英语词汇pipsqueak的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

pipsqueak. By 1900 American hoboes were contemptuously calling young punk hoboes pip-squeaks, perhaps from the little pips on playing cards, or the pips that were small seeds, and squeak for their squeaky adolescent voices. Although these derivations are only guesses, pipsqueak did mean a little, worth- less, insignificant person in hobo talk, whence it passed into general use. The term passed into British English by 1910, and during World War I, British soldiers called a small, high- velocity German artillery shell a pipsqueak. Use of pipsqueak for the shell reinforced the earlier meaning, which became a common expression on both sides of “the big pond,” as the At- lantic still was called at the time.

词汇	pipsqueak
词源	pipsqueak. By 1900 American hoboes were contemptuously calling young punk hoboes pip-squeaks, perhaps from the little pips on playing cards, or the pips that were small seeds, and squeak for their squeaky adolescent voices. Although these derivations are only guesses, pipsqueak did mean a little, worth- less, insignificant person in hobo talk, whence it passed into general use. The term passed into British English by 1910, and during World War I, British soldiers called a small, high- velocity German artillery shell a pipsqueak. Use of pipsqueak for the shell reinforced the earlier meaning, which became a common expression on both sides of “the big pond,” as the At- lantic still was called at the time.
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