| 释义 |
Polynesia|pɒlɪˈniːʃ(ɪ)ə, -sɪə, -ʒ(ɪ)ə, -zɪə|
[mod.L. form of F. Polynésie (De Brosses 1756), f. Gr. πολυ-, poly- + νῆσος island.
(It has been asserted that the name had been used by certain authors two centuries before De Brosses. This is an error, app. founded on the circumstance that De Brosses in the Table des Articles of his Histoire, arranges the voyages under his three heads of Magellanie, Australie, and Polynésie, and also uses these designations in the headings which he prefixes to the narratives themselves, in the originals of which no such terms occur. These headings are retained by Callander in his Terra Australis, 1766 (an unacknowledged transl. of De Brosses).]
Collective name for the numerous small islands in the Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and the Malay archipelago (or, in restricted sense, for those east of Melanesia and Micronesia). Hence allusively.
[1756De Brosses Hist. Navig. aux Terres Australes Pref. 2 La division de la terre australe y étoit faite [i.e. in a memoir previously read by De Brosses to a private literary society, which formed the germ of his Histoire], relativement à ces trois mers, en Magellanique, Polynésie et Australasie. Ibid. vi, Surtout dans la Polynésie. ]1766J. Callander Terra Australis Cognita I. 49 We [i.e. De Brosses] call the third division polynesia, being composed of all those islands, which are found dispersed in the vast Pacific Ocean. Ibid. 73 (Heading) Ferdinand Magellan to Magellanica and Polynesia [De Brosses I. 121 Ferdinand Magellan en Magellanique & en Polynésie]. 1815Tuckey Maritime Geog. IV. 1842 M. Russell Polynesia i. 22 The name Polynesia was first applied to this interesting portion of the globe by the learned President de Brosses, in his History of Navigation.
fig.1889Cornh. Mag. July 69 On the floor a polynesia of spittoons in a sea of sawdust. |