| 释义 |
significant, a. and n.|sɪgˈnɪfɪkənt|
[ad. L. significant-, stem of significans, pres. pple. of significāre to signify.]
A. adj.
1. Full of meaning or import; highly expressive or suggestive:
a. Of words, etc.
1579E. K. Ded. Spenser's Sheph. Cal., Other some.., if they happen to here an olde word, albeit very naturall and significant, crye out streightway [etc.]. 1596Bacon Max. & Use Com. Law Pref., Because it is most familiar to the Students and..most significant to expresse conceits of law. 1620Shelton Quix. To Rdr. A 2 b, Endeuour to deliuer with significant, plaine, honest, and wel-ordred words thy Iouiall and cheerefull discourse. 1668Publisher's Pref. to Rolle's Abridgment 2 His Arguments were fitted to prove and evince,..his words few, but significant and weighty. 1769E. Bancroft Guiana 328 They are mutually entertained..with a variety of fables, which are merry, significant, and replete. 1781J. Ripley Sel. Orig. Lett. 41 Let the words English and Scotch be obliterated and lost in that more ancient and significant word Britons. 1849Macaulay Hist. Eng. vi. II. 117 He lived and died, in the significant phrase of one of his countrymen, a bad Christian, but a good Protestant. 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) I. 262 [He] breaks off with a significant hint.
b. Of things, gestures, actions, etc.
1643Trapp Comm. Gen. xli. 11 That is, no vain dreame, but significant, and deserving an interpreter. 1710Shaftesbury Charac. (1737) II. iii. ii. 393, I saw so significant a Smile on Theocles's Face, that it stopt me. 1778F. Burney Evelina lxxii, She looked at me with a significant archness that made me colour. 1831Lamb Elia ii. Ellistoniana, Gathering up his features into one significant mass of wonder, pity, and expostulatory indignation. 1858Froude Hist. Eng. III. 87 The upper house had been treated in disputes which had arisen with significant disrespect. 1874Green Short Hist. iv. §5. 204 A significant act followed these emphatic words.
c. Important, notable.
a1761Law Comf. Weary Pilgr. (1809) 19 Whoever he is..that seems..to have made himself significant in any kind of religious distinction. 1857Maurice Mor. & Met. Philos. IV. vi. §6. 209 A little man may be a very significant man. 1890Amer. Jrnl. Sci. Ser. iii. XL. 66 Arsenic acid can be evaporated..without danger of significant volatilization.
2. a. Having or conveying a meaning; signifying something.
1597Hooker Eccl. Pol. v. lxv. §5 A special dislike they have to hear that ceremonies now in use should be thought significant. 1608Topsell Serpents (1658) 626 Their voyce was not a significant voyce, but a kinde of scrietching. 1693J. Edwards Author. O. & N. Test. 103 Adam gave..proper and significant names to all creatures. 1751Harris Hermes Wks. (1841) 124 For all words are significant, or else they would not be words. 1843Mill Logic i. vii. §1 A general, which is as much as to say a significant name. 1871C. Davies Metric Syst. iii. 157 The names of the months were to be significant.
b. Conveying information about the value of a quantity; esp. in significant digit, significant figure, a digit which has its precise numerical meaning in the number containing it, and is not a zero used simply to fill a vacant place at the beginning or end.
Earlier terms are significative and signifying figure.
1690Leybourn Curs. Math. 148 To have 6 Cyphers before the significant figure of each of them. 1706W. Jones Syn. Palmar. Matheseos 22 Multiply the Significant Figures by the former Rules, and annex to the Product as many Cyphers. 1798Hutton Course Math. (1799) I. 4 The first nine are called Significant Figures, as distinguished from the cipher, which is quite insignificant of itself. 1879Thomson & Tait Nat. Phil. I. i. §431 Few measurements of any kind are correct to more than six significant figures. 1938A. E. Waugh Elem. Statistical Method ii. 8 If we are told that the distance is 1000·00 miles, there are six significant figures, since it was not necessary to put in the zeros to locate the decimal point. 1957R. A. Buckingham Numerical Methods i. 6 The numbers 0·000101 and 0·000999, both of which have the same absolute accuracy afforded by 6 decimals, and 3 significant figures, may yet have relative errors differing by an order of magnitude. 1962C. Bell et al. Fund. Arith. for Teachers xi. 192 The value 3·1416 is said to be accurate to five significant figures. Ibid. xv. 231 If a measurement is expressed as a natural number, it is not always possible to determine the number of significant digits. 1965I. Adler New Look at Arith. iv. 228 Zeros which are not significant can always be replaced by words which serve the same function. Ibid. 231 When two approximate numbers are multiplied, the product has at most as many significant digits as there are in that one of the two numbers that has the fewer significant digits. 1968Brit. Med. Bull. XXIV. 216/2 This [sc. a mathematical value] is not ‘significant’ but is printed out routinely. 1971Physics Bull. Oct. 597/3 Does any analyst doing routine tests have the right to quote his result to four figures, and pretend that the fourth is also significant?
c. Significant Form, significant form Aesthetics, a hypothetical quality, thought to be common to all great works of art, that evokes an aesthetic response and is considered to be more significant than the subject-matter.
1914C. Bell Art ii. i. 8 What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions?.. In each, lines and colours combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions. These relations and combinations..I call ‘Significant Form’; and ‘Significant Form’ is the one quality common to all works of visual art. 1914R. Fry in Nation 7 Mar. 938/2 Why must the potter who is to make a superbly beautiful pot not think only of its significant form, but think first and most passionately about its functions as a pot? 1929D. H. Lawrence Paintings 20 The critics stepped forth and abstracted his good apple into Significant Form, and henceforth Cézanne was Saved. 1959H. B. Allsopp Future of Arts xiv. 120 Some abstractionists persist in seeking what Clive Bell called ‘significant form’ which is significant without being significant of anything. I suspect that this idea is nonsense. 1965Brit. Jrnl. Aesthetics V. 113 Significant form cannot be attributed primarily to works of art on the ground that aesthetic emotion obtained from works of art is more intense than that felt in the contemplation of natural objects and pure forms.
3. Expressive or indicative of something.
1793Holcroft tr. Lavater's Physiog. viii. 48 Blue eyes are generally more significant of weakness..than brown or black. 1827G. Higgins Celtic Druids Pref. p. i, Thus words are sounds significant of ideas. 1841Helps Ess., Judgm. Other Men (1842) 37 The most important of his actions may be anything but the most significant of the man. 1867Smiles Huguenots Eng. ix. (1880) 143 One of the first acts of Louis XIV..was significant of his future policy with regard to the Huguenots.
4. quasi-adv. = significantly.
1861Lytton & Fane Tannhäuser 14 The sullen barons on each other stared Significant.
5. Statistics. Of an observed or calculated result, such as the difference between the means of two samples: having a low probability of occurrence if the null hypothesis is true; statistically significant, significant at some conventionally chosen level, freq. five per cent.
A result is said to be significant at a specified level of probability if it will be obtained or exceeded with not more than that probability when the null hypothesis is true.
1885Jrnl. R. Statistical Soc. (Jubilee Vol.) 187 In order to determine whether the observed difference between the mean stature of 2,315 criminals and the mean stature of 8,585 British adult males belonging to the general population is significant [etc.]. 1907Biometrika V. 318 Relative local differences falling beyond + 2 and - 2 may be regarded as probably significant since the number of asylums is small (22). 1925R. A. Fisher Stat. Methods Res. Workers iii. 47 Deviations exceeding twice the standard deviation are thus formally regarded as significant. 1931L. H. C. Tippett Methods Statistics iii. 48 It is conventional to regard all deviations greater than those with probabilities of 0·05 as real, or statistically significant. 1969Sci. Jrnl. Nov. 57/1 The attitude scores differed only slightly and the differences were not statistically significant. 1970Nature 25 July 376/2 Analysis of variance gave highly significant population and fertilizer effects. 1971Daily Tel. (Colour Suppl.) 29 Oct. 35/4 The result, although occurring more often than other conjunctions, did not occur often enough to be statistically significant; i.e. a statistician would have said it was a chance occurrence. 1971Nature 26 Nov. 231/2 If..fifteen experiments are performed to detect a relationship which is not present, the probability that one or more experiments will give a result significant at the 0·05 level is 0·54.
B. n. Something which expresses or conveys a meaning; a sign, symbol, indication.
1588Shakes. L.L.L. iii. i. 131 Beare this significant to the countrey Maide Iaquenetta. 1591― 1 Hen. VI, ii. iv. 26 Since you are tongue-ty'd, and so loth to speake, In dumbe significants proclayme your thoughts. 1628Feltham Resolves ii. xx. 64, I see not, but that Diuinity, put into apt significants, might rauish as well as Poetry. 1655Stanley Hist. Philos. (1687) 435/2 The second Question concerning Words, is of their Power, περὶ σηµαινόντων, of Significants. 1825Coleridge Aids Refl. (1848) I. 273 The contradictory admission, that Regeneration is the significatum, of which Baptism is the significant. 1830Wordsw. Egyptian Maid 251 In my glass significants there are Of things that may to gladness turn this weeping.
Hence sigˈnificantness, ‘significancy’ (Bailey, vol. II, 1727).
▸ significant other n. (a) Social Psychol. any person with great influence on the behaviour, self-opinion, etc., of another (esp. of a child); (b) (in later use) a person with whom someone has an established romantic or sexual relationship; a partner.
1940H. S. Sullivan in Psychiatry 3 22/1 The point is that the self is approved by *significant others, that any tendencies of the personality that are not so approved..are dissociated from personal awareness. 1977Toronto Star 21 May b5 Some skirt the problem by using such words as ‘fiancee’, ‘co-hab’, ‘inamorata’, ‘significant other’. 1987A. Maupin Significant Others xiv. 115 ‘We aren't in love now’, he said. She nodded. ‘But she's still your significant other.’ 1998Community Care 30 Apr. 33/1 Psychosocial factors, highlighted by the researcher and the families—such as the overall well-being of the child in the context of their family and extended family, significant others, school and so on—were ignored. 2002Scotsman (Electronic ed.) 7 Aug. There is no ‘significant other’ in Sinatra's life now, and her sense of loneliness is almost palpable. |