| 释义 |
Parthian, a. and n.|ˈpɑːθɪən|
[See -an.]
A. adj. Of or pertaining to Parthia, an ancient kingdom of western Asia.
The Parthian horsemen were accustomed to baffle the enemy by their rapid manœuvres, and to discharge their missiles backward while in real or pretended flight: hence used allusively in Parthian fight, Parthian shaft, Parthian shot, Parthian glance, etc.
1590C'tess Pembroke Antonie 107 Thou car'st no more for Parth nor Parthian bow. c1640Waller Phillis 26 To look upon this Parthian Fight Of Love. 1848Lytton Harold vii. iv, The fugitive Britons..performed their flight with the same Parthian rapidity that characterised the assault. 1874L. Carr Jud. Gwynne I. i. 31 Casting back Parthian glances of scornful hostility. 1902Greenough & Kittredge Words 380 A ‘Parthian shot’ was very literal to Crassus..: to us it is only an elegant and pointed synonym for our method of ‘having the last word’.
B. n.
1. A native or inhabitant of Parthia.
1526Tindale Acts ii. 9. 1611 Shakes. Cymb. i. vi. 20 Or like the Parthian I shall flying fight. 1678Butler Hud. iii. Heroic. Ep. 173 You wound, like Parthians, while you fly, And kill, with a Retreating Eye. 1742Young Nt. Th. ii. 335 Whose Yesterdays look backward with a Smile; Nor, like the Parthian, wound him as they fly.
2. The Iranian language of the Parthians; = Pahlavi a. and n. Also as adj.
1932W. L. Graff Lang. x. 373 For a time Armenian was deemed to be an Iranian dialect on account of the large number of Parthian (Persian) words in its vocabulary. 1933L. Bloomfield Language iv. 63 Discoveries of manuscript fragments in Chinese Turkestan gave us knowledge of other medieval Iranian languages, which have been identified as Parthian, Sogdian, and Sakian. 1939L. H. Gray Foundations of Lang. 320 We have a fair amount of material in some other Middle Iranian dialects, notably Middle Parthian north of Persia. 1944Trans. Philol. Soc. 1942 44 Scripts used in Iran in ancient times..derive from the Aramaic script of twenty-two letters (not counting..Chinese for Middle Persian and Parthian). 1954M. Boyce Manichaean Hymn-Cycles in Parthian 1 There are in Parthian three long texts which are divided into sections known as handāms or ‘limbs’. 1972W. B. Lockwood Panorama Indo-European Lang. 236 The Manicheans borrowed the Estrangelo Syriac script and used it to write other Middle Iranian languages as well, i.e. Parthian and Sogdian. |