| 释义 |
nowhere, adv.|ˈnəʊhwɛə(r)|
Forms: α. 1 nahwær, -hwar, 4 naquer, -quhare; 3 nawhar, 4–5 nawher(e, 5 nay-where. β. 1 nohwær, 2–3 -hwer, 3 -hwere, -hwar(e; 4 noquar, -quer, 5 noqwere; 3 neowhær, 3–5 nowher, 3–4 -whar, 4– nowhere, 6 noo-, noewhere. γ. 3 nohwhar, noþware, 4 noghwhere; 3 nouhwar, 4 nouhewere, nouȝwher (5 -e), 3 nowhwere, Orm. nowwhar, 5 nowwhere.
[f. no adv. + where adv. Cf. nawer and nower adv.]
1. a. In or at no place; not anywhere.
α971Blickl. Hom. 59 Ealle þa ᵹewitaþ swa swa wolcn,.., & ofer þæt nahwær eft ne æteowaþ. c1000ælfric Gen. xix. 17 Ne þu ne ætstande na hwar on þisum earde. c1055Byrhtferth's Handboc in Anglia VIII. 308 Þæt we nahwar ne gan of laᵹe. a1300Cursor M. 16762 + 131 He miȝt not bere vp his hede, Ne nawhar it doun lay. 1393Langl. P. Pl. C. iii. 227 He was nawher welcome for hus meny tales. c1475Partenay 1924 A man no better myght hit employ nay-where.
βa1050Gregory's Dial. (1900) 127 ‘Hwær æton ᵹe?’ Hi him andswaredon & cwædon ‘nohwær’ [v.r. ‘nower’]. c1175Lamb. Hom. 113 He ne scal nohwer ortrowian bi godes fultum. c1205Lay. 8392 Nes hit nowher itald þat weore nowhar swa muchel mete [etc.]. c1275Wom. Samaria 44 in O.E. Misc. 85 No-hwere bute in þe temple. 13..Cursor M. 6047 (Gött.), Men noquar ne miht se Griss on erde, ne lef on tre. 1387Trevisa Higden (Rolls) V. 297 He..passed nowher his fader bondes. c1400Destr. Troy 12083 He denyet..þat noqwere he knew Þat commly be keppet. 1490Caxton Eneydos iv. 20 The..bloode.. hath..yssued oute of my body, and nowher ellis. 1511Guylforde's Pilgr. (Camden) 11, I trowe they haue noo where so stronge a place. 1603Dekker Batchelors Banquet (1882) 193 To auoid greater charges..he rests nowhere by the way. 1651Hobbes Leviath. iv. xlvi. 371 Because the Universe is All, that which is no part of it, is Nothing; and consequently no where. 1711Addison Spect. No. 163 ⁋3 Theodosius..had left his Chamber about Midnight, and could no⁓where be found. 1797Mrs. Radcliffe Italian Prol., He was nowhere to be seen. 1822Shelley The Zucca 22 Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere. 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) I. 441 There only, and nowhere else, he can find wisdom in her purity.
attrib.1589Nashe Anat. Absurd. Wks. (Grosart) I. 14 Those worne out impressions of the feyned no where acts, of Arthur of the rounde table. 1889Advance (Chicago) 10 Jan., Had he arrived at his hotel in Detroit, instead of at a nowhere side-hill.
γc1200Ormin 13073, I Crisstenndom mann findenn maȝȝ Hemm alle, & nowwhar elless. a1225Leg. Kath. 1306 Ne funde we nowhwer nan swa deope ilearet. 1362Langl. P. Pl. A. ii. 193 He nas nouȝwher wel-come for his mony tales. 1390Gower Conf. III. 136 And that is noghwhere elles sene Of kinde with non other beste. c1450Cursor M. 17556 (Laud), In Israell bene grete fellis, There is he sothe and now-wher ellis.
b. To no place.
13..Cursor M. 3495 (Gött.), For-þi was he noquer sent, Bot to þe hous ay tok he tent. 1484Caxton Fables of Alfonce xii, She myght not goo nowher. 1720De Foe Capt. Singleton (1906) 37 We were upon a voyage and no voyage, we were bound somewhere and nowhere. 1778Burney Evelina xvi, I never go nowhere without him. 1861Mrs. Carlyle Lett. III. 73 Mr. C. was minded to go nowhere this summer.
2. In no part or passage of a book, etc.; in no work or author. Also Comb.
a1225Ancr. R. 160 Nouhware ine holi write nis iwriten of hire speche. 1396–7in Eng. Hist. Rev. (1907) XXII. 296 Þat is..nowhere ensample in holi scripture. 1594Hooker Eccl. Pol. ii. vii. §2 Some men..have in their books and writings nowhere mentioned or taught that such things should be in the church. 1678–9Prideaux Lett. (Camden) 64 The original..of the Roman Empire is noe where better treated of then in this author. 1789Belsham Ess. II. xxxvi. 281 This, however, is..no-where countenanced by Aristotle. 1870Rogers Hist. Glean. Ser. ii. 77 This great writer..is nowhere a partisan. 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) III. 280 Sweet sauces are nowhere mentioned in Homer. 1889R. B. Anderson tr. Rydberg's Teut. Mythol. 155 A new, nowhere-supported myth.
3. nowhere near or † nowhere nigh, not nearly, not by a long way. (Cf. near adv.2 6, nigh adv. 12 d.)
1413Pilgr. Sowle (Caxton, 1483) v. xi. 101 Though the dede were nowhere nyghe soo greete, yett is hit a manere of resemblaunce. c1449Pecock Repr. i. viii. 42 Into the contrarie parti is not had nouȝwhere nyȝ so probable..euydencis. Ibid. ii. xi. 208 Nowhere nyȝ alle men.
4. slang.
a. to be nowhere, to be badly beaten (in a race, contest, etc.); to be hopelessly distanced or out of the running. Freq. transf. (In common use from c 1850.)
1755Gentl. Mag. XXV. 153 His powerful deep rate, by which all the horses that ran against him were no-where. 1826Sporting Mag. XVII. 306 Many men were nowhere at the end. 1831Macaulay Essay on Boswell's Life Johnson in Edin. Rev. Sept. 16 Boswell is the first of biographers..and the rest nowhere. 1861Illustr. Lond. News 7 Dec. 569/3 The first cow..was ‘nowhere’ at Birmingham. 1869Seeley Lect. & Ess. (1870) 22 In the Augustan age democracy was nowhere. 1895Athenæum 14 Sept. 347/3 To the philologist and the student of English literature, it is Oxford first, the rest nowhere. 1928C. A. Nicholson Hell & Duchess vi. 108 Don't imagine you have a fortune there. A hundred francs goes nowhere these days.
b. U.S. (See quot. 1859.)
1859Bartlett Dict. Amer. (ed. 2) 297 To be nowhere is to be at sea; to be utterly at a loss; to be ignorant. 1868in De Vere Americanisms (1871), When he began to ask me questions about surgery, I was just nowhere, and I can't tell, to save my life, what I said to him.
5. a. As n. A non-existent place; absence of all place.
1831Carlyle Sart. Res. ii. v, How wilt thou..find that shorter North-west Passage to thy fair Spice-country of a Nowhere? 1872Bushnell Serm. Living Subj. 167 It is now become as if all truth were gone out, and night and nowhere had the world.
b. A remote or inaccessible place; freq. in colloq. phr. the middle of nowhere.
1908Dialect Notes III. 312 Forty miles from nowhere, far from any civilized or settled section. 1951E. Coxhead One Green Bottle vii. 182 My uncle's farm is on the road to nowhere... They often don't see a new face for months on end. 1960Times 21 Nov. (Canada Suppl.) p. xi/2 Hydro-Quebec is starting to move far up the Manicouagan, in the middle of nowhere. 1963A. Lubbock Austral. Roundabout 30, I got going again pretty quickly as I didn't want to be caught by the storm in the middle of nowhere. 1967Mrs. L. B. Johnson White House Diary 7 July (1970) 544 The country was sparsely populated and it was surprising to come upon such an enormous church, out in nowhere. 1967E. Cousins Death in Quiet Place i. 10 ‘I never heard of Boling Green.’ ‘You wouldn't, old boy. Fag-end of nowhere, down a two-mile lane from the second-class road.’
c. A dull person, place, or thing. Passing into adj.: insignificant, unsatisfactory, dull; non-existent. In most contexts slang.
1940L. MacNeice Last Ditch 14 The here and there and nowhere birds. 1948L. Spitzer Linguistics & Literary History i. 18 The priestess Bacbuc (whose ambiguous response: ‘Trinc!’ is just a nowhere word). 1953W. Burroughs Junkie x. 110 The others [sc. patients] were a beat, nowhere bunch of people. The type psychiatrists like. 1956B. Holiday Lady sings Blues (1958) viii. 82 A Rolls is built for pleasure... But it's nowhere for highballing a hundred and fifty miles to make a gig. 1959‘F. Newton’ Jazz Scene xii. 220 The hipster classifies..an undesirable state as nowhere. 1959Esquire Nov. 70J Nowhere, the absolute of nothing. Example: That guy is nowhere. 1966Melody Maker 7 May 5/2 We all thought it was the most nowhere record we'd made. 1970Globe & Mail (Toronto) 26 Sept. 12/2 He wants to spread this physical act as a sign..and then..see work expanding in the nowhere parish to merge with the national scene. 1974Ibid. 14 Sept. 27/4 What you'll remember is the casual dreariness of the nowhere towns and the faded dreams of the guys who never managed to get out of them.
Hence ˈnowhereness.
1838Sterling Ess. (1848) I. 150 A dateless no-where-ness of the facts and topics. 1928D. H. Lawrence Let. 15 Dec. (1932) 766 A ghastly slummy nowhereness—but France seems all like that. 1929― Pansies 105 We can but howl the lugubrious howl of idiots, The howl of the utterly lost Howling their nowhereness. |