英和和英

名詞

Mawworm (plural Mawworms)

1. (now rare) A hypocrite.
   • 1853 - "Editor's letter box", Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal, vol.1 (new series), no.49, p.1090, 9 December 1853

     That there are a sufficient number of Mawworms and Cantwells in the profession, is abundantly proved by the number of signatures obtained to the petition against opening the Crystal Palace on Sundays.

   • 1862 March 15, “Military mawwormism”, in Punch, page 103:

     So, according to this Mawworm, it is not the play itself but its being acted publicly that is so pernicious.

   • 1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter II, in Middlemarch […], volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book I, page 30:

     He felt that he had chosen the one who was in all respects the superior; and a man naturally likes to look forward to having the best. He would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it.

   • 1986 December 12, The Ottawa Citizen, page E8:

     Troublemakers come in splendid variety - from the catamaran, or quarrelsome scold, to the solopsist, or self-absorbed, self-referential me addict; from the blateroon, or compulsive chatterbox, to the mawworm, or pious, mealy-mouthed hypocrite.

関連する語

• maw-worm

参照

• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “Mawworm”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.
• OED online 3rd edition 2010