| 释义 |
ˈcopy-book
[f. copy n. + book n.]
†1. A book containing copies of documents, accounts, etc. Obs.
1557Order of Hospitalls F vij, The Thresorers accompt⁓booke and the Thresorers privat Coppie-book all made in..time for the Audite. 1660Willsford Scales Comm. 206 Books usually kept in great Merchants Accounts... A Copy-book of charges at home, or Forreign accounts..with a breviate of Receipts or Acquittances.
2. a. A book in which copies are written or printed for pupils to imitate. colloq. phr. to blot one's copy-book: to commit a fault, misdemeanour or gaffe which spoils one's record.
1588Shakes. L.L.L. v. ii. 42 Faire as a text B. in a Coppie booke. 1612Brinsley Lud. Lit. iv. (1627) 30 Instead of setting of copies..let every one have a little copie booke fastened to the top of his writing booke. 1657Cocker (title) A Copy Book of Fair Writing. 1762Borlase in Phil. Trans. LII. 510 Another part of the same flash..tore and dispersed the copy-books of the scholars. 1885J. Payn Talk of Town I. 41 Words of wisdom, but..cut and dried, like proverbs from a copy-book. 1893Mod. Vere Foster's Drawing Copy-books. 1935D. L. Sayers Gaudy Night v. 85 Now, it was the College that had blotted its copy-book and had called her in as one calls in a specialist. 1958Spectator 22 Aug. 243/1 Its Founder..had badly blotted his copybook by making a speech in favour of the beheaded Earl of Essex.
b. attrib. Applied allusively to maxims of a conventional or commonplace character; more widely, to processes, action, or conduct of an exemplary kind.
1848Kingsley Saint's Tragedy ii. x, A few copy-book headings about benevolence, and industry, and independence. 1883G. Lloyd Ebb & Flow I. 4 Well provided with stores of copy-book morality. 1886J. K. Jerome Idle Thoughts (ed. 58) 28 It is easy to recite copy-book maxims against its [vanity's] sinfulness. 1908Daily Chron. 16 Jan. 8/5 ‘A fine copy-book hand to be sure’... ‘Yes; and a fine copy-book mind behind it.’ 1927Times 3 May 7/2 Twice in succession he drove Mr. Cameron to the boundary past mid-off with copybook strokes. 1947G. Greene 19 Stories 138 She had the kind of copybook psychological sense you often find in nuns. 1957Times 15 Mar. 10/4 The aircraft made a perfectly normal and very good copybook approach. |