| 释义 |
athlete|ˈæθliːt|
[ad. L. āthlēta, ad. Gr. ἀθλητής, n. of agent f. ἀθλέ-ειν to contend for a prize, f. ἆθλος contest, ἆθλον prize. Before c 1750 always in L. form, which is still occas. used in sense 1.]
1. A competitor in the physical exercises—such as running, leaping, boxing, wrestling—that formed part of the public games in ancient Greece and Rome.
1528Paynell Salerne Regim. E iij b, Porke..nourisheth mooste: wherof those that be called athlete [= -æ] haue beste experience. 1683Cave Ecclesiastici 235 A Bishop, not an Athleta or Champion. 1741Delany David (T.) Dioxippus, the Athenian athlete. 1756Miss Talbot in Mrs. Carter's Lett. (1808) I. 390 We have looked in Johnson for Athlete, no such word there. 1868M. Pattison Academ. Org. §5. 241 The barbarised athlete of the arena. 1877Bryant Ruins Italica ii, But where the combatant With his bare arms, the strong athleta where?
2. One who by special training and exercise has acquired great physical strength; one whose profession it is to exhibit feats of strength and activity; a physically powerful, robust, vigorous man.
1827Scott in Lockhart lxxiii. (1842) 654 He was a little man, dumpled up together..Though so little of an athlete, he nevertheless beat off Dr. Wolcott. 1881C. Phillipps-Wolley Sport in Crimea 280 The jump..was easily within the powers of the most third-rate athlete.
3. fig.
1759Adam Smith Mor. Sent. vii. §2 (R.) Having opposed to him a vigorous athlete, over whom..the victory was more glorious and equally certain. 1876Lowell Poet. Wks. (1879) 470 The long-proved athletes of debate.
4. athlete's foot, a popular name for tinea or ringworm of the foot.
1928Lit. Digest 22 Dec. 16/1 Athlete's foot..from which more than ten million persons in the United States are now suffering. 1942Lancet 18 July 75/2 After what we have been told about the shortage of phenol and its derivatives no-one over here is likely to begin trials of a remedy for ‘athlete's foot’ (tinea interdigitalis), advocated in America, which consists of equal parts of phenol and camphor. |