| 释义 |
ˈprairie ˈschooner N. Amer.
A fanciful name for the large covered wagons used by emigrants in crossing the N. American plains, before the construction of railways. Cf. prairie ship (prairie b). Also Austral. colloq. (see quot. 19111).
1841E. R. Steele Summer Journey in West 134 So much is this appearance acknowledged by the country people that they call the stage coach, a prairie schooner. 1847T. Weed Let. in T. W. Barnes Mem. T. Weed (1884) II. 149 We found the road..occupied with an almost unbroken line of wagons, drawn generally by two yokes of oxen, bringing wheat to the city. These teams are called ‘prairie schooners’. 1858New York Tribune 7 June 5/6 In our streets [Lawrence, Kansas] may be seen large covered wagons, alias ‘prairie schooners’... These wagons are generally drawn by oxen, otherwise by mules. 1867[see double-decker b]. 1882Harper's Mag. Dec. 5/1 The prairie schooner, or large lumbering freight wagon,..looms up in the distance. 1904[see schooner n.1 2]. 1911C. E. W. Bean ‘Dreadnought’ of Darling vii. 67 An old white-bearded patriarch of a fellow that had once appeared in one of the up-river towns with a ‘prairie schooner’—one of those big white-hooded sort of ambulance waggons which the travelling hawkers drive from homestead to homestead over the plains in the West. 1911Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 21 Apr. 4/2 Last summer one Sunday morning on the Cariboo road a prairie schooner stood by the roadside. 1949Amer. Speech XXIV. 259 Hordes of treasure seekers from regions east of the mountains crossed the plains in covered wagons, the ships of the desert of the early Western emigrants. Such wagons in various regions were known as..prairie schooners. 1955W. Foster-Harris Look of Old West vi. 159 The prairie schooners, developed from the Conestoga were smaller but still too heavy and clumsy for mountain work or badly broken country. 1957L. Eiseley Immense Journey 19, I slid over shallows that had buried the broken axles of prairie schooners. 1961[see Conestoga 2]. 1977Time 14 Feb. 54/1 There it will begin tests that will culminate in flights that could do for space colonization what the prairie schooner and the railroads did for the settling of America. |