| 释义 |
celt2|sɛlt|
[ad. (reputed) Lat. celt-es (or ? celte, ? celtis) ‘stone-chisel, sculptor's chisel’.
The received or Clementine text of the Vulgate has in Job xix. 24 Stylo ferreo, et plumbi lamina, vel celte sculpantur in silice; but, though this is the reading of some MSS., the Codex Amiatinus and others read certe ‘surely’. Some hold certe to be the original reading (representing l῾d of the Heb., ‘for ever’ of the Eng., which is not expressed by the LXX), and take celte as an erroneous alteration of some kind; others think celte a genuine word, and suppose that it was originally a marginal gloss on stylo, which was erroneously taken into the text, and subsequently altered to certe by some one to whom it was perhaps unfamiliar. But the independent evidence for a word celtes or celte is slender. The ‘vetus inscriptio Romæ’, cited by Du Cange, is a late forgery, and celte in it is app. from the Vulgate. One of the miscellaneous undated glosses in the Glossarium C. Labbæi (Stephens' Thesaurus) is ‘Γλυϕεῖον Celte’, but this is prob. later than the Vulgate variant reading, and may be founded on it. Later also than the Vulgate is the gloss on Sidonius Epist. vii. 3 (Anecd. Oxon., Class Ser. I. v. p. xi. and 50) ‘Hoc caelum, ut hoc celte, celtis, instrumentum est quo caelatur,’ which shows the ordinary explanation of the word in the Middle Ages. Celtes occurs however in two charters given in Lacomblet Urkundenbuch für die Geschichte des Niederrheins, II. 331 (anno 1267) ‘meatum seu transitum..ex fovea capituli Coloniensis, ad educendum celtes seu fracmina lapidum per viam eandem’, and II. 382 (anno 1319) ‘quod nulli frangentes lapides seu alii quicumque proicient seu mittent celtes seu alia fragmenta in ipsam foveam’. Here the meaning is ‘pieces or fragments, ? chips’, of stone; the relation of this to the Vulgate word is uncertain. In Welsh, maen cellt, with the assumed meaning ‘flint stone’, occurs in the Triads of Wisdom (16–17th c.), in Myv. Arch. III. 246; and cellt is also said to be (or to have been) known in Breconshire, in the sense of ‘shell’ of a nut, etc.; but the status of the word is altogether obscure, and its alleged senses help the question little. In any case, celtes, whatever its orgin and character, was assumed, on the authority of the Vulgate, to be a genuine word; and, as such, the term was admitted into the technical vocabulary of Archæology, about 1700. ‘In Beger's Thesaurus Brandenburgicus 1696 a bronze celt adapted for insertion in its haft is described under the name of celtes’ (Ll. Jewitt Half-hours among Eng. Antiq. 1877, p. 32). Apparently the general adoption of the word by antiquaries was influenced by a fancied etymological connexion with Celt1: thus the Grand Dict. of Larousse explains it as ‘sorte de hache gauloise en bronze’.]
An implement with chisel-shaped edge, of bronze or stone (but sometimes of iron), found among the remains of prehistoric man. It appears to have served for a variety of purposes, as a hoe, chisel, or axe, and perhaps as a weapon of war. Some specimens in bronze are flat, others flanged, others winged, others have sockets to receive a handle, and one, or two, ear-like ansæ or loops.
1715A. Pennecuik Descr. Tweeddale 203 note (Jam.), Supposed to be the ancient weapon called the stone celt. 1732–69De Foe Tour Gt. Brit. I. 309 In the great long Barrow, farthest North from Stone-henge..was found one of those Brass Instruments called Celts. 1796Pearson in Phil. Trans. LXXXVI. 428 Most probably celts were originally chopping tools. 1830Lyell Princ. Geol. (1875) I. i. i. 3 The..stone hatchets, called Celts, found in our peat bogs. 1851D. Wilson Preh. Ann. (1863) I. ii. iv. 383 The Bronze celt..is found in various sizes and degrees of ornament. 1866Laing Preh. Rem. Caithn. 40 The hammers or celts are almost all natural stones from the beach. 1878W. H. Dall Later Preh. Man 8 A skeleton interred in the earth, together with the remains of a small iron celt.
b. Comb., as celt-maker.
1865Lubbock Preh. Times 17 The celt-makers never cast their axes as we do ours, with a transverse hole, through which the handle might pass. |