2018年12月14日 星期五

Batman, lumber, lumber room, android/humanoid., droid, latitude, splinter, Dark Knight


The role of Batman demands stealth as much as strength. Ben Affleck—the tallest and bulkiest of the silver screen's caped crusaders—lumbers around action scenes
Over the years, the figure of the Dark Knight has been rising.
ECON.ST


"There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to life. The old are in life's lumber-room. But youth is the lord of life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile--like most kings."
--Lord Illingworth from "A Woman of No Importance"


Bill Moyers
"Today, in 2050, fewer and fewer people can recall what it was like to live among those leviathans. Back in my youth, we imagined that lumbering dinosaurs like Russia and China and the European Union would endure regardless of the global convulsions taking place around them. Of course, at that time, our United States still functioned as its name suggests rather than as a motley collection of regional fragments that today fight over a shrinking resource base."
"Had we been listening, we would have heard the termites. There, in the…
BILLMOYERS.COM

Ukraine's anti-government protests are lumbering into their seventh week, with no breakthrough in sight. The crowds on central Kiev's Independence Square, dubbed Maidan, have shrunk. Participants insist that that is just because of the Christmas holidays. But fatigue and a sense of futility are surely also part of the reason http://econ.st/1f9gjVv


Robots








'How to Build an Android'
By DAVID F. DUFTY
Reviewed by LAWRENCE DOWNES
An android of the author Philip K. Dick has a story of his own.


RIM Duels With Droid
Research in Motion has been fighting a defense of its BlackBerry smartphones against Apple iPhones. Now there's another competitor on the horizon: phones powered by Google's Android software.



have some latitude


splinter
ˈsplɪntə/
noun
  1. 1.
    a small, thin, sharp piece of wood, glass, or similar material broken off from a larger piece.
    "a splinter of ice"
    synonyms:slivershiverchipshardneedleMore
verb
  1. 1.
    break or cause to break into small sharp fragments.
    "the soap box splintered"
    synonyms:shatter, break into tiny pieces, break into fragments, smash, smash into smithereens, fracturesplitcrackdisintegratecrumbleMore

lumber 1

Pronunciation: /ˈlʌmbə/

verb


[no object, with adverbial of direction]
  • move in a slow, heavy, awkward way:a truck lumbered past

Origin:

late Middle English lomere, perhaps symbolic of clumsy movement


lumber room
noun
BRITISH
  1. a room where disused or bulky things are kept.


latitude
n.
    1. The angular distance north or south of the earth's equator, measured in degrees along a meridian, as on a map or globe.
    2. A region of the earth considered in relation to its distance from the equator: temperate latitudes.
  1. Astronomy. The angular distance of a celestial body north or south of the ecliptic.
  2. Freedom from normal restraints, limitations, or regulations. See synonyms at room.
  3. A range of values or conditions, especially the range of exposures over which a photographic film yields usable images.
  4. Extent; breadth.
[Middle English, geographical latitude, from Old French, width, from Latin lātitūdō, width, geographical latitude, from lātus, wide.]
latitudinal lat'i·tu'din·al (-tūd'n-əl, -tyūd'-) adj.
latitudinally lat'i·tu'di·nal·ly adv.

latitude


  音節
lat • i • tude
発音
lǽtətjùːd | -tjùːd
latitudeの変化形
latitudes (複数形)
[名]
1 [U]《地学》緯度. ⇒LONGITUDE
south latitude 35 degrees [=latitude 35 degrees south
南緯35度
the north latitude
北緯
inat] latitude 30°N
北緯30度の所に.
2 [C]((通例〜s))(緯度から見た)地方, 地帯
the cold latitudes
寒い地方
the highthe low] latitudes
高[低]緯度地帯.
3 [U]《天文》黄緯(celestial latitude);銀緯(galactic latitude).
4 [U]((形式))(行動・思想などの)自由, 許容程度, ゆとり. ⇒RANGE 2
allow one's son considerable latitude in his social life
息子にかなり自由に社交生活[交際]を許す.
5 《写真》(露出の)寛容度.
6 [C]((古))幅;範囲, 領域.
[ラテン語latitūdō(lātus幅広い+-TUDE=幅広いこと)]





android

(ăn'droid') pronunciation
adj.
Possessing human features.

n.
An automaton that is created from biological materials and resembles a human. Also called humanoid.

droid
(n.)
[shortening of android] a robot or android. Also used fig.
  • 1976 G. Lucas Adventures of Luke Starkiller (Mar. 15) № 42: Information vital to the survival of the Alliance has been placed in this droid.
  • 1977 Mountain Democrat-Times (Placerville, Cal.) (Oct. 12) № A10 (caption): Mary Ann Harrison [...] and Terry Huntington construct the armorplate for one of the droids or robots which will appear in the Discovery Players' futuristic Comedy of Errors.
  • 1982 Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald-Journal (Sept. 9) № A2/4: Erik Estrada, we now believe, after seeing him once more flashing those pearly whites, is a droid conceived by the American Society of Orthodontists.
  • 1994 M.M. Smith Only Forward № 190: Zenda explained that the delivery girls are only pseudoflesh droids.
  • 1997 M. Dowd Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald-Journal (Dec. 30) № A9/1: On one side, a bunch of Chinese terra cotta soldiers at attention in dark suits and red ties: [...] Dick Gephardt (a droid who thinks he's a maverick), Steve Forbes (a droid who is the son of a maverick) and George W. Bush (a droid who is the son of a droid.)
  • 2001 C. Asaro Ascendant Sun (2001) № 268: The locker door slid open with a quiet hum, revealing a storage room filled with sleeping machines, everything from foot-sized dust sweepers to the lumbering droids that worked the outer hull.

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