【#逐字學英文國際日報】74：Muslim and "muslin", potter, putter, watering hole, glaciology research,braves the elements

Polyphonic Architecture, watercolor on muslin, 1930.

I think this is one of Klee's many paintings on handkerchiefs he used under his chin while playing the violin.

I saw this many times at the St. Louis Art Museum when I lived there about 30 years ago.

MacAyeal, who braves the elements for his glaciology research, describes McMurdo as a “spa for scientists" during a conversation with the globetrotting chef at the Coffee House, one of the station's three watering holes.




HIS chief pleasures were contemplative and patient. With watering can and clippers, he would potter in his greenhouse among hundreds of varieties of orchids. Or, standing in a river, he would wait for hours until a fish tickled his line. These were, one could say, typical historian’s amusements; very close, in rhythm and character, to the painstaking, careful accumulation of tiny pieces of fact.


watering hole is a bar, nightclub, restaurant with popular bar or other social gathering place where alcoholic drinks are sold.



The verb potter has 3 meanings:
Meaning #1: do random, unplanned work or activities or spend time idly
Synonyms: putter, mess around, tinker, monkey, monkey around, muck about, muck around
Meaning #2: work lightly
Synonym: putter

Meaning #3: move around aimlessly



muslin

IN BRIEF: n. - Plain-woven cotton fabric.
Tutor's tip: Muslim/Moslem (a person who practices Islam) women of wear robes of "muslin" (cotton cloth) in adherence to the rules of "Islam" (the religious faith to which Muslims adhere).

NORTH AND SOUTH by ELIZABETH GASKELL

(First published in serial form in _Household Words_ in 1854-1855
and in volume form in 1855.)初章起頭:

'Edith!' said Margaret, gently, 'Edith!'

But, as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep. She lay

curled up on the sofa in the back drawing-room in Harley Street,

looking very lovely in her white muslin and blue ribbons.

我們上周談過 sofa/過去 談過 drawing room

muslin呢? 這連中國的百科全書紡織篇都沒收入

Yahoo的辭典很掃興：平紋細布,(做床單、枕頭套等的)棉布[U]

日本某辭典稍好：

━━ n. モスリン, 新モス ((婦人服・カーテン用綿織物の一種)); 〔米〕 平織り綿布.

只可意會的：(from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

muslin Show phonetics
noun [U]
a very thin cotton material:
A 19th-century painting of a girl in a muslin dress hung on the wall.
The soured milk is strained through muslin to leave a soft ball of cheese ready to be shaped.

Cambric Muslin Peignoirs, 1844 1844 The sleeves of dresses are worn short and not very full, but have the addition of long under-sleeves, composed of muslin . . . . Cambric muslin peignoirs are adopted for the watering places . . . . Also, printed muslin pelisse-peignoirs with high corsages in the Amazone (riding-habit) style. — Illustrated London News Text and scanned image 2006 by Philip V. Allingham. [This image may be used without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose.]

References

"Modes Parisiennes." Illustrated London News (24 August 1844): 125.


這MUSLIN歷史悠久 還有許多印度的血淚故事...請參考
Wikipedia article "Muslin".