| 释义 |
‖ petite, a.|pəˈtiːt|
[In sense 1, obs. var. of prec.; now only as Fr. fem. of petit adj.: see petit a. (n.)]
†1. A variant of petit, q.v. (used without reference to gender or sex). Obs.
2. a. Now, of a woman or girl: Little, of small stature or size, tiny. Also used absol.
1784J. Barry in Lect. Paint. iii. (1848) 132 His [Raphael's] women in general are either charged and heavy..or dry and petite. 1794Godwin Cal. Williams 51 Her person was petite and trivial. 1829Yng. Lady's Bk. 290 The style of dress suitable to..the pretty and petite. 1875W. S. Hayward Love agst. World 48, I know that Florence's slender petite figure cannot compare with mine. 1901[see Japanesey, japanesy a.] 1935H. Edib Clown & his Daughter vii. 33 Durnev Hanim did come in, a petite person with large innocent brown eyes and very black eyebrows. 1958Times Lit. Suppl. 10 Oct. 573/3 Being American, of course, fifteen-year-old Franzie, petite and bouncy, has begun her sentimental education long before she meets the ‘surf-bums’ on Malibu beach. 1960News Chron. 12 Sept. 6/1 The dress is from a newish range for the petite. 1972M. Kaye Lively Game of Death ii. 9 Some men would probably dismiss her as ‘small’... ‘Petite’ is le mot juste.
b. Used of small sizes in women's clothing. Also used absol.
1929Radio Times 8 Nov. 439/2 This Stylish Coat..From Petite to Matrons' Sizes. 1960Harper's Bazaar Oct. 5 Afternoon dress..in ‘petite’ sizes for the 5′2{pp} and under. 1974Times 26 Apr. 7/7 The tights..are in three sizes—Petite, Medium or Large. 1978N.Y. Times 29 Mar. a6 (Advt.), You'll find whatever you're looking for in misses (6 to 18), petites (6 to 16), juniors (5 to 13) and women's (16½ to 24½) in the brightest spring colors.
3. In certain French collocations often used in Eng., as petite amie (see quot. 1966); petite culture, small farming; petite marmite, soup of meat and vegetables served in a marmite; petite morale, minor morals, the ethics of every-day details; petite noblesse, the lesser nobility in France; petite pièce, a minor performance; in pl., the minor writings of an author (formerly as Eng. petite pieces); petite vitesse, slow train.
1712Budgell Spect. No. 341 ⁋9 [The French] always close their Tragick Entertainments with what they call a Petite Piece. 1797Encycl. Brit. (ed. 3) VI. 155/2 The petite pieces of this eminent writer [Dryden]..are too numerous to specify here. 1825Jeffrey Ess. (1844) I. 265 [They] composed a variety of petite pieces, and novels of polite gallantry. 1832Edin. Rev. July 521 The duties, and decencies, and charities, which are, after all, the petite morale of a home. 1848Mill Pol. Econ. I. i. ix. 179 The working of the petite culture cannot be fairly judged where the small cultivator is merely a tenant. 1883C. M. Yonge Stray Pearls I. iv. 32 He had only known of two ladies who had followed their husbands to the wars, and both of them only belonged to the petite noblesse. 1884Seeley H. Walpole viii. 192 This country is..hardened against the petite morale. 1887F. Engels in Moore & Aveling tr. Marx's Capital II. xxvi. 739 The labourers of the towns [in Northern Italy] were driven en masse into the country, and gave an impulse..to the petite culture, carried on in the form of gardening. Ibid. xxvii. 741 Japan, with its purely feudal organisation of landed property and its developed petite culture, gives a much truer picture of the European middle class than all our history books. 1896E. Dowson Let. c 24 Apr. (1967) 355 Here, I have no petites Amies. 1905Spectator 7 Jan. 13/2 France is notoriously a country of petite culture. 1906A. Filippini Internat. Cook Bk. 250 Petite Marmite... It is very important that during the two and a half hours it should simmer exceedingly slowly. 1913T. E. Lawrence Home Lett. (1954) 277 [The source has some illegible words, followed by]{ddd}on a railway with one train a day in four hours should take three days and petite vitesse ten days is a mystery. 1921Beerbohm Lett. to R. Turner (1964) 258, I..told him that you had ordered the book for me, and that I expected it had been sent by petite vitesse. 1923A. Huxley Let. 2 Sept. (1969) 219 The bulk of the luggage..is still on its way from England, coming by petite vitesse which appears to be extremely petite. 1924Petite noblesse [see haute bourgeoisie]. 1945A. L. Simon Conc. Encycl. Gastron. vii. 93 Petite marmite, the name given in restaurants to a consommé..served in the earthenware pot in which it was made. 1966A. J. Bliss Dict. Foreign Words & Phrases 279 Petite amie.., the female friend of a middle-aged man. 20c. Always with the implication that the friendship is not wholly Platonic. 1972R. Mayne Europeans v. 102 Gay Paree..home of the grisette, the petite amie, the bedroom farce. 1978W. Garner Möbius Trip v. 111 His petite amie..had raised the subject of marriage. 1978G. Vidal Kalki viii. 191, I narrowly avoided a lapful of petite marmite as one bemused agent's ladle missed the soup plate.
4. Biol. Used, freq. as n., to designate certain variant strains of yeast that are characterized by the cytoplasmically heritable lack of mitochondrial constituents and tend to form small colonies. [The sense is due to B. Ephrussi et al., who used F. petite colonie (Annales de l'Inst. Pasteur (1949) LXXVII. 64).]
1951Genetics XXXVI. 572 In many strains of yeast apparently non-genetic, cytochrome-deficient variants exhibiting a single strong alpha absorption band at 550 mu occur frequently (‘petites’). 1968Jrnl. Molecular Biol. XXXVII. 493 In cytoplasmic petite mutants no changes were observed in the major band. 1971D. J. Cove Genetics viii. 115 It is possible to get mutant strains of yeast which are incapable of metabolising sugars oxidatively; such strains grow almost as well as the wild type on glucose, which they ferment, but on carbon sources such as acetate, which can only be metabolised oxidatively by the tricarboxylic acid cycle, they are unable to grow. These strains, called petite, can often be shown to be abnormal in their mitochondrial constituents. Some have certain mitochondrial enzymes and cytochromes absent, and others have the relative proportions of these components altered. 1978Nature 23 Feb. 750/2 Cytoplasmically inherited respiratory deficient mutants termed petites, were first described in baker's yeast over 20 years ago. |