| 释义 |
ˈschool-marm orig. U.S.
Also ma'm, -ma'am.
1. A schoolmistress. Now freq. implying the conventionally prim and correct behaviour of a school-mistress. Also fig.
1831Ladies' Mag. (Boston) IV. 557 [It] obliged me to stay the longest in the houses where.. there was the most work to do, and the least time to make the school Ma'am comfortable. 1840Spirit of Times 8 Aug. 276/2 Them mirrors.., why what you got agin 'em? Cost me twenty-five dollars for the set—they be busters! open like a School⁓marm, by Jerusalem! 1841Picayune (New Orleans) 23 Feb. 2/1 What will the ‘school marm’ say when she reads the following extract of a letter? 1845S. Judd Margaret ii. viii, She is the best School⁓ma'am I ever went to. 1886Stevenson Silverado Sq. 82 The school-ma'am..walking thence to the..shanty where she taught the young ones. 1888C. M. Yonge Our New Mistress xii. 107 He said he supposed he should be a startling visitor for the school marm. 1897Gunter Susan Turnbull xi. 131 In this cheerful way the Schoolmarm runs on for over an hour, the sky looking very dark for poor Irene. 1924A. E. Housman Let. 10 Mar. (1971) 218 A French school-ma'm wrote to me wanting to translate A Shropshire Lad. 1929D. H. Lawrence Phoenix II (1968) 579 Now the funny thing is that nobody, not even the most conscientious father, ever questions the absolute rightness of these school-marms. 1951M. McLuhan Mech. Bride (1967) 69/2 Rigid with the social cocksureness of the schoolmarm. 1974Times 14 Mar. 16/1 Mrs Margaret Thatcher..had the bearing of a school ma'am, an inability to suffer fools. 1977M. Edelman Political Lang. v. 90 Schoolmarms of both sexes behave like teachers in the living room and when reacting to novels or to public affairs.
attrib.1965New Statesman 7 May 719/1 The schoolma'am tone that husbands are quick to notice. 1972Wodehouse Pearls, Girls, & Monty Bodkin xii. 181 Less than the dust beneath his chariot wheels, if he remembered the quotation correctly from his school-marm days. 1978M. Puzo Fools Die xxix. 333 Going through a bedroom, I saw a couple head to toe and I heard a woman's very schoolmarm voice say, ‘Get up here.’
2. N. Amer. slang. (See quots.)
1939H. O'Hagan Tay John 217 It was a pine. Long ago its trunk had been broken off by a slide or by the wind. Two stout branches had grown up instead, lightly tufted, to form a crotch. It was what the men there call a ‘school⁓marm tree’. 1958Scope Weekly 22 Oct. 7/1 The same situation may occur in felling a ‘schoolma'am’ which is essentially a forked tree, having two main trunks. 1965M. McIntyre Place of Quiet Waters iv. 82 The ‘schoolmarm’ turned out to be a tree that had branched out into two separate trunks.
Hence as v. trans., to treat (someone) in the manner of a school-marm, to instruct or guide patronizingly; ˈschool-marming vbl. n., the occupation of being a school-marm; ˈschool-marmish, ˈschool-marmy adjs., like or suggestive of a school-marm; ˈschool-marmishly adv., in the manner of a school-marm.
1887H. Frederic Seth's Brother's Wife 24 She was held to be too serious and ‘school-ma'am-ish’ for pleasant company. 1914Kipling Egypt of Magicians iv, in Cosmopolitan Sept. 458/1 Our trouble in America is we're being school-marmed to death. 1920‘O. Douglas’ Penny Plain xii. 124 Heaps of girls would think school-marming very dull, but Elspeth makes it into a sort of daily entertainment. 1921R. Macaulay Dangerous Ages vii. 132 The W.E.A. was a practical body... Dowdy, schoolmarmish, extension-lecturish, it might be. 1941Scrutiny X. 115 The priggishness of the book [sc. Mansfield Park] is of a special kind, not just the occasional schoolmarmy effects of Sense and Sensibility which there are only the result of artistic inexperience. 1943W. S. Churchill Second World War (1951) IV. 824 Considering..that it was the Americans..who led the world astray, it is pretty good cheek of them now coming to school-marm us into proper behaviour. 1945R. Hargraves Enemy at Gate 234 The Radicals' itch to continue ‘school-marming’ the native populations of the former Boer territories. 1959K. Vonnegut Sirens of Titan (1967) x. 174 ‘This way, please, We haven't got all day, you know,’ said Rumfoord school-marmishly. 1967Economist 15 Apr. p. xvii/1 Typical of all her encounters was her inability to find the disapproving school-marmy guide, Miss Tsu, anything but likeable. 1977N. Freeling Gadget ii. 83 Prissy, schoolmarmish, but a good schoolmarm. 1979Guardian 23 Oct. 8/1 The remarks tend to sound school-marmy and pontifical. |