| 释义 |
ˈpregnance
[f. pregnant a.2: see -ance.]
1. = pregnancy1 2–4; a pregnant quality.
1546Langley Pol. Verg. De Invent. i. viii. 15 b, Poetrie..comprehendeth al other sciences, as for that when other faculties be deuysed by the pregnaunce of mannes wytte, this art only is giuen of nature by a diuine inspiracion. 1610W. Folkingham Art of Survey iv. ii. 81 Increase comprehends all profits deriued from the Pregnance and Production of the Earth. 1633Marmion Fine Companion ii. vi, A sonne of..such pregnance of wit and understanding. 1645Milton Colast. Wks. 1851 IV. 364 In the passage following, I cannot but admire the ripenes, and the pregnance of his native trechery. c1645Howell Lett. (1688) IV. 470, I doubt it not, having discover'd in your Nature so many pregnances and sparkles of innated Honor. 1959I. Jefferies Thirteen Days xi. 171, I rode off early..into the pleasant pregnance of the day.
¶ negative pregnance, an erroneous rendering of the mod.L. law term negativa prægnans = negative pregnant: see pregnant a.2 4 b.
1641Termes de la Ley 209 The Defendant saith that it was not voyd being the temporalties in the kings hands by the death of W. this is a Negative pregnance, for it may be in the kings hands otherwise then by the death of W.
2. = Prägnanz. (But see quot. 1974.)
1948Brit. Jrnl. Psychol. June 181 How little we still know of the details of this process of adaptation, of its conditions and limitations, of its relation to..‘the law of pregnance’. 1969G. N. Seagrim tr. Piaget's Mechanisms of Perception vi. 305 Pregnance..is only a coercive effect produced..by a form whose elements..succeed in compensating any deformations which are present. 1974R. Arnheim Art & Visual Perception (rev. ed.) ii. 67 To compound the confusion, translators have rendered the German Prägnanz with the English pregnance, which means very nearly the opposite. |