaky veterans of variety, who have little more than a museum interest for the post-War generation.
1901Brit. Chess Mag. XXI. 351 The more stately carved pieces (named for the sake of distinction ‘museum-pieces’). 1908R. Fry Let. 12 Dec. (1972) I. 306 It would be a great Museum piece, but..the price is high for Ribera. 1920W. J. Locke House of Baltazar iii. 31 Quong Ho was admitted to be a museum-piece of discretion. 1923J. Galsworthy Captures 228, I felt as if I had a priceless museum piece which a single stumble might shatter to fragments. 1928― Swan Song i. xi. 82 The girl and her brother had been museum pieces, two Americans without money to speak of. 1936L. MacNeice tr. Aeschylus' Agamemnon Pref. 8 It is my hope that the play emerges as a play and not as a museum piece. 1949B. A. Botkin Treas. S. Folklore i. i. 4 What saves these relics of the past from being mere museum-pieces is their symbolic and often living relation to the culture of the region. 1955Amer. Speech XXX. 94 Museum piece,..an old truck. 1960H. Nicolson Let. 22 Sept. (1968) 385, I had to lunch with such a bore... He is a museum piece; it is like seeing a railway-engine of 1854. 1964D. Varaday Gara-Yaka v. 48 He..handed over his rifle, an ancient muzzle-loading museum piece. 1974P. Erdman Silver Bears xv. 153, I am looked upon as a mildly amusing curiosity—even a museum piece.
1899Allbutt's Syst. Med. VI. 257 The museum specimen of a uterus of a much quoted case.
1893Collingwood Ruskin I. 143 Flaws and interruptions destroy the museum-value of a mineral.
3. transf. and fig.
1753Hervey Theron & Aspasia (1755) I. i. 13 The boundless Musæum of the Universe. 1846E. FitzGerald Lett. (1889) I. 166 A heathy promontory there, good museum for conversation on old poets, &c. 1849Thackeray Pendennis I. xxiv. 228 Miss Blanche..had quite a little museum of locks of hair in her treasure-chest. 1894H. Drummond Ascent Man 106 The physical body of Man..is..a museum of obsolete anatomies. |