| 释义 |
sexless, a.|ˈsɛkslɪs|
[f. sex n. + -less.]
Without sex; lacking the characteristics of sex; asexual.
1598[see sireless]. 1714Mandeville Fab. Bees (1733) II. 99, I perfectly lothe the sight of those sexless animals [sc. eunuchs.] 1853Kingsley Hypatia II. ii. 40 Which..I must leave to be uttered only by the pure lips of sexless priests. 1865Lecky Ration. I. 374 Sometimes the soul was pourtrayed as a sexless child, rising out of the mouth of a corpse. 1903F. W. Maitland in Camb. Mod. Hist. II. xvi. 583 One reading of her character, and perhaps the best, makes her heartless and nearly sexless.
b. Nat. Hist. = neuter a. 4.
1827Blackw. Mag. XXII. 363 Like two sexless bees, from flower to flower, They wander'd unreproved. 1858Lewes Sea-Side Studies 283 The insect which issues from the egg [of the aphis] is a wingless sexless insect. 1877Darwin Forms of Fl. Introd. 6 Between the sexless, female and hermaphrodite states of these latter flowers, the finest gradations may be traced.
Hence ˈsexlessly adv., in a sexless manner; without reference to sex; ˈsexlessness, absence of sexual power or characteristics.
1864J. Manning Possessive Argument 56 In Wicliff's translation, ‘And Mary..turnid again to his own house’ Luke i. 56, the masculine possessive pronoun appears to be applied sexlessly. 1873Pater Renaissance viii. 194 Here, there is a moral sexlessness, a kind of impotence. 1891E. R. Pennell in Mary Wollstonecraft's Rights Wom. Pref. 23 The new sham sexlessness of emancipation. 1965F. Raphael Darling ix. 38 The West End was sexlessly bent on commerce. 1978Daily Tel. 6 July 13/1 He is frequently bidden to the neat little house..where Leonora flirts with him, mothers him, indeed sexlessly gobbles him up. |