| 释义 |
chalk-line
a. (Of uncertain meaning.)
b. ‘A cord rubbed with chalk or similar material, used by artificers for laying down straight lines on the material as a guide for a cutting instrument’ (Knight Dict. Mech.).
c. A line drawn with chalk; a straight line; also transf. and fig. So, in allusive use, to walk a chalk-line: to behave with propriety; to keep undeviatingly to a course of action (U.S. colloq.).
a1450Fysshynge wyth an Angle (1883) 15 A good fyne lyne of pak thryde made yn maner of a chalke lyne. 1631Winthrop Let. 28 Mar. in Hist. New Eng. (1853) I. 458 Store of shoe-maker's thread and hobnails; chalk and chalk-line. 1771Carroll Papers in Maryland Hist. Mag. XIII. 173 Pray desier Mr Deards to send me by him two Drumlines... The Chalk lines are too weak & small. 1825Bro. Jonathan I. 55 Eight or ten young women at work; not one..stayed her needle or chalk-line for a single moment. 1855T. C. Haliburton Nature & Human Nature II. viii. 324 He returns as straight as a chalk-line or as we say the crow flies. 1859H. E. Taliaferro Fisher's River xxii. 246 You can't swindle this boy; he's walked too many chalk-lines fur that. 1887in Amer. Speech (1950) XXV. 31/2 The owners of those dives also knew they would have to close up shop and walk the chalk-line once the police took the matter in hand. 1904C. Martyn Fables of Hotel Profession 26 Everybody had to walk a Chalk Line or Get Out. 1948Time 2 Aug. 12/2 Many of whom deny that they are Communists but all of whom walk the Communist chalk line. |