| 释义 |
‖ coyote|kɔɪˈjəʊteɪ, kɔɪˈjəʊt|
Also cayeute, cayote.
[a. Mexican Sp. coyote, ad. native Mexican coyotl.]
a. Zool. The name, in Mexico and now in the United States, of the prairie- or barking-wolf (Canis latrans) of the Pacific slope of North America.
[a1628F. Hernandez Anim. Mex. Hist. (1651) 4. 1793 Pennant Hist. Quadr. (ed. 3) I. 257 Coyotl seu vulpes Indica.] 1824W. Bullock 6 Months in Mexico 119 Saw a cayjotte, or wild dog, which in size nearly approached the wolf. Ibid. 261 Mexico produces an animal which seems to connect the wolf, fox, and dog: it is called the cocyotie. Ibid. 311 Cages in which lions, tigers, wolves, cayatoo, and wild cats were confined. 1834A. Pike Sketches (Boston) 14 (Th.), The little gray collotes [sic] or prairie wolves, who are as rapacious and as noisy as their bigger brethren. 1846R. B. Sage Scenes Rocky Mts. vi. 51 The cayeute,..or medicine-wolf of the Indians. a1848G. F. Ruxton Life Far West (1849) 250 One may safely wager to see a dozen cayeutes or prairie wolves loping round. 1849E. Bryant California (ed. 5) xix. 219 A species of jackal called here the coyote, frequently approached within a few rods of us. 1850B. Taylor Eldorado (1862) viii. 77 We saw the coyotes..prowling along the margin of the slough. 1850W. R. Ryan Upper & Lower California I. 250 Our horses..were set free by the cayotes—a species of animal something between a fox and a dog. 1874Coues Birds N.W. 213 Several coyotés and a skunk. 1882J. Hawthorne Fortune's Fool i. xxii, Wildest of all beasts is the wolf, and wildest of all wolves is the coyote. 1884W. Shepherd Prairie Exper. 42 The cayote will sneak in, and have his pickings on the offal.
transf.1872S. Powers Afoot & Alone 277 Many slouching fellows..are really squatters or ‘coyotes’. 1890Chicago Advance 20 Nov., Many ‘coyotes,’ as the Mexicans call the half breed population. 1909‘O. Henry’ Roads of Destiny xvi. 266 She's married to Benton Sharp, a coyote and a murderer. 1948New Mexico Q. Rev. Summer 198 Often coyote is used as a synonym for native, and is applied to Indians and mestizos (mixed bloods), as readily as to plants.
b. attrib. and Comb., as coyote-skin, coyote-wolf; coyote diggings, small shafts sunk by miners in California, compared to the holes of the coyote; coyote getter (see quot.); coyote hole = coyote diggings (see also quot. 1906).
1850San Francisco Picayune 31 Aug. 3/1 There are Coyoto Diggings..from which, at the depth of from 17 to 25 feet, $23,000 have been taken out in two days. 1857Borthwick California 138 (Bartlett) The coyote diggings require to be very rich to pay. 1948New Mexico Q. Rev. Summer 199 In mining lingo of early California, derived from the Mexicans, ‘coyote holes’ or ‘coyote diggings’ were small drift tunnels.
1961New Scientist 13 Apr. 17/1 What the Americans bluntly call ‘coyote getters’. These small, mushroom-like appliances, fixed to a metal stake in the ground, are capable of firing a small-calibre cartridge loaded with sodium cyanide.
1851Sacramento (Calif.) Transcript 1 May, He noticed one coyote hole where the miners had sunk the shaft through a strata..of ashes. 1906N.Y. Even. Post 12 Sept. 7 Drilling coyote holes is the name applied by railroad contractors to drilling blast holes in grade running cuts through hills.
1872C. King Mountain. Sierra Nev. x. 219 Floor of pine, and Coyote-skin rug.
1850L. H. Garrard Wah-to-Yah i. 13 We were serenaded by the Coyote wolf. 1874Coues Birds N.W. 382 At nightfall the coyoté-wolves..left their hiding places.
Hence coyˈoting vbl. n. (see quot.)
1867J. A. Phillips Mining of Gold & Silver 164 This method of mining..is called coyoting, from the supposed resemblance of openings so made to the burrows of the coyote. 1881Raymond Mining Gloss., Coyoting, mining in irregular openings or burrows.
▸ U.S. slang. A person hired to assist people in illegally crossing the border from Mexico into the United States.
1923Galveston (Texas) Daily News 24 May 1/8 The characters of the ‘coyotes’ at the border are the lowest and ‘the murder of a fellow man means nothing to them’. 1943Econ. Geogr. 19 359/2 The facilitators of illegal entrance, the smugglers or ‘coyotes’, the contractors or ‘engachistas’ who provided peons with jobs over the border. 1972Los Angeles Times 17 Sept. (West Mag. section) 19/3 The coyote took us by way of Tecate in a station wagon... He let us out on the highway and we waited there..to lose the border patrol. 1980J. Morrison & C. F. Zabusky Amer. Mosaic (1982) iii. 347 The Coyote rounded up me and five other guys, and then he got in contact with a guide to take us across the border. 2002Nation (N.Y.) 8 Apr. 7/1, I made my first trip to the States at 13, a solo journey that included a few months of indentured servitude to a ‘coyote’. |