| 释义 |
‖ roulette|ruːˈlɛt|
Also 8 rowlet, 8–9 roulet.
[F., dim. of rouelle wheel.]
†1. A small wheel. Obs. rare.
a1734North Life Lord Keeper North (1742) 137 The Manner of the Carriage [of coal] is by laying Rails of Timber from the Colliery, down to the River,..and bulky Carts are made with four Rowlets fitting these Rails. Ibid. 294 Wherever there was like to be a Friction, a Roulet was placed to receive it.
2. a. A game of chance played on a table with a revolving centre, on which a ball is set in motion, and finally drops into one of a set of numbered compartments.
1745Act 18 Geo. II, c. 34 §1 A certain pernicious game called roulet or roly-poly is daily practised. 1808Sporting Mag. XXX. 26 The foreign games of Roulet and Rouge et Noir. 1860Ld. Lytton Lucile ii. i, The duke..turn'd to roulette, And sat down, and play'd fast, and lost largely. 1882W. Ballantine Exper. iv, Roulette..was to be found at all the lower description of [gambling] houses.
b. attrib., as roulette ball, roulette box, roulette system, roulette table, roulette-wheel.
1827Disraeli Viv. Grey v. vi, The Roulette table opens immediately. 1844Rep. Sel. Comm. Gaming 210 in Parl. Papers VI. 1 Seized..2 roulette balls, 2 dice-boxes, 2 bags containing 366 counters, [etc.]. Ibid. 211, I seized a roulette-wheel and a quantity of gambling apparatus. 1851Mayhew Lond. Labour I. 371 The raffler of the China ornaments produces a portable roulette box or table. 1863Trevelyan Compet. Wallah (1866) 59 Foreign noblemen..turning the crank instead of the roulette-wheel. 1926A. Christie Murder of R. Ackroyd iii. 26 Caroline visibly wavered..much as a roulette ball might coyly hover between two numbers. 1976‘J. Fraser’ Who steals my Name? xi. 134 A roulette ball has no memory... In the South of France a ball went into the same slot seven times running. 1976P. Cave High Flying Birds iv. 47, I once sold a foolproof roulette system to a professional gambler for 500 francs.
c. The centre part of a roulette table; a box used for a simple form of roulette. Also Comb.
1850Bohn's Hdbk. Games (1867) 348 He throws an ivory ball into the concavity of the Roulette, in a direction opposite to the movement which he has given to the movable bottom. 1851Mayhew Lond. Labour I. 371 What may be called ‘the board’ of some of these ‘roulettes’ is numbered to thirty-two. Ibid. 189, I'm a roulette-maker now.
d. Russian roulette: see Russian a. 2 e.
3. Math. A certain curve (see quots.).
1867Brande Dict. Sci., etc. III. 314/2 Roulette, the curve traced by any point in the plane of a given curve when the latter rolls, without sliding, over another fixed curve. 1879Salmon Higher Plane Curves vii. 284 Roulettes or curves generated by a point on a rolling curve.
4. A device to keep the hair in curl.
1860Fairholt Costume (ed. 2) 571 To ‘put a wig in pipes’ was a phrase descriptive in the last century of a wig whose curls were kept in order by roulettes. 1874Temple Bar XLI. 54 Their hair..is piled up in a wonderful pyramid of..rolls all so stiff that they stand alone without the aid of pads, roulets, puffs, or hair-pins.
5. Engraving. (See quots.)
1835Brit. Cycl. Arts & Sci. I. 508/1 A more expeditious way of multiplying the dots has been contrived in the instrument called a roulette, a toothed wheel, fixed to a handle which, by being rolled forcibly along the copper, produces a row of indentations. 1854Fairholt Dict. Terms Art 376 Roulette, a small instrument..used by engravers to produce a series of dotted lines on a plate. It takes two forms, one like a spur-rowel.., and another which rolls at right angles with the shaft of the tool. 1875Knight Dict. Mech. 1994/1 Engravers' roulettes, principally used in mezzotinting to raise the burr when the original ground produced by the cradle has been too much scraped or burnished away.
6. A revolving toothed wheel used for perforating adhesive postage stamps.
1867Philatelist I. 102 The next sort [of perforation]..is that not made by a fixed machine, but by what is called the roulette, or revolving wheel. Ibid. 103 A line..which acts as guidant to the roulette.
7. A light roller used in massage.
1895Syd. Soc. Lex., Pressions, in massage, methods of pressing or compressing the muscles, by means of the whole hand, the tips of the fingers, or the roulet.
Hence rouˈletter, a player at roulette.
1891Pall Mall G. 3 June 6/1 We should have whole courts full of titled rouletters. |