| 释义 |
Rip Van Winkle|rɪp væn ˈwɪŋk(ə)l|
The name of a character in Washington Irving's Sketch Book (1819–20), a good-for-nothing who falls asleep for twenty years, applied: a. transf. to a person unfamiliar with prevailing conditions.
1833Advocate (Shelbyville, Kentucky) 28 Sept. 2/4 Wm. C. Preston, of South Carolina, in one of his furious tirades, applied to the State of North Carolina, the somewhat degrading epithet of ‘the Rip Van Winkle of the South’. 1852Dickens Bleak Ho. (1853) ii. 5 Both the world of fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent and usage; over-sleeping Rip Van Winkles, who have played at strange games through a deal of thundery weather. 1892G. B. Shaw Fabian Soc. 20 There are some Rip Van Winkles in our movement who are only now waking up. 1939C. Day Lewis Child of Misfortune iii. i. 262 A Rip Van Winkle's self-pity would seize him. 1945R. Hargreaves Enemy at Gate 187 That somewhat shop-soiled military Rip van Winkle, Giuseppe Garibaldi. 1974H. McCloy Sleepwalker ii. 17 What was she? A girl Rip Van Winkle who had been asleep since 1940?
b. attrib. to something characteristic of or resembling Rip Van Winkle or (an aspect of) his experience.
1849Picayune (New Orleans) 21 July 1/6 A person absent for three weeks, on returning, almost fancies that he has been taking a Rip Van Winkle slumber. 1893I. Zangwill Ghetto Tragedies 133 Is it possible that I can get into touch again with my youth..after a sort of Rip Van Winkle sleep? 1959Times 6 May 15/7 Time, in Česky Krummau, seems to have stopped about the year 1800. In this Rip-van-Winkle atmosphere, we were taken to the tiny castle chapel, where there is a baroque organ in which every single pipe is in its original state. 1977W. H. S. Smith Young Man's Country iii. 93 On the wall, as if to convince me that I was not in a Rip Van Winkle dream, was a list of S.D.O.s.
So Rip Van ˈWinkleish a., characteristic of or resembling Rip Van Winkle, ignorant of present conditions; hence Rip Van ˈWinkledom,(a) the Catskill Mountains in the state of New York, the site of Rip Van Winkle's sleep; (b) a state of prolonged sleep; Rip Van ˈWinkleism, an outmoded custom or opinion.
1829Mechanic's Press (Utica, N.Y.) 5 Dec. 28/1 His Rip Van Winkleish habits asked no more than to pursue ‘the even tenor of their way’. 1842C. M. Kirkland Forest Life II. 228 [Reading an old-fashioned book] was counted among my Rip-Van-Winkle-isms. 1852Harper's Mag. Aug. 420/2 A Pilgrim from the backwoods..had just been awakened from a Rip-Van-Winkleish existence of a quarter of a century by the steam-whistle of the Erie Railroad. 1888G. B. Shaw Let. 9 Feb. (1965) I. 185 He persists in his 18th century Rip-van-Winkleism. 1892Outing Apr. 48 (title) A cyclist's visit to Rip Van Winkledom. Ibid. 50/2 We are already in the confines of Rip Van Winkledom. 1911Beerbohm Lett. to R. Turner (1964) 195 It made me feel very Rip-Van-Winkleish to find no Alfred Douglas. 1956M. Lowry Let. 13 Nov. (1967) 391 She..has also for the latter part of this time been mostly asleep... She emerged from this Ripvanwinkledom, feeling and sounding better than she has in ten years. |