Читать книгу Bees Knees and Barmy Armies - Origins of the Words and Phrases we Use Every Day - Harry Oliver - Страница 18

The image of a bull creating havoc in a china shop is a vivid one, and this phrase perfectly describes a situation where someone goes about solving a delicate problem in too rough a manner. It has not been suggested that the phrase can be traced to a real bull in a real china shop, but we can ascertain that the phrase does not date back further than the eighteenth century, for porcelain known as china was not made before then. It first appeared in print in 1834, in Frederick Marryat’s novel Jacob Faithful. That is not to say that the British writer, who was a pal of Charles Dickens, invented the phrase. Its ultimate origin is a mystery, but one theory is that it may have been inspired by Greek writer Aesop’s fable about an ass in a potter’s shop. Needless to say, the animal knocks over a few fragile items.