| 释义 |
▪ I. dante
Also 6 dant, 8–9 danta.
[Cf. It. dante, ‘a kind of great wilde beast in Affrike hauing a very hard skin’ (Florio 1598): see ante n.1 In the second sense app. a transferred use of the same word by the Spanish settlers in S. America.]
†1. (Also dant.) Some African quadruped: the same as ante n. q.v. Obs.
1600J. Pory tr. Leo's Africa i. 39 Buffles..and Dantes (of whose hard skins they make all their targets) range in heards up and down the woods. Ibid. ii. 340 The beast called Lant or Dant..in shape resembleth an oxe, saving that he hath smaller legs and comelier horns.
2. (Also danta.) The American tapir.
(The early accounts are often exaggerated and erroneous.)
1601Hakluyt tr. Galvano's Discov. World (1862) 206 Many heards of swine, many dantes. 1712E. Cooke Voy. S. Sea 392 This Country [Verapaz]..has abundance of Lyons, Tygers, and Dantas. 1760–72tr. Juan & Ulloa's Voy. (ed. 3) I. 362 Peru..infested with bastard lions, bears, dantas or grand bestias, (an animal of the bigness of a bullock, and very swift, its colour generally white, and its skin very much valued for making buff leather; in the middle of its head is a horn bending inward). 1796Morse Amer. Geog. I. 83 American beasts..averse to cold; such are apes, dantes, crocodiles. 1887W. T. Brigham Guatemala 370, I have seen the tracks of the danta (Tapirus Americanus) in the Chocon forests.
▪ II. dante(e, -ie, dantely
obs. ff. dainty, -ily. |