| 释义 |
squireen|skwaɪəˈriːn|
[f. squire n. + -een, Ir. Gael. -ín diminutive suffix.]
A petty squire; a small landowner or country gentleman.
The first group of quots. illustrates the orig. Irish usage.
(a)1809–12M. Edgeworth Absentee vii, Squireens are persons who, with good long leases or valuable farms, possess incomes from three to eight hundred a year, who keep a pack of hounds, take out a commission of the peace [etc.]. 1825Lockhart in Scott's Fam. Lett. (1894) II. 297 Warned by a Mr. Hutcheson (apparently a squireen) not to travel on the Drogheda road after 7 p.m. 1846J. Keegan Leg. & Poems (1907) 421, I..said I would no longer be a slave to any squireen of them all. 1883S. C. Hall Retrospect II. 314 The ‘half-sirs’ or ‘squireens’, a class peculiar to Ireland, are, I believe, unknown now.
attrib.1841Lever C. O'Malley x, There were scores of squireen gentry.
(b)1834Medwin Angler in Wales II. 264 A young lout of a squireen took yesterday, with worms,..thirty pound of trout in one rapid. 1878tr. Dumas' Three Musketeers ii, A reserve of courage, wit, and shrewdness, which often makes a Gascon squireen better off than the richest gentleman of other provinces. 1898J. A. Gibbs Cotswold Village 67 Hunting, shooting, coursing, and sometimes fishing are enjoyed by most of these squireens.
Hence squiˈreeness, a female squireen.
1872Contemp. Rev. XX. 106 Can we not endeavour to dissociate the Irish nation from those Hibernian squireens and squireenesses? |