| 释义 |
pop-gun, ˈpopgun, n.
[f. pop n.1 or v.1 + gun n.; prob. suggested by pot-gun in sense 2.]
1. A child's toy, consisting of a short straight tube from the mouth of which a tight-fitting pellet is expelled with a pop by compressing the air in the tube with a piston.
1622Hobbes Seven Philos. Prob. iii. (1682) 18 Tis of the nature of a Pop gun which Children use. 1749Fielding Tom Jones x. vi, I value a pistol, or a blunderbuss, or any such thing, no more than a pop gun. 1801Strutt Sports & Past. iv. iv, The trunks were succeeded by pot-guns made with hollow pieces of elder, or of quills... These were also called pop-guns. 1847Alb. Smith Chr. Tadpole xv, Just as one pellet in a pop-gun drives out another. 1967D. Abercrombie Elem. Gen. Phonetics ii. 24 An air-stream mechanism can be compared to a fruit-spray, a Flit gun, a syringe, or a child's pop-gun.
fig.1711Addison Spect. No. 46 ⁋6 She is a meer Sermon Popgun, repeating and discharging Texts, Proofs [etc.]. 1777E. Montagu in Doran Lady of last Cent. viii. (1873) 215 The scriblers weekly let fly their pop-guns at the Duchess. 1883Hall Caine Cobwebs of Crit. iii. 54 Volleys from the popgun of criticism.
2. Contemptuously applied to a small, inefficient, or antiquated fire-arm. Also transf. (contextually an aeroplane).
1849E. E. Napier Excurs. S. Africa II. 389, I instantly stepped into the next room, to get the old pop-gun there;..my finger was in an instant on the trigger. 1864in A. Bisset Omitted Chapters Hist. Eng. vi. 376 Cromwell's pop-guns, which I will engage did not kill twenty men during the action [of Dunbar]. 1919M. Beer Hist. Brit. Socialism I. ii. vii. 240 To equip men with pop-guns for a hunting expedition in the jungle. 1929W. Faulkner Sartoris i. 43, I tried to keep him from going up there on that goddam little popgun... I tried to keep him from going up there on that damn Camel.
3. attrib. and Comb., as pop gun-pellet, etc.
a1704T. Brown Walk round Lond., Presbyt. Meeting-Ho. (1709) 17 His merry Posture and Pop-gun-way of Delivery. 1823Scott Fam. Lett. 11 Jan., Bells rung on the true pop-gun principle by the action of air alone. 1826Miss Mitford Village Ser. ii. (1863) 279 She had sitten out..by help of..putting her fingers in her ears, two or three popgun lectures, on chemistry and mechanics. 1844Knickerbocker XXIII. 182 To the United States in reference to the pop-gun shots of foreign tourists, might be addressed the warning which Peter Plymley thundered against Bonaparte. 1874E. Eggleston Circuit Rider ix. 87 He had been flogged in boyhood for shooting pop-gun wads into the face of a portrait of the reigning monarch. 1895Montreal Med. Jrnl. XXIII. 565 The physician without physiology and chemistry flounders along in an aimless fashion, never able to gain any accurate conception of disease, practising a sort of pop-gun pharmacy, hitting now the malady and again the patient, he himself not knowing which. 1963Times 5 Jan. 12/3 A complicated regimen of treatment which Dr. Walton described as ‘pop-gun polypharmacy’. 1968Wall St. Jrnl. 29 Mar. 1 (headings) Centers in Slums Offer Legal, Employment Assistance; ‘Outreachers’ Make Rounds. A Popgun Effort, Critics Say.
Hence ˈpop-gun v. trans., to discharge a pop-gun at; ˈpopˌgunner; ˌpopˈgunnery; ˈpopˌgunning ppl. a.
1721Amherst Terræ Fil. No. 48 (1726) 269 Those abominable monsters..pop-gun with their huge trunks the poor constellations, and turn the milky way into a salt posset. 1831P. Hawker Diary (1893) II. 25 The..tag-rag popgunners blazing away at the fieldfares. 1846Ibid. 273 Loads of popgunning blackguards. a1849Poe Marginalia Wks. 1864 III. 499 The lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into popgunnery. |