| 释义 |
numbers
noun- an illegal lottery based on guessing a number determined by chance each day US, 1897
- The whole area was overrun with fay gangsters who got fat on the profits they raked in from the big nightclubs and speakeasies and from the numbers racket. — Mezz Mezzrow, Really the Blues, p. 182, 1946
- You got the numbers running in here? — Mickey Spillane, I, The Jury, p. 43, 1947
- Where’d you get all that much money? You been playing the numbers? — Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, p. 324, 1947
- Numbers and slot machines and the black market paid off. — Irving Shulman, The Amboy Dukes, p. 3, 1947
- With such ancestry, it is no wonder today that “numbers” make one of the biggest businesses in Washington. — Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, Washington Confidential, p. 1, 1951
- There is still money in her. The numbers operators will tell you that. — John D. McDonald, The Neon Jungle, p. 5, 1953
- That’s the way they are. They gamble and play the numbers. — James T. Farrell, Kilroy was Here, p. 64, 1954
- God damn it, you mean to tell me you write numbers in this neighbourhood and you don’t know anything about the Moslems? — Chester Himes, The Real Cool Killers, p. 72, 1959
- All the people who had a little more nerve than average or didn’t care would take numbers. Numbers was the thing; it sort of ran the community. — Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land, p. 191, 1965
- Some of them old-time numbers men, all they got to show for their years of working is a little, dinky room[.] — Sara Harris, The Lords of Hell, p. 117, 1967
- At that time the numbers were controlled by “Jews” in Newark and they used colored men as runners. — Babs Gonzales, I Paid My Dues, p. 7, 1967
- It was an even bigger money-maker than numbers, and Jimmy was in charge. — Goodfellas, 1990
- Black people don’t play the stock market. We play the numbers. But how do we determine what numbers to play? Dreams. — Chris Rock, Rock This!, p. 95, 1997
- a telephone number US, 2002
- — Connie Eble (Editor), UNC-CH Campus Slang, p. 8, October 2002
▶ by the numbers
precisely, correctly US, 1918- Mace, let’s make this one smooth and by the numbers. Okay? — Airheads, 1994
▶ do numbers
to urinate or defecate TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, 1990- — Lise Winer, Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago, 2003
▶ take the numbers down
in horse racing, to disqualify a horse from a race and announce a new winner US- — Walter Steigleman, Horseracing, p. 278, 1947
▶ the numbers
in prison, Rule 43, which allows a prisoner to be kept apart from the main prison community for “safety of self or others” UK, 2003
Explained by former Cabinet Minister Jonathan Aitken, describing his prison experience 1999–2000, Have I Got News for You, 28 November, 2003. |