| 释义 |
▪ I. boots1|buːts|
[pl. of boot n.3, used as sing.]
1. A name for the servant in hotels who cleans the boots; formerly called boot-catcher and -catch.
a1798O'Keefe Fontainebleau iii. i. (L.) Your honour will remember the waiter..Your honour won't forget Jack Boots. 1836–7Dickens Sk. Boz (1850) 250/1 ‘I'm the boots as b'longs to the house.’ 1856W. Collins After Dark I. 109, I waited in the pantry till Boots had brushed the clothes.
2. (slang.) An appellation given to the youngest officer in a regiment, junior member of a club, etc.
1806Sir R. Wilson in Life (1862) I. ii. 60 My chief resistance to discipline was at mess where I could not brook the duties of Boots.
3. In various comb. (humorous or colloq.) = ‘Fellow, person’: as clumsy-boots, lazy-boots; see also sly-boots, smooth-boots.
1623Percivale Sp. Dict., Lisongero, a flatterer, a smooth boots. 1865Dickens Mut. Fr. iv. xi, You are the most creasing and tumbling Clumsy-Boots of a packer. 1832Lytton Eugene A. ii, ‘Why don't you rise, Mr. Lazyboots?’
▪ II. † boots2 Obs. or dial.
[prob. a dial. form of bouts, bolts, applied to the same plant.]
A local English name of marsh marigold (Caltha palustris) or meadow bouts.
1597Gerard Herbal cclxxx. §3. 671 Marsh Marigoldes, in Cheshire and those parts it is called Bootes. 1721Bailey, Boots, the Plant Marshmallows [An error]. |