| 释义 |
plunger|ˈplʌndʒə(r)|
[f. plunge v. + -er1.]
I.
1. a. One who plunges; a diver. (So F. plongeur.)
1611Cotgr., Plongeur, a plunger, ducker, diuer. 1730–6Bailey (folio), Plunger, a diver. 1848Clough Bothie iii. 46 Here, the pride of the plunger, you stride the fall and clear it; Here,..into pure green depth drop down from lofty ledges. 1893Tablet 18 Feb. 272 Would the plunger hold his own in the vortex of troubled waters?
†b. A diving bird; spec. the Black Gull. Obs.
1655Moufet & Bennet Health's Impr. (1746) 194 White Gulls, Grey Gulls, and Black Gulls (commonly termed by the Name of Plungers and Water-Crows).
c. N. Amer. A type of sailing boat (see quot. 1948).
1860North-West (Port Townsend, Wash.) 12 July 3/1 The following craft were entered for the stakes:—Sloop H. L. Tibbals, Port Townsend;..and the plunger Star of the South. 1892Outing Mar. 467/1 Yachting on the Pacific coast dates from about 1869, when the first club..was organised, though a few small plungers and sloops had long been owned on the bay. 1948R. de Kerchove Internat. Maritime Dict. 541/2 Plunger, name given to various sailing craft employed in the Pacific coast oyster fisheries for transportation... Also called oyster sloop. Most of them are built with flush deck and a large central cockpit divided by a centerboard. The larger type is keel built... All are cat-rigged. 1969Islander (Victoria, B.C.) 23 Mar. 4/2 The next day [24 Dec. 1860] a plunger brought a quantity of salvaged goods to Victoria, mostly in the form of cases of Old Tom gin.
2. In various technical applications, an instrument or part of a mechanism which works with a plunging or thrusting motion.
a. Any solid piston, as that of a force-pump, esp. the piston of a Cornish pump; a hollow piston forming the bucket of a lift-pump. b. The dasher of a churn. c. The firing pin in some breech-loading firearms; also, a bolt sliding in a groove on the breech for securing the barrel in firing position. d. A metallic cylinder or plug for regulating an electric current. e. Pottery. A vessel in which clay is beaten to paste or slip. f. Short for plunger-brake (see 5). Also in other applications: see quots.
1777Macbride in Phil. Trans. LXVIII. 115 Stirring it [the leather] up with the utensil called a plunger, which is nothing more than a pole with a knob at the end of it. 1822J. Imison Sc. & Art I. 457 Plungers are pistons that nearly fill the working barrel. 1831Lardner Pneumat. vi. 312 A heavy beam, or plunger, suspended from a chain, and capable of descending by its own weight in water. 1837Flemish Husb. 62 in Libr. Usef. Knowl., Husb. III, Sometimes..a dog walks in a wheel, which turns the machinery by which the plunger is moved up and down [in churning]. 1839R. S. Robinson Naut. Steam Eng. 83 It is..very usual to see two plungers attached, one on each side of the cross-head of the air pump; one works a bilge pump, the other the feed pipe. 1866Cornh. Mag. Sept. 355 The barrel is closed by a sliding plunger or bolt, which can be pushed forward against the barrel, or withdrawn for the admission of the cartridge. 1870Daily News 31 Aug. 2 The cartridges fall into slots in the barrels, and are gradually pushed into the firing position by 10 plungers or pistons. 1875Knight Dict. Mech. 1778/2 The clays are..prepared by mixing them in a plunger containing a large wheel, by which they are, with the addition of water, converted into a mass of the consistency of cream. 1878F. S. Williams Midl. Railw. 424 Hydraulic power is obtained by a 40-horse engine, pumping the water into two upright cylinders, fitted with solid plungers.
g. Railways. Applied to various knobs or buttons used to operate signalling mechanisms and points; esp. (a) one with which a signalman operates an electric relay which releases locked signals or points, freq. in an adjacent block section; (b) a tapping key on a block instrument.
1881Daily News 7 Sept. 2/5 Uxbridge..signalled a couple of ‘beats’ to the West Drayton box, when the officer there in charge replied with four beats, pressed the ‘plunger’ and took off the lock at Uxbridge signals. 1897W. E. Langdon Applic. Electr. Railway Working (new ed.) v. 103 The block instrument is fitted with a bell key or ‘plunger’. 1899J. Pigg Railway Block Signalling iv. 214 For the lines converging at the junction the plunger used to liberate the signal at the rear cabin of any one of the converging sections is arranged to be free for use only when the points have been set for a train coming from that direction. 1926C. J. Allen Iron Road xii. 173 Below the instrument box is..a plunger or a ‘tapper’..by the use of which the signalman exchanges the prescribed code of bell signals with his neighbour. Ibid. 180 Only the action of ‘accepting’ the train by the box next in advance—that is, of giving ‘Line Clear’ by means of the special plunger on the signalling instrument—will free the lock on the lever, and allow it to be pulled over. 1963Kichenside & Williams Brit. Railway Signalling v. 44 If Mottingham can accept the train the signalman there acknowledges the ‘Is line clear?’ code and presses the plunger on his home signal instrument. This{ddd}unlocks Lee's starting signal and places the block indicator at Lee in the raised position. 1967G. F. Fiennes I tried to run Railway iv. 46 As soon as he put his signals back and took the hook off his Sykes plunger Crowlands offered him the Mail and gave him On Line at once.
h. Jazz slang. A plunging device, resembling the type used by plumbers to clear blocked pipes, used as a mute for a trumpet or trombone. Freq. attrib. and Comb.
1936L. & E. Dowling Panassié's Hot Jazz i. 15 Some players..use a regular mute and place over it a rubber plunger—of the sort used by plumbers—which is manipulated by hand to produce ‘wa-wa’ effects. 1946Mezzrow & Wolfe Really Blues 340 The trumpet got different tonal effects by using plungers and other home-made devices. 1949L. Feather Inside Be-Bop iii. 93 Took a couple of plunger solos on Decca. 1958S. Dance in P. Gammond Decca Bk. Jazz xxiii. 293 Cootie at first found Miley's growl legacy altogether too strange... He had always previously played open horn, but since Duke had engaged him to fill Miley's chair, he felt bound to experiment with the plunger style. 1961John o' London's 6 July 55/1 Booty Wood's melancholy plunger-muted trombone. 1966Crescendo Jan. 6/1 A slow opening with Tricky Sam style plunger trombone (sounding here very much like a human voice).
II.
3. Mil. slang. A cavalry man.
1854Thackeray J. Leech's Pict. 82 He used rather to laugh at guardsmen, ‘plungers’, and other military men. 1857Kingsley Two Y. Ago xvi, It's an insult to the whole Guards, after refusing two of us, to marry an attorney, and after all to bolt with a plunger.
4. slang. One who bets, gambles, or speculates rashly or recklessly.
1876World V. No. 115. 4 The prince of plungers, with hat jauntily cocked over one eye. 1877Besant & Rice Son of Vulc. i. i, Plungers in baccarat, badminton, loo, and opera-dancers. 1892Jessopp Stud. by Recluse vi. (1893) 192 He took to the turf,..was a regular plunger, and got deeply into debt.
III. 5. attrib. and Comb., as plunger-button, plunger-case, plunger-pole, plunger-rod; plunger-brake: see quots.; plunger-bucket, plunger-lift, in a pump, a bucket having no valve; also = plunger-piston (b); plunger mute = sense 2 h; plunger-piston, (a) a solid cylindrical piston used in a plunger-pump; (b) a similar piston used in a pressure-gauge, steam-indicator, etc.; plunger-pump, one with a solid piston, as a force-pump; plunger-valve, a valve having a plunging action.
1898Westm. Gaz. 13 July 3/2 With my *Plunger brake I rode down every inch of the descent from the top of the Grimsel Pass to the Rhone Glacier. [1898Cycling ix. 52 [A brake] actuated by means of a lever attached to the handle bar, which is connected by a hinged joint with a plunger. ]
1875Knight Dict. Mech., *Plunger-bucket, one without a valve.
1947I. Lang Jazz in Perspective vii. 90 Miley was the pioneer and master of a new style of trumpet-playing—a powerful and strangely moving ‘growl’ obtained by the use of a rubber *plunger mute. 1965New Yorker 27 Feb. 123/1 Rudd, a former Dixieland trombonist,..uses the plunger mute effectively. 1977Ibid. 20 June 95/1 Another muted passage (this time using a plunger mute), in which he mumbled funny gibberish through his instrument, all the while using his slide and seeming to blow out the words.
1840Civil Eng. & Arch. Jrnl. III. 41/1 Motion is given to the piston, bucket, or *plunger-pole of the pump.
1882Rep. to Ho. Repr. Prec. Met. U.S. 147 Stationary double *plunger pumps. 1898Engineering Mag. XVI. 52 The water is taken out of the mines by means of two Rittinger telescopic plunger pumps, placed at the present lowest level, one hundred and eighty feet below the adit.
1839Ure Dict. Arts 187 There is also a rack and toothed sector, with a balance weight connected to the inclined plane at the top of the *plunger-rods. 1844Stephens Bk. Farm III. 929 The very unfavourable position in which a man applies his force directly to the plunger-rod of this churn.
1908Westm. Gaz. 2 Jan. 4/1 The crank-case, into the cover of which the cam-shaft and *plunger-valves are built. 1931Engineering 2 Oct. 5 (Advt.), Being a combination of a plunger valve with a mushroom valve, they possess a greater efficiency than is possible with either of these types alone. |