| 释义 |
seven sleepers
[tr. L. septem dormientes.]
Seven youths of Ephesus said to have hidden in a cave during the Decian persecution and to have slept there for several hundred years.
c1000ælfric Saints' Lives (1881) I. 488 Her efne on-ginð þæra eadiᵹra seofon slæpera ðrowung. c1310Leg. Saints (MS. Ashm. 43) lf. 122 b, Seue sleparis. 1387Trevisa Higden (Rolls) VII. 221 Þe array of þe sevene slepers. c1450Godstow Reg. 19 Make us to study þe seuen slepars. 1599Nashe Lenten Stuffe Wks. 1905 III. 163 The forty yeares vndermeale of the seauen sleepers. 1641Milton Prel. Episc. Wks. 1851 III. 77 The seven Sleepers, that slept..three hundred seaventy, and two years. 1781Gibbon Decl. & F. xxxiii. (1787) III. 350 The memorable fable of the Seven Sleepers. 1831Carlyle Sart. Res. i. iv, A peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven Sleepers!
b. Hence sing. seven-sleeper: allusively, one who has been asleep for years; dial. a dormouse or other hibernating (or migrating) animal. [So G. siebenschläfer.]
1671Glanvill Further Discov. M. Stubbe 30, I thought there was something in 't, that you now publish him for a Seven Sleeper, that knows not the Transactions of the Learned World. 1837Carlyle Fr. Rev. II. iii. i, But in seasons of Revolution..your miraculous Seven-sleeper might, with miracle enough, awake sooner. 1873W. P. Williams & Jones Somerset Gloss., Seven-sleeper, dormouse. 1899H. C. Hart in Phil. Soc. Trans. 13 Seven sleepers. The summer migrants supposed to sleep through the Winter. |