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单词 third rail
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third rail
third rail n. (a) in some systems of electric railways, an additional rail which conveys the current; cf. conductor rail n. at conductor n. 12d; an additional rail for the accommodation of trains with a wider gauge; (b) U.S. slang, used attributively to designate highly intoxicating liquor.
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1867 Commercial & Financial Chron. 29 June 808 It is throughout a double track road, and a third rail is laid..for the accommodation of the wide cars of that line.
1890 Jrnl. Franklin Inst. 129 268 In 1879, Dr. Werner Siemens constructed and operated an exhibition railway... A third rail centrally placed between the other two was used as the outgoing conductor.
1901 Westm. Gaz. 23 July 4/3 A new electric railway..built on the ‘third rail’ system, which is believed to represent a great economy as compared with the overhead system.
1905 Daily Chron. 2 Feb. 3/4 Avoiding the dangers which had been experienced with the third-rail system.
1916 Gazette-News (Asheville, N. Carolina) 7 Jan. 1/2 This recipe is for fourteen and one-half gallons of the ‘third-rail’ liquor.
1928 J. Callahan Man's Grim Justice (1929) i. 4 A shot of the third-rail booze that the Silver Alley joints peddled.
1972 Mod. Railways Sept. 331/3 Invalides is the terminus of the Western Region 750V third-rail service to Versailles Rive Gauche.
1972 Mod. Railways Sept. 332/3 From October 1, the third-rail electric trains from Paris St Lazare to St Germain will be replaced by 1500V dc RER trains.
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third rail
third rail n. U.S. colloquial (originally and chiefly Politics), an issue avoided because of its extremely controversial nature.
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1903 A. W. Small Let. in Social Forces 15 (1937) 309/2 Either I was having a bad attack of aphasia or the people at the Macmillan end had landed on some sort of third rail before they undertook to translate me.
1924 Jrnl. Philos. 21 385 If grade-pupils can be thrown into the mad vortex of human affairs..they can be also thrown into the not quite so mad reign of natural law. The third rail is hardly any more fatal or more ubiquitous than the third degree.]
1982 Newsweek (Nexis) 24 May 24 Social security..is, in the words of one Democrat, the ‘third rail of American politics’ and the one great hazard that Ronald Reagan and his Republicans had hoped to avoid touching in election year 1982.
1993 Atlantic Oct. 90/2 Unless we are willing to touch the third rail of American politics and rein in the growth in middle- and upper-class entitlements, our goal will elude us.
2000 Washington Post 24 Nov. e1 Should you purchase a computer that runs Microsoft Windows or Apple's Mac OS? This little question is the third rail of technology journalism.
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更新时间:2024/12/24 2:31:31