| 释义 |
selection|sɪˈlɛkʃən|
[ad. L. sēlectiōn-em, n. of action f. sēligĕre: see select v.]
1. The action of selecting or choosing out; also the fact of being selected or chosen.
1646–58Sir T. Browne Pseud. Ep. iii. xxv. (ed. 4) 211 While we single out several dishes, and reject others, the selection seems but arbitrary, or upon opinion. 1744Harris Three Treat. Wks. (1841) 83 It should seem, then,..that the essence of right conduct lay in selection and rejection. 1825Coleridge Aids Refl. (1843) I. 187 There is [in the instinctive action of insects] selection, but not choice; volition rather than will. 1890A. J. Bell Why does Man exist? xi. 75 Can selection of food-materials by plants be accounted for without consciousness? 1893J. A. Hodges Elem. Photogr. (1907) 113 The careful selection of the point of view.
2. a. A particular choice; choice of a particular individual or individuals; concr. the († person or) thing selected; a number of selected († persons or) things. Often, a passage or a number of extracts from one or more literary works; a musical passage or a sequence of selected musical extracts.
1805W. Cooke Foote II. 7 His company generally consisted of men of rank and fashion, some literary characters, and a selection from the stage. 1828B. Oakley (title) Selections from Shakspeare. 1837Dickens Pickw. xxxvii, At this, the assembled selections laughed very heartily. 1857W. Acton Prostitution vii. 103 [We]..enjoyed in a grim kind of way the ‘selection’ from some favourite opera. 1865(title) A Selection from the Works of Alfred Tennyson. 1878C. Stanford Symb. Christ i. 27 They make a selection from His laws, choosing some and rejecting others. 1887Traill in Contemp. Rev. Oct. 479 The English public..does not pretend to care for poetry except in ‘selections’. 1899Observer 1 Oct. 5/3 The ‘selection’, which always begins the second part of the concert, was the familiar fantasia on English airs. 1929Radio Times 8 Nov. 411/1 Selection of Songs by T. C. Sterndale Bennett. 1945S. Hughes in C. Madge Pilot Papers I. 94 The brass band repertoire..consists principally of marches..waltzes and light opera selections. 1968M. Ball (title) Selections from the classics for chime bar music making.
b. Sporting. The horse or horses selected by a racing prophet as likely to win or obtain a place.
1901Scotsman 12 Mar. 5/2 In 1897..the sporting selections of a highly respectable newspaper..the individual race prophecies numbered 1739.
c. in pl. ‘In tobacco-culture, the choicest leaves and the highest grades of tobacco’ (Funk's Stand. Dict. 1895).
3. a. Applied spec. to the action of a breeder in selecting individuals from which to breed, in order to obtain some desired quality or characteristic in the descendants. b. Hence in Biol., used by C. Darwin (Origin of Species, 1859) and subsequent writers, to designate any process, whether artificial or natural, which brings about a particular modification of an animal or vegetable type by ensuring that in successive generations the individuals that reproduce their kind shall be those that have transmissible variations from the ancestral form in the direction of this modification.
natural selection: the operation of natural causes by which those individuals of a species that are best adapted to the environment tend to be preserved and to transmit their characters, while those less adapted die out, so that in the course of generations the degree of adaptation to the environment tends progressively to increase. sexual selection: that kind of natural selection which arises through the preference by one sex of those individuals of the other sex that have some special characteristic, in consequence of which that characteristic tends to be transmitted, with progressive enhancement in succeeding generations.
a.1837Youatt Sheep iii. 60 That which enables the agriculturist not only to modify the character of his flock, but to change it altogether..—the principle of selection. 1844H. D. Richardson Pigs 51 In the selection of a boar and sow for breeding, much more attention and consideration are necessary.
b.1857Darwin Lett. (1887) II. 123 There is such an unerring power at work, or Natural Selection (the title of my book), which selects exclusively for the good of each organic being. 1859― Orig. Species iv. 81 This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. Ibid. iv. 88 And this leads me to say a few words on what I call Sexual Selection. This depends, not on a struggle for existence, but on a struggle between the males for the possession of the females; the result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring. 1868― Var. Anim. & Plants Domest. (1875) II. 177 The principle of selection may be conveniently divided into three kinds. Methodical selection..Unconscious selection..Natural selection. 1878Tait & Stewart Unseen Universe v. §170 Thus the struggle for existence bears to natural selection the same relation as man bears to artificial selection. 1882Vines tr. Sachs' Bot. 929 The struggle for existence acts therefore in a certain sense similarly to the selection of the breeder; as the breeder developes only that which is suited to his own purposes... Thus,..through what may be termed metaphorically Natural Selection by means of the struggle for existence,—forms are produced which are as well or even better adapted for the purpose of self-preservation than cultivated plants are for the purpose of man.
transf.1860O. W. Holmes Elsie V. xix, That is the way..physiological democracy is enabled to fight against the principle of selection which would disinherit all the weaker children. 1869Fortn. Rev. June 644 By a sort of critical selection, the cultivated class improves the breed of literary egotists; it suppresses all but the best specimens.
4. Austral.
a. = free-selection. Also attrib.
1866Rogerson Poems 22 Heathcote never was so gay As on the land selection day. 1880Victorian Rev. I. 628 It is surprising that the selectors themselves have not prayed the Government to stop selection for some years at least.
b. A piece of land selected or taken up through ‘free-selection’.
1875Melbourne Spect. 21 Aug. 189/3 Jumping selections..is said to be very common now in the Winmera district. 1881Mrs. C. Praed Policy & P. I. 50 He has a selection down the Koorong.
5. a. attrib. as (sense 1) selection board, selection committee, selection panel, selection test; selection pressure Biol., differential mortality or fertility such as tends to make a population adapt genetically; selection restriction Linguistics, a syntactic or semantic restraint on the concurrence of dependent lexical items; selection rule Physics, any of a number of rules which describe, within certain limits, which particular quantum transitions can occur in an atom, molecule, etc., and which are ‘forbidden’; selection value, value (of a variation or peculiarity) as affecting natural selection.
1940R. S. Lambert Ariel & all his Quality xi. 302 Methods of appointing new staff..by advertising vacancies and setting up selection boards. 1976L. Deighton Twinkle, twinkle, Little Spy xvi. 162 Douglas was sent to a swanky private school..but was still unable to pass the U.S. Army officers' selection board.
1909Daily Graphic 26 July 6/3 It is safe to believe that the Selection Committee has done its best, the players will do their best, Australia will do its best. 1932Q. D. Leavis Fiction & Reading Public i. ii. 22 The Book Society{ddd}was started..in 1927..with a Selection Committee of five novelists and journalists. 1978J. Pudney Thank Goodness for Cake 97, I was short-listed and looked over by a selection committee.
1974BP Shield Internat. Oct. 8/1 Conference members..were screened by a selection panel.
1944J. S. Huxley On living in Revolution 79 [In the Australian area] there is less scope for variation,..so that general selection-pressure never became so intense. 1977J. L. Harper Population Biol. of Plants ii. 46 Groups of species caught in different evolutionary pathways may face the same selective forces, e.g. a selection pressure to disperse.
1964Katz & Postal Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions ii. 15 Each reading in the dictionary entry for a lexical item must contain a selection restriction, i.e., a formally expressed necessary and sufficient condition for that reading to combine with others. 1976Word 1971 XXVII. 133 One reason is that the selection restrictions of the verb throw require an animate subject.
1931H. P. Robertson tr. H. Weyl's Theory of Groups & Quantum Mech. iv. 198 The selection rule for the inner quantum number j is obtained in an analogous manner. 1977I. M. Campbell Energy & Atmosphere viii. 218 The origin of the selection rules for radiative transitions between electronically excited states and the ground state lies in fundamental quantum theory.
1935Discovery Jan. 17/2 The most anxious moment in the design of a selection test now comes. If we take a group of workers..can the new test sort them into their correct relative order? 1967Wills & Yearsley Handbk. Managem. Technol. xi. 202 Are we right to ignore selection tests?
1892Romanes Darwin & After I. 275 We cannot speak of adaptations as due to natural selection, without thereby affirming that they present what I have elsewhere termed a ‘selection value’.
b. Forestry. Used attrib. with reference to a system of forest management under which there is a continuing selection of individual trees for felling over the whole area, on the basis of their saleability.
1891W. Schlich Man. Forestry II. 133 The term selection system was introduced into India; it is perhaps not an ideal term, since a certain amount of selection is practised in all systems; it has been retained, as none better is at present available. 1911H. S. Graves Princ. handling Woodlands ii. 72 The development of the individual trees in a selection stand is somewhat different than in an even-aged stand. 1935N. C. Brown Gen. Introd. Forestry U.S. viii. 105 The selection method is likely to be best adapted to general silvicultural and economic conditions found in this country. 1950Q. Jrnl. Forestry XLIV. 15 Rabbits are probably the greatest drawback to the selection system or any irregular system in this country. 1979O. Kuthanova tr. Jenik's Pict. Encycl. Forests 451 (caption) Diagram showing selection felling in a high forest; four stages of forest with alternating generations of trees in man-made clearings. |