| 释义 |
overworn, ppl. a.
(əʊvəwɔːn, shifting stress)
[f. over- 21, 17 + worn ppl. a.; or pa. pple. of overwear v.]
1. Much worn, the worse for wear; that has lost its original freshness; shabby, threadbare; faded.
1565Wills & Inv. N.C. (Surtees 1835) 221 One overworne fether bed wt a good boster xs. 1594Shakes. Rich. III, i. i. 81 The iealous ore-worne Widdow, and her selfe,..Are mighty Gossips in our Monarchy. 1609Holland Amm. Marcell. 400 Come there once over their head a coat of some over⁓worne colour, it never goes off nor is changed. 1631Weever Anc. Fun. Mon. 49 A beaten-out pulpit cushion, an ore⁓worne Communion-cloth. 1657W. Coles Adam in Eden cxxviii, The first of the Vipers grasses hath long broad leaves..of an overworn green colour. 1817Coleridge Biog. Lit. 157 Alas! even our prose writings..trick themselves out in the soiled and over-worn finery of the meretricious muse. a1825Forby Voc. E. Anglia s.v., Apparel worn as long as is thought fit, thrown aside, and given to servants, or the poor, is called ‘overworn clothes’.
†b. fig. Spoilt by too much use; stale. Obs.
1579Lyly Euphues (Arb.) 44 You shal assoone catch a Hare with a taber as you shal perswade youth with your aged and ouerworn eloquence. 1601Shakes. Twel. N. iii. i. 66 Who you are, and what you would are out of my welkin, I might say Element, but the word is ouer-worne.
†2. Grown out of use or currency, obsolete. Obs.
1581Savile Tacitus Hist. i. ix. (1622) 32 They sware, To the Senate and people of Rome, a stile long ago ouerworne. 1603Knolles Hist. Turks (1638) 123 To defend the ouer⁓worne right that his father and grandfather had vnto that lost kingdome. 1610Holland Camden's Brit. i. 314 Rude verses in an old and ouerworne character.
3. Worn out, exhausted, spent (with age, toil, etc.).
1592Greene Upst. Courtier in Harl. Misc. (Malh.) II. 247, I espied, a far off, a certaine kind of an ouerworne gentleman, attired in veluet and sattyn. 1592Shakes. Ven. & Ad. 135 O'erworn, despised, rheumatic and cold. 1611Speed Theat. Gt. Brit. xxii. (1614) 43/1 The Romans..whose over⁓worne empire ending in Britaine, the Saxons by strong hand attained this province. 1650Earl of Monmouth tr. Senault's Man bec. Guilty 390 This overworn mother shall be freed from her care of nourishing man.
4. Spent in time; passed away.
1592Shakes. Ven. & Ad. 866 Musing the morning is so much o'erworn, And yet she hears no tidings of her love. 1850Tennyson In Mem. i, Behold the man that loved and lost, But all he was is overworn. |