释义 |
spot check, n. orig. U.S. Also hyphened. [f. spot n.1 + check n.] A check made on the spot; a quick check made on a random sample. Also attrib.
1933Sun (Baltimore) 15 Aug. 8/1 The spot check made on bread prices from February 15 to August 2 in sixteen representative cities. 1946N.Y. Times 30 June l–25/2 Spot checks are made but many of these slaughter houses go as long as five weeks without a check. 1947Sun (Baltimore) 3 Apr. 5/1 Troops and police made a surprise spot-check of identities in the center of Jerusalem today, hastily erecting roadblocks while they examined the papers of pedestrians and persons in trucks and automobiles. 1963Language XXXIX. 465 A survey of the vast..literature of ethology, supplemented by repeated spot checks of ongoing research projects, reveals that the study of signaling behavior in animals has, by and large, been taxonomically parochial. 1972Daily Tel. 1 Mar. 2 A spot check by the Inner London Education Authority last autumn showed that 17,000 out of 165,000 secondary school pupils were absent that day. 1978L. Deighton SS-GB iv. 37 They saw the soldiers doing the spot-check. Parked across the roadway there were three Bedford lorries. 1980Sunday Times 24 Aug. 1/1 Six French paratroopers have also been charged after spot-checks on kitbags revealed stolen electrical goods. Hence spot-ˈcheck v. trans., to subject to a spot check; also absol.; spot-ˈchecking vbl. n.
1944U. Sinclair Presidential Agent i. ii. 43 Robbie Budd lived and breathed and ate and talked aeroplanes: cat-walks and bulkhead segments, stabilizers and de-icers, sub-assemblies and spot-checking—a whole new vocabulary. 1955Times 5 July 10/7 They had decided..not to make vehicle tests compulsory and they were considering falling back on the proposal..to extend ‘spot checking’ to private vehicles. 1962Guardian 15 Jan. 3/4, I recently saw vehicles being spot-checked by the Ministry of Transport. 1962E. Snow Red China Today (1963) xxxviii. 277 We spent another forty days spot⁓checking all over the county. 1972Accountant 14 Sept. 314/1 He'd spot-checked them against actual orders. 1976C. Weston Rouse Demon (1977) xix. 90 By spot-checking instead of monitoring each complete tape, Adrian had managed to go through seven. 1980P. Moyes Angel Death i. 9 Once in a while, a Customs Officer will..do a certain amount of spot-checking on visiting private yachts. |