• n. 地图集；寰椎

泰坦巨人Atlas，与宙斯争位战败，被罚手撑天柱，因出现在早期的地图册上而得名。词源同词根tol, 举起，见extol, 抬举，赞美。

atlas

atlas: [16] In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan who as a punishment for rebelling against the gods was forced to carry the heavens on his shoulders. Hence when the term was first used in English it was applied to a ‘supporter’: ‘I dare commend him to all that know him, as the Atlas of Poetry’, Thomas Nashe on Robert Greene’s Menaphon 1589. In the 16th century it was common to include a picture of Atlas with his onerous burden as a frontispiece in books of maps, and from this arose the habit of referring to such books as atlases (the application is sometimes said to have arisen specifically from such a book produced in the late 16th century by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512–94), published in England in 1636 under the title Atlas).

Atlas also gave his name to the Atlantic ocean. In ancient myth, the heavens were said to be supported on a high mountain in northwestern Africa, represented as, and now named after, the Titan Atlas. In its Greek adjectival form Atlantikós (later Latin Atlanticus) it was applied to the seas immediately to the west of Africa, and gradually to the rest of the ocean as it came within the boundaries of the known world.
=> atlantic

Atlas

1580s, Titan, son of Iapetus and Clymene, supposed to uphold the pillars of heaven, which was his punishment for being the war leader of the Titans in the struggle with the Olympian gods. The name in Greek perhaps means "The Bearer (of the Heavens)," from a-, copulative prefix, + stem of tlenai "to bear," from PIE root *tele- "to lift, support, weigh." Mount Atlas, in Mauritania, was important in Greek cosmology as a support of the heavens.

atlas (n.)

"collection of maps in a volume," 1636, first in reference to the English translation of "Atlas, sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi" (1585) by Flemish geographer Gerhardus Mercator (1512-1594), who might have been the first to use this word in this way. A picture of the Titan Atlas holding up the world appeared on the frontispiece of this and other early map collections.

1. a road atlas of Europe

欧洲交通地图册

来自《权威词典》

2. The atlas contains forty maps, including three of Great Britain.

这本地图集有40幅地图, 其中包括3幅英国地图.

来自《简明英汉词典》

3. He reached down the atlas from the top shelf.

他从书架顶层取下地图集.

来自《简明英汉词典》

4. That book on the desk is an atlas.

桌上的那本书是地图册.

来自《简明英汉词典》

5. ATLAS is an of excellent general - purpose language for system testing, provided with hardware - independent characteristics.

Atlas语言是一种非常出色的通用测试系统语言, 具有设备无关性.

来自互联网