| 释义 |
▪ I. ping-pong, n.|ˈpɪŋˈpɒŋ|
[Echoic. Cf. ping n.]
1. a. A parlour game resembling lawn-tennis, played on a table with bats, formerly of parchment stretched on a wooden frame, now usu. with a wooden blade covered with pimpled rubber and celluloid balls; so called from the sharp ‘ping’ emitted by the bat when striking; table-tennis. Also attrib.
Ping-pong is a proprietary name in the U.S.
1900Daily Chron. 8 May 6/6 Our correspondent seems to hope that the unclean, playing Ping-Pong with the clean, will become unpleasantly conscious of his uncleanness and reform. 1901Ibid. 2 May 3/2 The inventor of Ping-Pong has been discovered, it was Mr. James Gibb, an old Cambridge athlete, now living at Croydon. Ibid. 31 Dec. 5/1 Playtime's too short for us, bedtime too long, Since we have taken to playing Ping Pong. 1901[see table-tennis s.v. table n. 22]. 1902Harper's Weekly 7 June 739 To have your squash-court this summer, if you have any pretensions to style, is as necessary as to have your ping-pong table or your automobile. 1904‘H. Foulis’ Erchie xiv. 90 The grocer in there wad be thinkin' I was awa' on the ping-pong if he didna ken I was a beadle. 1907Westm. Gaz. 12 Oct. 3/2 A set of ‘ping-pong’ materials. 1949Official Gaz. (U.S. Patent Office) 4 Oct. 40/2 Parker Brothers, Inc., Salem, Mass...Ping-pong... For game played with rackets and balls. Claims use since Aug. 1, 1900. 1958R. Liddell Morea ii. i. 47 Nick..had been playing ping-pong outside the hotel. 1968Listener 13 June 783/2 No character ever entirely subsides: they are like those ping-pong balls at a fair that rise and fall on spurts of water. 1977E. Ambler Send no more Roses x. 231, I used the handle of a ping-pong bat to keep it [sc. a door] open.
b. fig. A series of (usu. verbal) exchanges between two parties. Also attrib.
1917E. Pound Let. 11 Apr. in T. S. Eliot Waste Land Drafts (1971) p. xii, I want to boom Eliot and one cant have too obvious a ping-pong match at that sort of thing. 1934L. B. Lyon White Hare 50 After him came two high⁓brows playing a wordy ping-pong. 1955Times 18 July 9/2 Coal is one industry that has escaped the political ping-pong which threatens steel. 1966J. Cleary High Commissioner iii. 51 Two hours of diplomatic ping-pong hadn't touched her; she looked..poised and unmarked. 1974‘M. Allen’ Super Tour (1975) v. 203 It was impossible to beat Mama in the game of verbal Ping-Pong. 1976N. Postman Crazy Talk 8 In the Ping-Pong ball theory, communication is conceived of as a discrete, quantifiable piece of stuff that will move from one source to another and then back. 1977Times 5 Dec. 54/1 The French political journals, center and right, ravaged Courbet for years, and beside their vilifications the attacks on impressionism and cubism were mere Ping Pong.
2. A type of drum in a West Indian steel band (see quots.). Also, a melody played on such a drum.
1955New Commonwealth 28 Nov. (Suppl.) p. xix/1 In the orchestra the pans are grouped into Ping Pongs, Alto Pans, Tenor Kittles, Kittle Booms, Tune Booms and Bass Booms. 1956L. Hughes First Bk. of W. Indies 42 Discarded oil drums are cut, heated, and hammered in such a way that each has its own pitch and tone. Those that carry the melody are called ‘ping pongs’. 1959W. A. Simmonds ‘Pan’-Story of Steelband 9 By the end of 1945, different bands had developed different ‘beats’. The initiated could, by the rhythm and ‘Ping-Pong’, distinguish what band ‘was beating pan’. Ibid. 12 The queen of them all—the sweet Ping-Pong. This is a steel drum cut to about six or seven inches from the top. After these are stretched, and tempered, between twenty-six and thiry-two notes are marked and tuned.
Hence ˈping-ˈpongist, a ping-pong player or enthusiast.
1901Daily Chron. 27 Dec. 6/3 The competitors were presumably the pick of ‘Ping-Pongists’ in London.
▪ II. ˈping-ˈpong, v.
[f. the n.]
a. intr. To play ping-pong. Also, to move back and forth in the manner of a ping-pong ball. Also fig.
b. trans. To send back and forth, to pass around aimlessly.
1901Times 1 June 8/5 [He] is only required to be agreeable and to ping-pong. 1952Jackson (Tennessee) Sun 1/1 (heading) Question of Margaret's guards ping-pongs across Atlantic. 1960in Cassidy & Le Page Dict. Jamaican Eng. (1967) 351/2 A common Jamaican expression, if you say ‘he ping-pongs at it’ it means he doesn't do it very well—like me typing: I just ping-pong at it. 1970Washington Post 22 Nov. b6 The administration ‘ping-ponged’ the proposal back and forth. 1971Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 2 Sept. 13/7 It was ‘unfortunate for this accused that he has been, if I may coin a phrase, pingponged from one court to another’. 1972Daily Tel. 11 Mar. 11/2 He can time funny lines so that they ping-pong back and forth in long sustained volleys with the audience's laughter. 1974Times Lit. Suppl. 27 Sept. 1033/2 They ping-pong helplessly between sea and sheets, between pub and plough. 1976Times 31 Aug. 5/2 The report [of a Senate committee] states that ‘investigators were repeatedly ‘ping-ponged’ to neurologists, gynaecologists, internists, [etc.]’.
Hence ˈping-ponger = ping-pongist; ˈping-ponging vbl. n., playing ping-pong; also fig.; spec. (see quots.).
1901Morn. Leader 18 Dec. 3/3 The ping-ponging, however, has not yet started. 1933Times 14 Nov. 15/4 It cannot be, and is not, good for anyone to enjoy the high moments or ecstasies of lawn tennis without sharing its physical dangers; yet that is what the ping ponger is trying to do. 1962G. Compton Too Many Murderers xvii. 144 She sidled round the ping⁓pongers. 1972Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 6 Jan. 1/8 Medical groups..engaged in ‘ping-ponging’—sending patients from one medicaid provider to another for services they did not need. 1972National Observer (U.S.) 18 Mar. 16/1 The chief resident and Ping-ponger extraordinaire is one Dal-Joon Lee. 1975Time 26 May 55/2 Many of the ‘Medicaid mills’ of clinics set up to handle poor patients in the nation's urban ghettos reap enormous profits by such practices as ‘Ping Ponging’ (passing a patient along to all the other doctors in the clinic). 1976Discursive Dict. Health Care (U.S.) 122 Ping-ponging, the practice of passing a patient from one physician to another in a health program for unnecessary cursory examinations so that the program can charge the patient's third-party for a physical visit to each physician. |