| 释义 |
pentarchy|ˈpɛntəkɪ|
Also 7 erron. pempt-.
[ad. Gr. πενταρχία a rule of five, a quinquevirate, f. πέντε five + -αρχία rule.]
1. A government by five rulers; a group of five districts or kingdoms each under its own ruler.
In quot. 1871 applied to the European system of the ‘Five Great Powers’.
1587Holinshed Chron., Hist. Eng. I. 15/1 The monarchie or sole gouernement of the Iland became a pentarchie, that is, it was diuided betwixt fiue kings. 1611Speed Hist. Gt. Brit. ix. vi. §47 Dermot Mac Murgh (in that time of the Irish Pentarchie, or fiuefold Kingdome) hauing secretly stolne away the wife of Rothericke. 1799S. Turner Anglo-Sax. I. ii. vi. 253 East Anglia made it a tetrarchy; Essex a pentarchy. 1871Echo 27 Jan., Some writer lately deplored the dissolution of the great European Pentarchy.
2. The government of a country or district by a body of five persons; a governing body of five.
1661Sir A. Haslerig's Last Will & Test. 3 Though I stood ever a profest enemy unto Monarchy, I appeared a constant Zealot for a Pentarchy. 1711Swift Examiner 25 Jan., A picture..representing five persons as large as the life, sitting in council together like a pentarchy. 1827Scott Napoleon ii, The inconvenience of this pentarchy.
b. fig.
1633P. Fletcher Purple Isl. v. xxxviii, Auditus, second of the Pemptarchie. Ibid. vi. xlii, Those five fair brethren [the senses] which I sung of late, For their just number called the Pemptarchie. 1651Biggs New Disp. 33 The Pentarchy of sences. 1855Milman Lat. Chr. xiv. iii. (1864) IX. 119 What may be called the Supreme Pentarchy of Scholasticism [Aquinas, Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, Ockham]. |