英和和英

語源

sheep + biter (“one who bites”). Figurative term possibly influenced by the fable "De cane oves domini sui occidente, a quo suspensus est" in Hecatomythium by Laurentius Abstemius (later included with Aesop's Fables as "A Sheep-Biter Hang'd" — see quotations).

名詞

sheep-biter (複数形 sheep-biters)

1. (obsolete) A sheepdog that worries (chases または attacks) sheep.
   • 1592, Nashe, Thomas, Pierce Penniless:

     What curre will not bawle, & be ready to flye on a mans face, when he is set on by his master, who, if hee bee not by to encourage him, he casts his taile betwixt his legges, & steales away like a sheepe byter.

2. (obsolete, figuratively, pejorative) A contemptible person, expecially one who practices petty thefts.
   • 1573, Tusser, Thomas, Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie:

     His gait, like a sheep-biter, fleering aside

   • 1604, Dekker, Thomas; Middleton, Thomas, The Honest Whore, Act 2, Scene 1:

     A poor man has but one ewe, and this grandee sheep-biter leaves whole flocks of fat wethers, whom he may knock down, to deuour this.

   • c. 1605–1608, Shakespeare, William, Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5:

     Wouldst thou not be glad to have the niggardly, / rascally sheep-biter come by some notable / shame?

   • 1669, L'Estrange, Sir Roger, Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists‎^[1], Fable CCCXXX: A Sheep-Biter Hang'd, page 296:

     There are Political Sheep-biters as well as Pastoral; Betrayers of Publick Trusts as well as of Private; And Humane Curs that are as Wolvish as the Other.

同意語

• See Thesaurus:git and Thesaurus:thief

派生語

• sheep-biting

関連する語

• bitesheep