| 释义 |
shower-bath
a. A bath in which water from above is poured in a shower upon the person. Also an apparatus for producing a bath of this kind. (Now a somewhat old-fashioned term.)
Also U.S. a form of punishment for convicts.
1803Med. Jrnl. IX. 209 A slight delirium..subsided immediately on the use of the shower bath. 1815tr. Duc de Levis' Eng. 19 Cent. I. 211 They have invented a machine..which is now very much in use; it is called a shower-bath. It is like a sentry-box. 1853A. R. Wallace Amazon & Rio Negro 30 In the morning, after a refreshing shower-bath under the mill-feeder, we shouldered our guns [etc.]. 1859F. S. Cooper Ironmongers' Catal. 3 Hand Shower Baths. 1868B. J. Lossing Hudson 303 Severe punishments are becoming more and more rare, and the terrible Shower Bath..is now seldom used. 1899Allbutt's Syst. Med. VIII. 380 Shower baths in the young, when they can be borne, are most efficacious.
b. transf. and fig. Also in fig. phr. to pull the string of the shower-bath, to cause (something concealed) to be released or made known suddenly. colloq. rare.
1824Scott St. Ronan's iv, He was soused with a deluge of water... [A threat] induced him to retreat in all haste from the repetition of this shower-bath. 1889Swinburne Study B. Jonson 25 The character of Captain Pantilius Tucca, which seems to have brought down on its creator such a boiling shower-bath or torrent of professional indignation. 1928Kipling Limits & Renewals (1932) 20 If I pull the string of the shower-bath in the papers..Castorley might go off his veray parfit gentil nut. 1937V. Woolf Years 441 Why can't he flow? Why can't he pull the string of the shower bath? Why's it all locked up, refrigerated? Because he's a priest, a mystery monger. |