| 释义 |
cutlass, n.|ˈkʌtləs|
Forms: 6 coutelace, 7 coutelas, cuttelas, cuttleass, 8 cutlace, 7– cutlass. Also corruptly β. 7 cutleax, cuttleaxe, cotellax; γ. 8– cutlash.
[a. F. coutelas, augm. of couteau (coutel) knife; cognate with It. coltellaccio: Lat. type *cultellāceum. The original coutel-as, coutel-ace, has undergone many perversions in English under the influence of popular etymology, which has transformed the first part into cuttle, curtal, curtle, curt, cut, and the second into ax, axe. A later change has made cutlass into cut-lash. The forms cuttle-ax and cut-lash are included here; see curtelace, curtal-axe, curt-axe, in their alphabetical places.]
1. A short sword with a flat wide slightly curved blade, adapted more for cutting than for thrusting; now esp. the sword with which sailors are armed.
α1594Kyd Cornelio i. in Hazl. Dodsley V. 189 Arm'd with his blood-besmeared keen coute-lace. 1603Knolles Hist. Turks (1621) 1333 A Cuttelas verie curiously wrought, and inricht with stone. 1633T. James Voy. 67 The boyes with Cuttleasses, must cut boughes. 1678tr. Gaya's Arms of War 32 A kind of Cutlass, which they called Cinacis, and in English Cimeter. 1719De Foe Crusoe (1840) I. xvii. 300 A great cutlass (as the seamen call it) or sword. 1825Waterton Wand. S. Amer. i. i. 92 With a cutlass to sever the small bush-ropes. 1868Regul. & Ord. Army ⁋1299 The sailors armed with cutlasses are to proceed to the hatchways.
β [1598Florio, Coltellaccio, a curtelax or chopping knife.] 1611― A cutleax, a hanger. Also a chopping knife, a great knife. 1630J. Taylor (Water-P.) Laugh & be fat Wks. ii. 79/1 The bloudy cutthroat cuttleaxe of swaggering Mars. 1647N. Bacon Disc. Govt. Eng. i. lxxi. (1739) 194 Either a Cotellax, or such-like Weapon.
γ1704Collect. Voy. (Church.) III. 779/1 Men arm'd with Cutlashes. 1725Pope Odyss. xiv. 87 Of two, his cutlash launch'd the spouting blood. 1757Smollett Reprisal ii. viii, A good cutlash in my hand. 1867Smyth Sailor's Word-bk., Cutlas..the small-handed swords supplied to the navy, the cutlash of Jack.
2. Comb., cutlass-blade, etc.; cutlass-proof adj.; cutlass-fish, a name of a species of fish, the Silvery hair-tail, so called from its shape.
1711E. Ward Quix. I. 26 That he conceiv'd 'twas Cutlace proof. 1827O. W. Roberts Centr. Amer. 300 The Indians constantly require..moscheates, or cutlass blades. 1884G. B. Goode Nat. Hist. Aquatic Anim. 335 The name ‘Cutlass-fish’, which is current for the same species [sc. Trichiurus lepturus] in the British West Indies. 1963P. H. Greenwood Norman's Hist. Fishes (ed. 2) ii. 14 At the other extreme are fishes with long bodies, which may be..very much compressed, as in the ..Cutlass-fishes.
Hence ˈcutlass v. nonce-wd., to hew with a cutlass; ˈcutlassed ppl. a., furnished with cutlasses.
1890Harper's Mag. Feb. 413/1 He will cutlass his way through forest to the summit of peaks to find particular herbs. 1839Morn. Herald 11 July, The nucleus of a cutlassed gendarmerie. |