| 释义 |
biscuit|ˈbɪskɪt|
Forms: 4 besquite, 5 bysqwyte, -cute, 5–6 bysket, 6–8 bisket, 8– biscuit. (Also, casually, 6 biskett, -kette, -ked, -kitte, -kott, -ky, -quette, -quite; 6–7 bisquet; 7 bisquett, biscot, -coct.)
[a. OF. 12th c. bescoit, 13th c. bescuit, 16th c. biscut, mod.F. biscuit, a common Romanic word (= Pr. bescueit, Cat. bescuyt, Sp. bizcocho, Pg. biscuto, It. biscotto) on L. type *biscoctum (panem), bread ‘twice baked,’ from the original mode of preparation. The regular form in Eng. from 16th to 18th c. was bisket, as still pronounced; the current biscuit is a senseless adoption of the mod.Fr. spelling, without the Fr. pronunciation.]
1. a. A kind of crisp dry bread more or less hard, prepared generally in thin flat cakes. The essential ingredients are flour and water, or milk, without leaven; but confectionery and fancy biscuits are very variously composed and flavoured. Even the characteristic of hardness implied in the name is lost in the sense ‘A kind of small, baked cake, usually fermented, made of flour, milk, etc.’ used, according to Webster, in U.S.
1330R. Brunne Chron. (1810) 171 Armour þei had plente, & god besquite to mete. c1440Promp. Parv. 48 Bysqwyte..biscoctus. 1555Fardle Facions ii. vii. 159 Their daiely foode..is hard Bisquette. 1569Crawley Soph. Dr. Watson ii. 169 The bread was such as was prouided to serue at neede, or in warres, for it was Bisket, that is twice baked, and without leauen or salt. 1595Sir J. Gilbert in N. & Q. Ser. iii. (1864) Feb. 109/1, 1400 tones off corn too be bakyd ynto bysky. 1600Shakes. A.Y.L. ii. vii. 39 As drie as the remainder bisket After a voyage. 1697W. Dampier Voy. (1729) I. 303 Bread of fine Wheat Flower, baked like Bisket, but not so hard. 1755Johnson, Bisket: see biscuit. 1770Fitz-Henry Observ. Baretti's Journ. i. 90, I call for a bisket and a glass of Madeira. 1818J. Palmer Jrnl. Trav. N. Amer. ix. 125 Hot short cakes, called biscuits. 1828Webster, Biscuit,..a composition of flour and butter, made and baked in private families. 1843‘R. Carlton’ New Purchase v. 27 Hot rolls.., a novelty then, but much like biscuits in parts of the Far West. 1860All Y. Round No. 63. 302 Munching an Abernethy biscuit. 1903N.Y. Sun 1 Dec. 8 Did he never spread cream ham gravy on his hot biscuits?
b. transf. (a) (see quot.).
1881Encycl. Brit. XII. 836 The flat rounded cakes of [South American] rubber made in this manner are known in the London market as ‘biscuits’.
(b) Mil. slang. A square brown palliasse or mattress.
1915‘Ian Hay’ First Hundred Thous. v. 33 ‘Got the biscuits here, Sergeant-Major?’.. The Sergeant-Major dives into a pile of brown blankets and presently extracts three small brown mattresses, each two feet square. 1917Times 21 Nov. 11/4 Sleeping on the floor on army ‘biscuits’—as they had already learned to call the military mattress. 1919Athenæum 22 Aug. 791/2 ‘Biscuits.’ These were the palliasses—square in form and brown as to colour—of which three went to each bed. a1935T. E. Lawrence Mint (1936) iii. v. 173 The mattresses are three little square brown canvas cushions, rammed solid with coir. Biscuits they call them.
c. The characteristic light-brown colour of biscuits; biscuit colour; often attrib. = of this colour.
1884Biscuit colour, biscuit satin [see sense 3]. 1892Daily News 16 Sept. 3/3 A biscuit straw hat. 1896Ibid. 18 July 6/3 White, cream, and biscuit-fawn. 1897Ibid. 15 Sept. 6/6 Biscuit-tinted lace insertion. 1923Daily Mail 15 Jan. 6 Newest shades, including: Pale Pink..Scarlet Fuchsia, Biscuit, Mauve.
d. Colloq. phr. to take the biscuit: to ‘take the cake’ (see cake n. 7).
1907G. B. Shaw John Bull's other Island iii. 76 All you know is ah to ahl [howl] abaht it. You take the biscuit at that, you do. 1930Wodehouse Very Good, Jeeves! vi. 167 Of all the absolutely foul sights I have ever seen, this took the biscuit with ridiculous ease. 1961Listener 16 Nov. 825/2 For the sheerest idiocy, it's the comparative ‘as contemporary as{ddd}’ that takes the biscuit.
2. Pottery. The name given to porcelain and other pottery-ware after having undergone the first firing, and before being glazed, painted, or otherwise embellished; also fig.
1791E. Darwin Bot. Gard. i. 87 The kneaded clay refines, The biscuit hardens, the enamel shines. 1864J. S. Harford Recoll. Wilberforce i. 21 ‘What an interesting creature is Dunn! he is formed of the finest biscuit.’ 1880C. M. Mason Forty Shires 158 Potter's ‘Biscuit’ is the dough after it has been made into vessels and baked.
3. Comb. and attrib.
a. attrib., as (in sense 1) biscuit-bag, biscuit-box, biscuit-cask, biscuit-figure, biscuit-manufactory, biscuit-sack, biscuit tin, biscuit-worm; (of the colour of a biscuit, light-brown), as biscuit satin; also dry-biscuit-jest, -rogue; (in sense 2) biscuit-body, biscuit-china, biscuit clay, biscuit oven, biscuit stage, biscuit state, biscuit ware, biscuit warehouse (hence b. warehouseman).
b. objective, as biscuit-baker, biscuit-baking, biscuit-beater, biscuit-cast, biscuit-maker, biscuit-making, biscuit-throw, biscuit-toss (cf. stone's throw).
c. parasynthetic and similative, as biscuit-brained, biscuit-coloured, biscuit-like, biscuit-shaped. biscuit barrel, a barrel used to contain biscuits; spec. a small domestic barrel-shaped container for biscuits; biscuit root N. Amer., the quamash (Camassia esculenta) of North America, or other esculent roots similar to this.
1837Carlyle Fr. Rev. I. iii. viii. 132 A sinking pilot will fling out..his very *biscuit-bags.
1707Lond. Gaz. No. 4332/8 Caleb Claggett, *Biscuit Baker. 1865L. F. Simpson Handbk. Dining ii. (ed. 3) 27 Biscuit bakers..hold a middle path between pastry cooks and confectioners.
1787T. Jefferson Let. 18 Sept. in Writings (1853) II. 269 He has contrived a varnish..for lining *biscuit barrels. 1840N. Hawthorne in Harper's Mag. XLV. 690/2 Sometimes I..warmed myself by a red-hot stove, among biscuit-barrels..and kettles. 1886F. H. Burnett Little Lord Fauntleroy (1887) ii. 21 You said..that you wouldn't have them sitting 'round on your biscuit barrels. 1935D. L. Sayers Gaudy Night xi. 174 People still give plated biscuit-barrels!
1783Wedgwood in Phil. Trans. LXXIII. 285 Mixed with porcelain *biscuit body.
1886Times 24 Feb. 9/6 Constructing the *biscuit-box redoubt under fire at Gubat.
1853Kane Grinnell Exp. xlix. (1856) 461 Within short *biscuit-cast.
1862Mayhew Crim. Prisons 129 As white as slabs of *biscuit-china.
1599B. Jonson Ev. Man out Hum. Grex 157 [He] breaks a drie *bisquet-jest, Which..He steepes in his owne laughter.
1836Todd Cycl. Anat. & Phys. I. 746/1 The rough *biscuit-like surface of the bone.
1835Penny Cycl. IV. 452/1 Our description of *biscuit-making.
Ibid. The largest *biscuit-manufactories are those..for supplying the navy.
1768J. Wedgwood Let. 13 June (1965) 65 We..cannot keep Pace with the *Biscuit oven. 1902A. Bennett Anna of Five Towns viii. 172 There's the biscuit oven, but we can't inspect it because it's just being drawn. 1904Goodchild & Tweney Technol. & Sci. Dict. 52/2 Biscuit oven, is that in which the clay articles are placed, and the heat of which renders them more or less vitrified.
1620Fletcher Fr. Lawyer ii. i. 58 Ze dry *bisket rogue!
1837W. Irving Capt. Bonneville III. i. 9 The cowish, also, or *biscuit root, about the size of a walnut, which they reduce to a very palatable flour. 1847De Smet Oregon Missions 116 The bitter root..grows in light dry, sandy soil as also the caious or biscuit root.
1779Johnson Drake Wks. IV. 410 A sail made of a *bisket sack.
1884Pall Mall G. 8 Apr. 4/2 In dinner and evening dresses the biscuit colour is equally popular. An evening dress of *biscuit satin.
1865Daily Tel. 3 Nov. 5/5 It is fired for about sixty hours..and is then in what is called the ‘*biscuit’ state.
1833Marryat P. Simple (1863) 340 Running the brig within *biscuit-throw of the weather schooner.
1901Kipling Five Nations (1903) 114 We stumble on refuse of rations, The beef and the *biscuit-tins.
1891Pall Mall Gaz. 26 Jan. 3/1 This was but a *biscuit-toss from Crown Office-row. 1896Kipling Seven Seas 29 And north, amid the hummocks, A biscuit-toss below. 1960Listener 18 Aug. 250/2 Daughters of ‘rails’ and raised within biscuit-toss of the ‘big rust’—the main line.
1782Wedgwood in Phil. Trans. LXXII. 307 The kiln in which the *biscuit ware is fired.
1902A. Bennett Anna of Five Towns viii. 173 Mynors took the plate..to the *biscuit-warehouse... A solitary biscuit-warehouseman was examining the ware.
1798Coleridge Anc. Mar. i. xvii, The mariners gave it *biscuit-worms.
4. biscuit bread. Formerly used as = biscuit.
c1440Promp. Parv. 37 Byscute brede, biscoctus. 1555Eden Decades W. Ind. i. iii. (Arb.) 77 The vytayles (especially the byskette breade) corrupted. 1616Surfl. & Markh. Countr. Farm 583 Physitians appoint bisket bread for such as are troubled with rheumes. 1684tr. Bonet's Merc. Compit. x. 364 Adust humours, which are increased by Biscoct Bread.
Hence ˈbiscuiting vbl. n., the first baking of earthenware or similar material.
1871Echo 6 Jan., This first burning is technically termed ‘biscuiting.’ |