| 释义 |
back room
Also back-room, backroom.
[back a. 2.]
A room at the back of a house or other building. Also attrib.
1592Greene Conny-catch. (1881) 59 The gentlewoman..brought him into a backe roome. 1713Guardian No. 85 The young poets are in the back room. 1679[see front n. 13]. a1777Foote Cozeners (1778) iii. i. 66 And, as you see he is violent, let him have the back room, with the barr'd windows, up two pair of stairs. 1841Punch July 13/2 Paddy Green intends shortly to remove to a three-pair back-room in Little Wild-street. 1904Daily Chron. 17 Dec. 6/4 Little Miss Lazarus or Solomon can generally be relied upon to look after..the little back-room home.
b. spec. A room where (esp. secret) research is carried out. Also in extended uses. Applied attrib. to one who works or wields influence ‘behind the scenes’. So backroom boy (colloq.), a person engaged in (secret) research.
1941Ld. Beaverbrook in Listener 27 Mar. 443/1 Now who is responsible for this work of development on which so much depends? To whom must the praise be given? To the boys in the back rooms. They do not sit in the limelight. But they are the men who do the work. Many of them are Civil Servants. 1943N. Balchin (title) The Small Back Room. 1943Punch 11 Nov. 422 (caption) He's one of those obscure back-room boys who have lately been so much in the limelight. 1944Times 9 Aug. 2/3 The man most responsible for the development of the rocket projectile..is Group Captain John D'Arcy Bakercarr,..whose ‘backroom boys’ at the Ministry of Aircraft Production have worked unremittingly with him. 1945News Chron. 17 May 1/1 Considerable numbers of backroom Nazis, such as bankers and industrialists, have been arrested. 1951D. N. Chester Lessons Brit. War Econ. ii. 15 No group of back-room boys writing memoranda embodying ideal policies is likely to have much influence. 1958Times Lit. Suppl. 20 June 337/3 It occurred to boys working in back rooms that if only neutrons could be released in the process a chain-reaction might be set up. 1959Oxf. Univ. Gaz. 1 May 995/1 The staff..could not take on additional services to readers without increasing the arrears of essential cataloguing and other back-room work. |