| 释义 |
positional, a.|pəʊˈzɪʃənəl, pə-|
[f. position n. + -al1.]
a. Of, pertaining to, or determined by position. spec. (a) Linguistics = isolating ppl. a. 1; (b) Chess, characterized by position play.
1571Digges Pantom. i. xxxiv, K iv, The concourse or meeting of semblable positionall lines. 1646Sir T. Browne Pseud. Ep. ii. vii. 102 A strange conceit,..ascribing unto plants positionall operations, and after the manner of the Loadstone. 1664Power Exp. Philos. iii. 157 A Magnet..acquires a new one [Magnetical vigour], according to the positional Laws in its Refrigeration. 1879Thomson & Tait Nat. Phil. I. i. §343 A system so constituted that the positional forces are proportional to displacements and the motional to velocities. 1881R. Ellis in Academy 9 Apr. 256/1 Why has not Mr. Butler..reproduced the Greek metre exactly, or at least with that positional quantity which seems most nearly to approach it? 1883D. H. Wheeler By-Ways of Lit. x. 188 The possessive form in 's stands side by side with the positional possessive,..God's love or the love of God. 1895Funk's Stand. Dict., Positional co-ordinates (Mech.), quantities, employed to fix a system, occurring explicitly in expressions for kinetic and potential energies. 1908T. G. Tucker Introd. Nat. Hist. Lang. 92 Languages which express grammar and modification of sense by position, without external or internal modification of the ‘roots’..may be called Inorganic or Positional. Ibid. 93 The Positional languages include Chinese, Burmese, Anamese, and their group. Ibid. 117 The line of linguistic ease naturally taken by a language which finds the purely positional structure inadequate to it [sic] needs. 1929Times 2 Nov. 6/7 Newman increased a run of 312..to 349, and then missed a positional red winner. 1937M. Euwe Strategy & Tactics in Chess 18 We call games such as the preceding one, in which strategy plays such an important part, positional games, in contrast to combinative games, in which the strategy is of minor importance. 1937J. R. Firth Tongues of Men vii. 88 Three types of language structure: (i) Meanings indicated by words; relations by position... These were called Isolating and Positional Languages. E.g., Chinese, English. 1937Language XIII. 3 Not uncommonly, the same language has long consonants of different phonemic types; for example, English has long consonants both as positional variants and as geminate clusters. 1938Times Lit. Suppl. 5 Mar. 157/2 It secured the dominance of the positional over the combinational school. 1945Diamond Track (Army Board, N.Z.) 37/2 The Allied success..made the position of large forces of the enemy's positional infantry on our front most precarious. 1946Sunday Dispatch 8 Sept. 6/2 There was no weakness in United, who played clever positional football. 1952A. Cohen Phonemes of Eng. 90 ‘Positional diphthongs’ are characterised by the preservation of the individual character of the component parts. 1960C. Barnett Desert Generals iii. ii. 103 The mentality of the army's senior and rising officers could not be similarly converted by decree to suit mobile armoured warfare. The stiff, positional war of the Western Front between 1914 and 1918 was the only..influence. 1964R. B. Lees Gram. Eng. Nominalizations p. xli, Subcategorization is obviously a different kind of constraint on syntactic constituents from positional constraints in a tree or domination by a certain kind of node. 1970Nature 12 Dec. 1121/1 In fact, the positional accuracy achieved is typically a small fraction of the vehicle stability. 1971Physics Bull. July 397/2 Three instruments incorporating laser interferometers for calibration have been built at NPL. The first of these, for measuring the positional errors of the lines on precision scales and gratings, has been in use for several years. 1972G. Green Great Moments in Sport: Soccer iv. 58 Cohen and Ray Wilson, the full backs, overlapping down the flanks..as the whole side bamboozled Spain with mobile positional play. 1979E. H. Gombrich Sense of Order ix. 243 Repetition devalues elements while isolation in the centre will emphasize them. In the ‘field of force’ we can observe the effects of ‘positional enhancement’.
b. Special collocations: positional goods (Econ.): see quots.; positional player (Chess) = position player (a).
1976F. Hirsch Social Limits to Growth iii. 27 The positional economy..relates to all aspects of goods, services, work positions, and other social relationships that are either (1) scarce in some absolute or socially imposed sense or (2) subject to congestion or crowding through more extensive use... If..positional goods remain in fixed supply while material goods become more plentiful, the price of positional goods will rise, as consumers' relative intensity of demand for them increases in terms of material goods. 1976Economist 11 Dec. 129/2 Many of the things which are valued in our society are hierarchical. They are what Professor Hirsch calls ‘positional goods’. 1977N.Y. Times Bk. Rev. 13 Feb. 10/3 ‘Positional goods’—a house at the shore, tenure on the Harvard faculty, a Picasso on the wall. 1977Econ. Jrnl. Sept. 574 Positional goods are defined as those to which access is a function of an individual's income relative to other people's.
1933M. A. Schwendemann tr. Reti's Masters of Chess Board 4 Typical positional players like Steinitz and Rubinstein are of the opinion that this variation of the King's Gambit is in favour of White.
Hence poˈsitionally adv.
1923C. D. Broad Sci. Thought xi. 408 Some of these strands may be positionally uniform. 1961Times 13 Feb. 4/1 The new open side wing forward, Rogers, was positionally at sea. 1964Amer. Speech XXXIX. 35 The main adjective class is positionally any word that goes either as a prepositive or as a complement of a copulative. 1971D. Crystal Linguistics 190 The..is positionally fixed, preceding the noun it modifies. 1975Nature 31 Jan. 310/2 The molecules are positionally ordered but orientationally disordered and mobile. |