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词汇 waif
释义

Definition of waif in English:

waif

noun weɪfweɪf
  • 1A homeless, neglected, or abandoned person, especially a child.

    she is foster mother to various waifs and strays

    她收养了多个弃儿和流浪儿。

    Example sentencesExamples
    • Artful Dodgers are on every street corner waiting for poor orphaned waifs.
    • It was hard to believe this modest little place was charity shop Barnardo's, once associated with sale of second-hand items to raise funds for waifs and orphans.
    • Experts estimate that China has at least 150,000 waifs between the ages of 10 and 15 wandering its streets.
    • Tavistock Street already has a number of problems which seem to be exacerbated by a policy of housing the waifs and strays of the borough nearby.
    • I used to pick up all sorts of collarless waifs and strays from our housing estate in Ireland.
    • Coogan essentially reprises the role that made him famous, only this time he's an immigrant waif orphaned during his sea passage from the Old World.
    • With the exception of a saintly matron, called Mama Sunshine, who collects waifs and strays, grown-ups are not to be trusted.
    • Your willingness to help others is admirable, but unless you're a registered charity you'd best contain your habit of taking in waifs and offering them a hot bath and food.
    • With the spread of Sunday schools and increasing literacy a huge market for religious fiction was created, stories of street waifs by such writers as ‘Hesba Stretton’ being particularly popular.
    • Artie enters with a lost teen waif named Donna whom he found in an elevator.
    • Winter for Kiev's waifs and strays is a cold, bleak daily battle for survival.
    • At his St Thomas's gym, on the run-down hill on Wincobank, world-class boxers spar among a small band of waifs and strays aged from five to 50.
    • Dutton's Epoch label seems to be turning into a home for British music's foundlings, but Cyril Scott is one of the more deserving of those waifs and strays.
    • This is the simplified world of a child's memories - although Joe is no naïve waif - and it is largely remembered with fondness.
    • Like Lessing during the 1960s, Frances is a ‘housemother’, who fills her large home with an eclectic mixture of waifs, strays and scroungers.
    • The youngsters have raised £1,800 towards the almost completed first safe house for Ukrainian waifs and strays, paid for and equipped by Kendal-based charity New Beginnings.
    • The labor movement used the dominant culture's gendered representations of fallen women, tramps and street waifs to assert their demands for a living wage and an eight hour day.
    • Mrs Tarpen had no problem with that idea, and she rather liked the idea of helping a homeless waif off the streets.
    • Merlin, Jo and Ollie are siblings; waifs and strays with an absent father and a hopeless mother who locks them out of the house for long periods.
    • It will also act as a staging post for medical care and feeding for some of Kiev's 10,000 homeless waifs and strays.
    Synonyms
    ragamuffin, street urchin, guttersnipe
    abandoned infant, foundling, orphan, stray, outcast
    archaic gamin, mudlark
    1. 1.1 A small, thin person who appears to be undernourished and neglected.
      a little shop presided over by a Gothic waif in purple eyeshadow and lipstick
      Example sentencesExamples
      • Zorina was no ethereal waif; she gave sturdy, supple body to the classical dance.
      • Jay, dear, go get her luggage, this little waif who was obviously underfed in London, shouldn't have to carry her own.
      • Once a tiny, flitting waif, she had become a graceful, full-figured woman.
      • Those movies wanted us to see her as a Pre-Raphaelite figure but she verged on a Walter Keane waif.
      • But Nicole claims that she's always been a tiny bony little waif, and during season one of The Simple Life, she was going through a rare chubby period.
      • Who thinks a white blond, blue-eyed, slender waif can commit murder?
      • Britney has bridged the gap between knowing teenage waif and sex bomb.
      • There were more of those girls than there were little waif heroin-looking chicks.
      • In January 1945, at 13, she emerged from a Nazi labor camp in Czestochowa, Poland, a waif on the verge of death.
      • British waif Kate Moss was to follow, helping to launch his unisex perfume CK one.
      • The waifs are back… those small, thin people are ruling the media.
      • Carilya was odd, a slender frail-looking girl, though no longer the skinny waif she had been.
      • A dark Goth pop spectacle, should one exist, would work best with a pale, dark-haired waif, who moves in a dreamy ethereal manner - a buxom earth mother cast in this role would simply spoil the whole look.
      • Robby's wife was a beautiful yet petite waif of a woman with straight, jet black hair.
      • Lauren had changed from being a chatty, chubby, healthy child to become a withdrawn, frightened waif with ‘stick-insect thin’ arms.
      • In an era of waifs and buffed bodies, the full-figured beauties in Rubens's works have a graceful nobility.
      • You appreciate someone with a few extra pounds (as opposed to, say, the starving waifs you presented me with?)
      • It's what the cool waif girls would throw on effortlessly but still look amazing.
      • I am not some anaemic little waif who looks like she'll blow away in a strong wind.

Derivatives

  • waifish

  • adjective
    • Curvaceous, decidedly feminine and womanly I would say, rather than waifish and childlike.
      Example sentencesExamples
      • Ben Drawing shows a waifish, pale boy with scruffy black hair and tattoos lounging in black bathing briefs on a brightly colored beach towel.
      • But as an additional twist, he picks up waifish Russian prostitute Anne, whose seeming helplessness belies a shrewd sense of self-preservation at any cost.
      • The 28-year-old model, whose waifish good looks have graced the covers of countless magazines, delivered her first child early last Sunday.
      • Audrey Hepburn may look very good in those stylish designer clothes, if you're into her starving waifish look, but she isn't a very good actress.
  • waiflike

  • adjectiveˈweɪflʌɪkˈweɪflaɪk
    • Even stars such as Geri Halliwell and Kate Winslet have succumbed to pressure to swap their famous curves for more waiflike physiques.
      Example sentencesExamples
      • It may have been her waiflike quality that made one want to serve her, but there was also something imperious in her personality that blurred the line between wishes and commands.
      • I did not see these super-thin, waiflike girls that I see today.
      • This is the realm of iconic Japanese cartoons in which doe-eyed characters with waiflike faces have fantastic adventures that inspire devotion in millions of fans.
      • What he has tried to sell the public is the waiflike innocence of his Peter Pan persona.

Origin

Late Middle English: from an Anglo-Norman French variant of Old Northern French gaif, probably of Scandinavian origin. Early use was often in waif and stray, as a legal term denoting a piece of property found and, if unclaimed, falling to the lord of the manor.

  • In the 1990s a new look became popular for fashion models—the very thin, childlike girls were called waifs or superwaifs. The word waif can be traced back to medieval law, where it was a term for a piece of property found without an owner, which belonged to the lord of the manor if it was not claimed— waifs and strays was an overall term for lost property and stray animals. It was not until the 1600s that waif first referred to a homeless or neglected person. The word is from Old French gaif, and before that was probably Scandinavian.

Rhymes

chafe, Rafe, safe, vouchsafe

Definition of waif in US English:

waif

nounwāfweɪf
  • 1A homeless, neglected, or abandoned person, especially a child.

    she is foster mother to various waifs and strays

    她收养了多个弃儿和流浪儿。

    Example sentencesExamples
    • Winter for Kiev's waifs and strays is a cold, bleak daily battle for survival.
    • It will also act as a staging post for medical care and feeding for some of Kiev's 10,000 homeless waifs and strays.
    • Artful Dodgers are on every street corner waiting for poor orphaned waifs.
    • Merlin, Jo and Ollie are siblings; waifs and strays with an absent father and a hopeless mother who locks them out of the house for long periods.
    • Your willingness to help others is admirable, but unless you're a registered charity you'd best contain your habit of taking in waifs and offering them a hot bath and food.
    • It was hard to believe this modest little place was charity shop Barnardo's, once associated with sale of second-hand items to raise funds for waifs and orphans.
    • Mrs Tarpen had no problem with that idea, and she rather liked the idea of helping a homeless waif off the streets.
    • At his St Thomas's gym, on the run-down hill on Wincobank, world-class boxers spar among a small band of waifs and strays aged from five to 50.
    • Tavistock Street already has a number of problems which seem to be exacerbated by a policy of housing the waifs and strays of the borough nearby.
    • Artie enters with a lost teen waif named Donna whom he found in an elevator.
    • The labor movement used the dominant culture's gendered representations of fallen women, tramps and street waifs to assert their demands for a living wage and an eight hour day.
    • With the exception of a saintly matron, called Mama Sunshine, who collects waifs and strays, grown-ups are not to be trusted.
    • Experts estimate that China has at least 150,000 waifs between the ages of 10 and 15 wandering its streets.
    • The youngsters have raised £1,800 towards the almost completed first safe house for Ukrainian waifs and strays, paid for and equipped by Kendal-based charity New Beginnings.
    • Like Lessing during the 1960s, Frances is a ‘housemother’, who fills her large home with an eclectic mixture of waifs, strays and scroungers.
    • With the spread of Sunday schools and increasing literacy a huge market for religious fiction was created, stories of street waifs by such writers as ‘Hesba Stretton’ being particularly popular.
    • I used to pick up all sorts of collarless waifs and strays from our housing estate in Ireland.
    • Coogan essentially reprises the role that made him famous, only this time he's an immigrant waif orphaned during his sea passage from the Old World.
    • Dutton's Epoch label seems to be turning into a home for British music's foundlings, but Cyril Scott is one of the more deserving of those waifs and strays.
    • This is the simplified world of a child's memories - although Joe is no naïve waif - and it is largely remembered with fondness.
    Synonyms
    ragamuffin, street urchin, guttersnipe
    1. 1.1 A small, thin person who appears to be undernourished and neglected.
      Example sentencesExamples
      • Robby's wife was a beautiful yet petite waif of a woman with straight, jet black hair.
      • Once a tiny, flitting waif, she had become a graceful, full-figured woman.
      • In an era of waifs and buffed bodies, the full-figured beauties in Rubens's works have a graceful nobility.
      • The waifs are back… those small, thin people are ruling the media.
      • Britney has bridged the gap between knowing teenage waif and sex bomb.
      • Zorina was no ethereal waif; she gave sturdy, supple body to the classical dance.
      • But Nicole claims that she's always been a tiny bony little waif, and during season one of The Simple Life, she was going through a rare chubby period.
      • Carilya was odd, a slender frail-looking girl, though no longer the skinny waif she had been.
      • There were more of those girls than there were little waif heroin-looking chicks.
      • You appreciate someone with a few extra pounds (as opposed to, say, the starving waifs you presented me with?)
      • Jay, dear, go get her luggage, this little waif who was obviously underfed in London, shouldn't have to carry her own.
      • Who thinks a white blond, blue-eyed, slender waif can commit murder?
      • I am not some anaemic little waif who looks like she'll blow away in a strong wind.
      • It's what the cool waif girls would throw on effortlessly but still look amazing.
      • Those movies wanted us to see her as a Pre-Raphaelite figure but she verged on a Walter Keane waif.
      • Lauren had changed from being a chatty, chubby, healthy child to become a withdrawn, frightened waif with ‘stick-insect thin’ arms.
      • British waif Kate Moss was to follow, helping to launch his unisex perfume CK one.
      • A dark Goth pop spectacle, should one exist, would work best with a pale, dark-haired waif, who moves in a dreamy ethereal manner - a buxom earth mother cast in this role would simply spoil the whole look.
      • In January 1945, at 13, she emerged from a Nazi labor camp in Czestochowa, Poland, a waif on the verge of death.

Origin

Late Middle English: from an Anglo-Norman French variant of Old Northern French gaif, probably of Scandinavian origin. Early use was often in waif and stray, as a legal term denoting a piece of property found and, if unclaimed, falling to the lord of the manor.

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