| 释义 |
oral, a. (n.)|ˈɔərəl|
[f. L. ōs, ōr- mouth + -al1. Cf. F. oral (18th c. in Hatz.-Darm.).]
A. adj.
1. a. Uttered or communicated in spoken words; transacted by word of mouth; spoken, verbal. oral history: (the collection or study of) tape-recorded historical information concerning matters from the personal knowledge of the speaker; such a taped record; Oral Law, oral law: the part of Jewish religious law passed down by oral tradition before being collected in the Mishnah.
1638Penit. Conf. iv. (1657) 43 Opened by himself in orall confession to the principal party wronged. c1680in Somers Tracts I. 211 How often have they formerly urged us to an Oral or Pen Combat. 1733tr. B. Picart's Ceremonies & Relig. Customs I. 46 A Man who hath made the Oral Law his principal Study..is looked upon by the Generality amongst them as a Doctor. 1751Johnson Rambler No. 87 ⁋12 Temptations to petulance..which occur in oral conferences. 1797Encycl. Brit. XVIII. 303/2 The Mishna is divided into six parts... In the fourth..are named those by whom the oral law was received and preserved. 1874Green Short Hist. v. §4. 239 Disputes were easily settled by the steward of the manor..on oral evidence of the custom at issue. 1879Farrar St. Paul I. 155 To throw discredit even upon the Oral Law would not be without danger. 1907Oral law [used s.v. Mishnah, mishna]. 1962New Jewish Encycl. 362/1 At present, most Jews, though they may deviate from certain of its practices, believe the Oral Law to be divinely inspired. 1971Webster Add., Oral history. 1976C. Bermant Coming Home i. vii. 93 The Talmud incorporates the Oral Law, and..the Oral Law was dictated with the written Law by God to Moses on Sinai, and..the Oral Law was received intact by the Rabbis. 1977Times 16 May 7/7 Oral history..enables the historian to put the questions he wants. 1977Program Announcement 1977–78 (U.S. Nat. Endowment for Humanities) 11 (caption) Oral history taping sessions, and a more informal jam session took place as part of..an NEH Division of Research Grants project that brought together these St. Louis jazz musicians to recount their experiences... Taping sessions..produced an oral history which will be made available to music historians and centers of research through the University's Learning Resources Center. 1978P. Thompson Voices of Past ii. 19 The term ‘oral history’ is new, like the tape recorder; and it has radical implications for the future.
b. (Of poetry, etc.) delivered or transmitted orally; of or pertaining to such poetry. Also transf. So oral-formulaic a., of or pertaining to (usu. early) poetry belonging to a spoken tradition which is characterized by the use of poetic formulae as an aid to memory.
1628Bp. Hall Old Relig. xvi. §3. 167 As for orall Traditions, what certaintie can there be in them? 1767Percy Ess. Anc. Eng. Minstrels (Notes) 44 He [sc. Asser] has however particularly recorded Alfred's fondness for the oral Anglo-Saxon poems and songs. 1774T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. Diss. 1 p. l, That scalds were common in the Danish armies when they invaded England, appears from a stratagem of Alfred; who, availing himself of his skill in oral poetry and playing on the harp, entered the Danish camp habited in that character, and procured a hospitable reception. 1777J. Brand Observations Pop. Antiq. p. iv, These [ceremonies],..though erazed by public Authority from the written Word, were committed as a venerable Deposit to the keeping of oral Tradition. 1892J. Earle Deeds of Beowulf p. xlvi, Müllenhoff had discovered six different authors, of which the first two were oral poets, but the third had a written copy of the rudimentary work as it then existed. Ibid. p. xlviii, The oral Epic was simple in outline and plain in style, and therefore the contradictions, irregularities, inversions..and intolerable repetitions..can only be explained by the gradual accretion of heterogeneous elements in the process of transmission. 1898S. A. Brooke Eng. Lit. fr. Beginning to Norman Conquest ii. 42 This was the origin of the early unhistoric sagas, like that of Beowulf, and such a saga was the highest form of the oral literature of the German tribes. 1906G. P. Krapp Andreas 75 The poem opens with the conventional epic formula, citing the authority of oral tradition for the story. 1928W. W. Lawrence Beowulf & Epic Trad. 289 A written version of Beowulf might conceivably have served as a guide for oral recitation. 1929W. E. Leonard in Malone & Ruud Stud. Eng. Philol. 1 The intrinsic nature..of oral or chanted verse as inevitably emphasizing an organic metrical pattern. 1953S. A. Brown in A. Dundes Mother Wit (1973) 40/1 The Negro was contributing..through what we call oral literature—folk literature. 1953F. P. Magoun in Speculum XXVIII. 446 (heading) Oral-formulaic character of Anglo-Saxon narrative poetry. 1970Jrnl. Eng. & Gmc. Philol. LXIX. 72 Even contemporary criticism has tended to damn with faint praise by suggesting that Old English poems were largely collections of formulae indicative of oral composition... The conclusion that the presence of formulae is an indication of oral composition has been attacked as illogical. Ibid. 439 It would have been possible to use [in the OE Riming Poem] some of the oral formulae of other elegies and add a second half-line that rimed. 1972T. A. Shippey Old Eng. Verse iv. 89 The theory claims that much classical and modern poetry has been composed by an ‘oral-formulaic’ process. 1973Black World Nov. 10/2 Black music..as a basically oral-tradition music, is lacking in the kind of documentation that..would clarify these aspects.
2. a. Using speech only; communicating instruction, etc. by word of mouth. rare.
1870Arber Introd. Ascham's Scholem. 6 The influence of simply Oral Teachers rests chiefly in the hearts and minds of the Taught.
b. Using ordinary speech or ‘lip-language’ in the instruction of the deaf and dumb.
1880Daily News 11 Nov. 6/2, I understand that under the oral system both signs and finger-speaking are prohibited. Ibid., If I [a deaf mute] had been sent to an oral school I should have made little or no progress whatever.
3. a. Of or pertaining to the mouth, as a part of the body.
oral cavity, (a) the cavity of the mouth; (b) in haustellate insects, the hollow on the lower surface of the head, from which the haustellum or sucking-mouth protrudes.
1656Blount Glossogr., Oral, pertaining to the mouth, visage, face, look, favor or voyce. 1816Kirby & Sp. Entomol. (1843) I. 89 The acute pain which attends the insertion of their oral stings. 1826Ibid. xlvii. (ed. 1) IV. 379 Their oral organs..are of a Neuropterous type. 1888Rolleston & Jackson Anim. Life 503 Salivary glands..open into the oral cavity, the most important pair belonging to the labium.
b. Involving or being sexual activity in which the genitals of one partner are stimulated by the mouth of the other; freq. in Comb., as oral-genital adj. Cf. cunnilingus, fellatio.
1948A. C. Kinsey et al. Sexual Behavior Human Male ii. x. 373 Most prostitutes are from the lower social levels, and consequently..few of them engage freely in oral activities. 1953― et al. Sexual Behavior Human Female vii. 257 Oral stimulation of the male genitalia by the female occurs somewhat less frequently. 1958G. S. Sprague et al. in C. Berg Homosexuality ii. i. 213 At one end..would stand the most primitive oral pattern, fellatio. 1961Encounter XVI. v. 77 His short paragraph on oral-genital techniques. 1969‘J’ Sensuous Woman (1970) xi. 79 A few minutes of oral-genital play was a small price to pay. 1973S. Fisher Female Orgasm vii. 209 Most of the women..received manual and often oral stimulation of the clitoral region. 1973Sunday Times (Colour Suppl.) 11 Mar. 20 Her main discovery is that oral sex is fun. 1977Time Out 17–23 June 45/3 There's more erotic charge from two seconds of Damiano's close-up oral sequences than in Ms Richmond's entire oeuvre.
4. a. Done or performed with or by the mouth, as the organ of eating and drinking.
1625Ussher Answ. Jesuit 71 This grosse opinion of the orall eating and drinking of Christ in the Sacrament. a1655Vines Lord's Supp. (1677) 382 The guiltiness of Christs Body is not by the oral eating. 1888Ch. Times 13 July 613 Attendance at the Holy Eucharist without oral communion on every occasion.
b. Administered or taken through the mouth; involving such administration.
1957Amer. Jrnl. Med. Sci. CCXXXIV. 28/1 The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of an oral alcohol-water solution of theophylline in terminating acute asthmatic attacks. 1959Science 10 July 81/1 This property..led to the experimental testing of a norethyn⁓odrel-estrogen combination as an oral contraceptive. 1959K. H. Beyer in Waife & Shapiro Clin. Eval. New Drugs ii. 18 Oral efficacy..is certainly a limiting factor in the acceptance of a new drug for systemic use. 1962Lancet 22 Dec. 1315/2 Oral contraception is now a matter of practical politics. 1967Proc. Soc. Exper. Biol. & Med. CXXIV. 483/1 The acute oral toxicity of sodium selenite in the rat does not seem to have been investigated. 1970W. J. Burley To kill Cat i. 24 A sachet of oral contraceptives. 1974Passmore & Robson Compan. Med. Stud. III. i. xxviii. 34/1 A number of women..experience amenorrhoea after discontinuing oral contraception.
5. Psychol. In psychoanalysis, characterized by having the mouth as the main focus of infantile sexual energy and feeling.
[1910Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. XXI. 316 In infantile sexuality the oral and anal-urethral erogeneous zones..as well as sadistic and masochistic impulses rule.] 1925J. Riviere tr. Freud's Infantile Neurosis in Coll. Papers III. v. 587, I have been driven to regard as the earliest recognizable sexual organization the so-called ‘cannibalistic’ or ‘oral’ phase. 1954R. W. Pickford Analysis of Obsessional iii. 68 In general the oral stages are concerned with taking in of objects and ideas, or introjection. 1972Rosen & Gregory Abnormal Psychol. (ed. 2) 53/2 The child's relationship with his parents as established during the oral period.
6. Phonetics. Of a sound: that is articulated with the velum raised, so that there is no nasal resonance. Cf. nasal a. 2. So oral-nasal adj.
1919E. Kruisinga Handbk. Present-Day Eng. (ed. 3) I. i. i. 14 We see therefore that sounds can be produced..with the nose-passage shut: oral sounds. 1924J. S. Kenyon Amer. Pronunc. 36 (heading) Oral and nasal consonants. 1933L. Bloomfield Language vi. 96 Most sounds of speech are purely oral; the velum is completely raised and no breath escapes through the nose. 1955P. Strevens Papers in Lang. & Lang. Teaching (1965) ix. 114 In rapid speech the consonant may be omitted, leaving a nasalized vowel where Received Pronunciation would have an oral vowel followed by a nasal consonant. 1961H. A. Gleason Introd. Descriptive Linguistics (ed. 2) xv. 250 If only the mouth is open, the sound is an oral resonant. 1962Amer. Speech XXXVII. 228 Differences between oral and nasal vowels. 1965Language XLI. 478 The oral-nasal contrast is neutralized after a nasal; such vowels are written in this paper as oral. 1970Ibid. XLVI. 81 There are eight consonants in Maxakalí, comprising an oral-nasal pair at each of four points of articulation. 1975P. Ladefoged Course in Phonetics i. 3 Note that the air passages that make up the vocal tract may be divided into the oral tract within the mouth and the pharynx and the nasal tract within the nose.
B. as n.
a. Short for oral sound, oral plate, etc.
1885Athenæum 11 Apr. 475/2 A ring of plates which are the homologues of the five oral plates... These orals are the actinal representatives of the basals. 1887Benson Univ. Phonography 11 The vowels [may be divided] into Five Pharyngals: Five Orals: Five Diphthongs. Ibid. 12 The Orals, short or long, in Feel, Fill, Tulle, Full, Fool.
b. Short for oral examination.
1876G. H. Tripp Student-Life Harvard 18 Do something splendid on the mathematics and the ‘orals’, and I will wage any thing you will pass clear. 1927W. E. Collinson Contemp. Eng. 124 In regard to teaching within the University the only terms worthy of notice are the use of Oral (where some universities use Viva for Viva Voce)..and tutorials. 1973D. May Laughter in Djakarta xii. 194 Examiners told candidates their marks immediately at the end of the oral. 1974B. Johnston It's been a Lot of Fun vi. 45 One of the dons pointed this out to me during my oral.
▸ oral argument n. Law a spoken presentation of a case or motion before a court.
1823Times 2 July 2/1 In this country, in all trials the law is carried on by *oral argument in open court. 1875Rev. Statutes U.S., District of Columbia 357 The Arbitrators may, if they desire further elucidation with regard to any point, require a written or printed statement or argument, or oral argument by counsel, upon it. 1940Amer. Jrnl. Internat. Law 34 10 On May 15-17 and 19 the Court heard oral arguments on behalf of the parties. 1998D. Baldacci Simple Truth ii. 11 Last term, Murphy had voted to hear the Chance case. Oral argument was set, and the bench memo was being prepared. |