nondescriptとは 意味・読み方・使い方

語源

From non- +‎ descript.

発音

• (英国発音) IPA^(key): /ˈnɒndɪskɹɪpt/
• (米国発音) IPA^(key): /nɑndəsˈkɹɪpt/

形容詞

nondescript (comparative more nondescript, superlative most nondescript)

1. (biology, now rare) Not described (in the academic literature).

   Synonyms: undescribed, unidentified

2. Without distinguishing qualities or characteristics.

   Synonyms: (一般的ではない用法) undescript, unexceptional

   He drove a nondescript silver sedan.

   • 1895, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Second Cabin”, in The Amateur Emigrant:

     There was, besides, a Scots mason, known from his favourite dish as "Irish Stew," three or four nondescript Scots, a fine young Irishman, O'Reilly, and a pair of young men who deserve a special word of condemnation.

   • 1950 April, R. A. H. Weight, “They Passed by My Window”, in Railway Magazine, pages 258-259:

     In 1919, demobilisation specials from Purfleet, Essex, to the North, usually made up of nondescript, almost paintless or grey stock which had seen long wartime service, chalked with slogans, were worked through by way of Bromley and the North London line […] .

   • 2017 February 23, Katie Rife, “The Girl With All The Gifts tries to put a fresh spin on overripe zombie clichés”, in The Onion AV Club‎^[1]:

     We open in a grimy, fluorescent-lit military base somewhere in rural England, where the girl from the poster, Melanie (Sennia Nanua), is the star student in a class full of children who are wheeled into school—or at least, the nondescript concrete room that serves as a school—with their arms, legs, and foreheads bound to their wheelchairs by leather straps.

   • 2021 December 29, Stephen Roberts, “Stories and facts behind railway plaques: Chippenham (1841)”, in RAIL, number 947, page 57:

     The plaque, of light-blue hue (a tone favoured by the Wiltshire market town's civic society), can be found on a nondescript structure just outside the station.

名詞

nondescript (複数形 nondescripts)

1. (chiefly biology) A species or other type of creature that has not been previously described or identified. [from 17th c.]
   • 1791, Thomas Paine, Rights of Man:

     Imagination has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a chimerical non-descript.

2. An undistinguished, unexceptional person or thing. [from 18th c.]
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 6, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts.

3. (UK) An unmarked police car.
   • 1970, Peter Laurie, Scotland Yard: a study of the Metropolitan Police, page 118:

     By a nice British compromise, the enforcement car — visible just then as a white spot on the television screen — has nothing externally to show its police affiliation, but unlike the CID's nondescripts, carries two large policemen in uniform.

アナグラム

• nonscripted

名詞

non-descript (複数形 non-descripts)

1. Alternative form of nondescript.
   • 1790, John White, “Advertisement”, in Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales with Sixty-five Plates of Non-descript Animals, Birds, Lizards, Serpents, Curious Cones of Trees and Other Natural Productions, London: […] J. Debrett, […], page 84:

     IT becomes the duty of the Editor, as much as it is his inclination, to return his public and grateful acknowledgments to the Gentlemen, through whoſe abilities and liberal communications, in the province of Natural Hiſtory, he has been enabled to ſurmount thoſe difficulties that neceſſarily attended the deſcription of ſo great a variety of animals, preſented for the firſt time to the obſervation of the Naturaliſt, and conſequently in the claſs of Non-deſcripts.

   • 1791, Thomas Paine, Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke’s Attack on the French Revolution, London: […] J. S. Jordan, […], →OCLC, pages 67–68:

     Imagination has given figure and character to centaurs, ſatyrs, and down to all the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a chimerical non-deſcript.

   • 1795, [Susanna] Rowson, “Preface”, in Trials of the Human Heart, a Novel, volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: […] for the Author, by Wrigley & Berriman, […], page xiii:

     It is with reluctance I find myſelf obliged to remark, that the literary world is infeſted with a kind of loathſome reptile, of the claſs of non-deſcripts, for it cannot be ranked with propriety amongſt either authors or critics, not poſſeſſing the qualifications neceſſary to form either, and being in itſelf remarkable for nothing but its noxious qualities: its only aim is to prevent the ſucceſs of any work of genius; and ſwelling with envy, ſhould the ſmalleſt part of public favour, be conferred on another, ſpits out its malignant poiſon, in ſcurrility and detraction.

   • 1851 March 15, Spirit of the Times: A Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature and the Stage, volume XXI, number 4, New York, N.Y., page 38, column 2:

     A drunken poet appears upon the stage in front of the ruins of the St. Charles, and his imagination summons up the various allegorical spectres and spectacles—angels, dancing girls, dandies, musicians, and odd non-descripts of the animal world, which take bodily shapes upon the stage.

   • 2002, Robert L. Slavens, Ply Not Thy Fortune From My Malady: A Doctor’s Opinion About American Healthcare, Morris Publishing, →ISBN, page 45:

     We are so effectively able to live on an island of isolation—television, computers and the automobile separate us from each other. The indifference that falls out from this separation makes us immune to any sense of guilt that might occur as a result of forcing the penalty of payment on our neighbors. In fact, they are no longer neighbors in our minds, just other non-descripts who must be punished when they do us wrong.

   • 2011, Freda, Malcolm & Brian Heywood, In a League of Their Own: Cricket & Leisure in 20th Century Todmorden, Upper Calder Valley Publications, →ISBN, page 123:

     This was the last flowering of a form of cricket which had been popular long before the war, attracting many spectators and creating fierce rivalry, especially where a team with one or two regular league players was beaten by a team of non-descripts.