| 释义 |
sapless, a.|ˈsæplɪs|
[f. sap n.1 + -less.]
1. Of plants, wood, etc.: Destitute of sap; dry, withered.
1591Shakes. 1 Hen. VI, ii. v. 12 Pyth-lesse Armes, like to a withered Vine, That droupes his sappe-lesse Branches to the ground. 1678H. Vaughan Thalia Rediv., Affliction (1858) 224 Flowers that in sunshine riot still, Dye, scorched and sapless. 1762Poetry in Ann. Reg. 225 Sapless wood but makes a blaze. 1786tr. Beckford's Vathek (1868) 46 Their summits..till then had never been covered but with sapless thistles and fern. 1818Shelley Euganean Hills 43 Like sapless leaflets..Frozen upon December's bough. 1892Walsh Tea (Philad.) 161 But if old and ‘sapless’ they [the tea leaves] will be found rough and ‘chaffy’ to the touch.
fig.1594J. Dickenson Arisbas (1878) 29 The saplesse frutes of greene youth, and pithlesse blossomes of a simple Authors vnripe wit.
b. Of soil: Dry, without moisture; also barren, unproductive.
1655Moufet & Bennet Health's Impr. (1746) 78 A dry, crumbling, sapless and unmingled Earth. 1665Sir T. Herbert Trav. (1677) 37 These Troglodites well knowing how little advantage that great Monarch would get by entring their sapless Country, scornfully refused it. 1827Lytton Pelham liv, I live, as it were, on a rock, barren, and herbless, and sapless. 1895Salmond Chr. Doctr. Immort. ii. v. 262 His creative might will bring life out of the sapless dust of Sheol.
2. transf. and fig.
a. Of persons: Lacking vital moisture, energy, or vigour. Also with reference to mental qualities: Lacking in character, insipid.
1598Marston Sco. Villanie iii. viii. 214, I am not saplesse old or reumatick. c1600Distracted Emp. i. i. in Bullen O. Pl. III 168 Theres not enough to cherrish a desyer Left in his saplesse nerves. 1647Trapp Comm. 1 Cor. ii. (1656) 663 Such was that Sapless fellow Psal. 14. 1. that may have a disciplinary knowledge..but not an intuitive per speciem propriam. 1680Baxter Answ. Stillingfl. vi. 16 An unexperienced sapless Teacher. 1700Dryden Ovid's Met. xv. 349 Now sapless on the verge of Death he stands. 1821Shelley Hellas 706 Hear ye the blast,..Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones Of Slavery? 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) III. 33 Ghosts and sapless shades, and the rest of their Tartarian nomenclature. 1903Daily Chron. 31 Oct. 3/2 In ten years he was friendless, his children sapless and sensitive, his wife lonely.
b. Of age, etc.
1591Shakes. 1 Hen. VI, iv. v. 4 When saplesse Age, and weake vnable limbes Should bring thy Father to his drooping Chaire. 1618G. Strode Anat. Mortal. 161 The euill dayes of sickly and saplesse old age. 1842Tennyson Love & Duty 16 The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days. 1864Lowell Fireside Trav. 318 A somewhat sapless womanhood.
c. Of immaterial things, ideas, sayings, etc.: Destitute of inner worth, insipid, trivial, pointless.
1602Marston Antonio's Rev. i. iii, Blowe hence these saplesse jestes. 1642Milton Apol. Smect. x. Wks. 1851 III. 310 Pestring their heads with the saplesse dotage of old Paris and Salamanca. 1664H. More Myst. Iniq. 292 It is to make the Prophecy guilty of a sapless and useless Tautologie. 1732Waterland Script. Vind. iii. 38 Those heartless, sapless Services, which had no Godliness in them, were not the Services which God required. 1850Marsden Early Purit. (1853) 408 The evangelical principles of the Reformation had begun to decline..into a dry and sapless orthodoxy. 1891Academy 20 Aug. 171/2 Old stories and sapless anecdotes. 1897W. P. Ker Epic & Rom. 358 The growth of a kind of dull, parasitic, sapless language over the old stocks.
Hence ˈsaplessness.
1851Ruskin Stones Ven. I. xxvii. §23 The good in it, the life of it.., are Protestantism in its heart; the rigidity and saplessness are the Romanism of it. 1866Neale Sequences & Hymns 26 Now this saplessness shall flush to green. |