单词 | half ass |
释义 | half assn.1 1. A mule. Now rare.figurative in quot. 1587, with reference to the mixed Persian and Medean ancestry of Cyrus the Great (d. 529 b.c.), founder of the Achaemenid empire. ΘΚΠ the world > animals > mammals > group Ungulata (hoofed) > family Equidae (general equines) > [noun] > hybrid horse and ass > mule muleOE muletto1656 mute1838 hardtail1906 jarhead1906 skin1918 1587 Sir P. Sidney & A. Golding tr. P. de Mornay Trewnesse Christian Relig. xxvi. 473 A Hafeasse of Persia [Fr. vng Perse demi Asne] shal come and make vs his thralles. 1616 H. Ainsworth Annot. First Bk. Moses, called Genesis xxxvi. sig. Cc/1 It is knowen that mules are ingendred of the mixture of horses & asses,..as Plinie sheweth in Histor. b. 8. ch. 44. (translated commonly therfore in Greek hemi-onous, that is half-asses 1. King. 10, 25, &c.) and mules of themselves are barren. a1763 J. Byrom Misc. Poems (1773) I. 290 Poor Dogs of some Sort, and impeccant Half-Asses. 1861 Southern Lit. Messenger 32 ii. 131 Simonides, when offered a small price for an ode in honor of a victory in a mule race, contemptuously calls the successful animals half-asses. 2006 R. L. Koenig Fourth Horseman vi. 104 A mule—also known as a ‘half ass’—is a male offspring of the breeding of a donkey and a horse. 2. Any of several Asiatic wild asses, esp. the onager, Equus hemionus. ΘΠ the world > animals > mammals > group Ungulata (hoofed) > family Equidae (general equines) > [noun] > equus hemionus (Asiatic wild ass) onagera1398 mule1607 dziggetai1793 kulan1793 onagra1860 kiang1869 a1667 G. Hughes Analyt. Expos. Bk. Moses (1672) 148/2 Mules,..half asses and camels. 1855 E. Blyth Let. 8 Dec. in C. Darwin Corr. (1989) V. 521 I think I have proved that only one species is known, which is the Ghor-Khur (or ‘Horse-Ass’), hemionus (or ‘half-Ass’) hemippus (or ‘½ horse’), &c. 1891 J. W. Buel Living World 560 The Hemione, Kiang, Koulon, Half-ass, Mountain Ass, Dgiggitai, Dzigethai (Equus polyodon), has..as many names as a Spanish nobleman. 1973 Amer. Jrnl. Archaeol. 77 282/1 The wall paintings..depict a variety of hunting scenes in which the prey consists of deer, pigs, half-asses, and apparently wild cattle. 2012 B. A. Pierce Genetics (ed. 4) 592/2 African wild asses and Asian half asses are genetically distinct: they formed two completely separate groups in the evolutionary tree. This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2022). < |
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