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(a) blessing in disguise Meaning ‘a misfortune that turns out to be beneficial’, this phrase has been in existence since the early 18th century. A perfect example is provided by the noted exchange between Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine. Attempting to console him after his defeat in the 1945 General Election, she said: ‘It may well be a blessing in disguise.’ To which he replied: ‘At the moment, it seems quite effectively disguised.’ Despite this comment, Churchill seems to have come round to something like his wife’s point of view. On 5 September 1945, he wrote to her from an Italian holiday: ‘This is the first time for very many years that I have been completely out of the world…Others having to face the hideous problems of the aftermath…It may all indeed be “a blessing in disguise”.’

blind See LIKE TAKING MONEY.

(the) blind leading the blind Ineffectual leadership. ‘They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch’ (Matthew 15:4).

(a) blind man on a galloping horse could see that It is very obvious indeed. Swift has ‘a blind man would be glad to see that’ in Polite Conversation (1738), and Apperson finds ‘A blind man on a galloping horse would be glad to see it’ by 1894. Former Beatle Paul McCartney on the similarity between the sound of the Fab Four and the much later group Oasis: ‘You would have to be a blind man on a galloping horse not to see it’ – quoted by the Press Association (5 September 1996). Compare the Australianism even blind Freddie could see that, for what is blindingly obvious, a phrase since the 1930s.

(a) blinking idiot Term of abuse where ‘blinking’ is a euphemism for ‘bloody’. However, Shakespeare coined the phrase in The Merchant of Venice, II.ix.54 (1596), where the Prince of Arragon opens the silver casket and exclaims: ‘What’s here? the portrait of a blinking idiot / Presenting me a schedule.’ This is probably a more literal suggestion of an idiot whose eyes blink as a token of his madness.

bliss beyond compare See OH JOY.

block See CHIP OFF THE OLD.

(a) blonde bombshell A journalistic cliché now used to describe any (however vaguely) blonde woman but especially if she has a dynamic personality and is a film star, show business figure or model. In June 1975, Margo Macdonald complained of being described by the Daily Mirror as ‘the blonde bombshell MP’ who ‘hits the House of Commons today’. The original was Jean Harlow, who appeared in the 1933 US film Bombshell. In the UK – presumably so as not to suggest that it was a war film – the title was changed to Blonde Bombshell.

blondes See IS IT TRUE.

blood all over the walls See SHIT HITS.

(through) blood and fire Motto of the Salvation Army, founded by General William Booth in 1878. The conjunction of blood and fire has appropriate biblical origins. In Joel 2:30, God says: ‘And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.’

blood and iron When Bismarck addressed the Budget Commission of the Prussian House of Delegates on 30 September 1862, what he said was: ‘It is desirable and it is necessary that the condition of affairs in Germany and of her constitutional relations should be improved; but this cannot be accomplished by speeches and resolutions of a majority, but only by iron and blood [Eisen und Blut].’ On 28 January 1886, speaking to the Prussian House of Deputies, he did, however, use the words in the more familiar order: ‘This policy cannot succeed through speeches, and shooting-matches and songs; it can only be carried out through blood and iron [Blut und Eisen].’ The words may have achieved their more familiar order, at least to English ears, through their use by A. C. Swinburne in his poem ‘A Word for the Country’ (1884): ‘Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, shall a nation be moulded at last.’ (Eric Partridge, while identifying this source correctly in A Dictionary of Clichés, 1966 edn, ascribes the authorship to Tennyson.) On the other hand, the Roman orator Quintillian (1st century AD) used the exact phrase sanguinem et ferrum.

blood and sand Blood and Sand was the title of a silent film (US 1922) starring Rudolph Valentino as a matador. It was adapted from a play with the title by Tom Cushing, in turn adapted from a novel about bullfighting, Sangre y Arena (which means the same thing) by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. It was later re-made with Tyrone Power (US 1941).

blood and thunder Bloodshed and violence – especially as found in ‘blood-and-thunder’ books, films and tales (especially in the USA, where the coinage originated by 1852). However, the conjunction occurred before this in England as an oath. Byron’s Don Juan, Canto 8, St. 1 (1822), has the line: ‘Oh, blood and thunder! and oh, blood and wounds! / These are but vulgar oaths.’ The melodramatic, violent, bloody and sensational tales are sometimes called ‘thud and blunder’, if they are ineptly done.

(a) blood libel Name given to accusations by medieval anti-Semites that Jews had crucified Christian children and drunk their blood at Passover. In September 1982, following allegations that Israeli forces in Lebanon had allowed massacres to take place in refugee camps, the Israeli government invoked the phrase in a statement headed: ‘BLOOD LIBEL. On the New Year (Rosh Hashana), a blood libel was levelled against the Jewish state, its government and the Israel Defense Forces…’

(to pay the) blood price To be willing to sustain casualties by going to war. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said that he was prepared to send troops and ‘pay the blood price’ of Britain’s special relationship with America by attacking President Hussein of Iraq (in a BBC 2 TV interview, 8 September 2002). In fact, the phrase had been fed to him by the interviewer, quoting Robert McNamara, Lyndon Johnson’s Defense secretary in the Vietnam War. The phrase occurs much earlier, in Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I.v.26 (1590): ‘The man that made Sansfoy to fall, / Shall with his owne blood price that he hath spilt.’

bloodstained tyrannies Cited as the phrase of a ‘tired hack’ by George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’ in Horizon (April 1946). ‘The Prime Minister [Mrs Thatcher] welcomed Romania to “the family of free nations” and promised help for its people. She praised the Romanian “heroes” who had not been prepared to “knuckle under in a bloodstained tyranny”’ – The Guardian (23 December 1989).

blood, sweat and tears In his classic speech to the House of Commons on 13 May 1940, upon becoming Prime Minister, Winston Churchill said: ‘I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ Ever since then, people have had difficulty getting the order of his words right. The natural inclination is to put ‘blood’, ‘sweat’ then ‘tears’ together – as did Byron in 1823 with ‘blood, sweat and tear-wrung millions’ and as did the Canadian/US rock group Blood Sweat and Tears in the late 1960s and 70s. Much earlier, however, there had been yet another combination of the words in John Donne’s An Anatomy of the World (1611): ‘’Tis in vain to do so or to mollify it with thy tears, or sweat, or blood.’ Churchill seemed consciously to avoid these configurations. In 1931, he had written of the Tsarist armies: ‘Their sweat, their tears, their blood bedewed the endless plain.’ Having launched his version of the phrase in 1940, he referred to it five more times during the course of the war.

bloody See CAN A BLOODY.

bloody but unbowed Often used as an unascribed quotation, meaning ‘determined after having suffered a defeat’. From W. E. Henley’s poem ‘Invictus. In Memoriam R.T.H.B.’ (1888): ‘In the fell clutch of circumstance, / I have not winced nor cried aloud: / Under the bludgeonings of chance / My head is bloody but unbowed.’ ‘Bloody but unbowed, veteran discount retailers Gerald and Vera Weisfeld have hit out at the new £56m rescue deal agreed between struggling Poundstretcher owner Brown & Jackson and South African group Pepkor’ – Daily Mail (10 May 1994); ‘Bloody but unbowed, Dungannon had several heroes. Johns lorded the lineouts; while Beggs and Willie Dunne scrapped for everything’ – The Irish Times (17 October 1994); ‘Charles Scott, acting chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, now renamed Cordiant, survived his first shareholders’ meeting since the upheavals at the top of the advertising combine bloody but unbowed, with investors’ vitriol shared out fairly equally between him, the Saatchi brothers and David Herro, the Chicago investor’ – The Times (17 March 1995).

(the) bloody deed was done The provenance of this phrase has proved elusive. In Shakespeare, the phrase ‘bloody deed’ occurs several times and, what with Macbeth’s ‘I have done the deed’ and the almost immediate references to ‘blood’, not to mention Rosse’s ‘Is’t known who did this more than bloody deed?’ (II.iv.22), might well have produced this conflation. The nearest one gets is Richard III, IV.iii.1(1592–3): ‘The tyrannous and bloody act is done’ – which is what Tyrrel says about the murder of the Princes in the Tower. As with ‘the bloody dog is dead’ from the end of the same play (V.v.2), we are almost there, but the exact phrase remains untraced – except in the works of lesser poets of the 17th to 19th centuries: ‘Here through my bosom run / Your sword, and when the bloody deed is done, / When your steel smoaks with my hearts reeking Gore, / Bid me be well as e’re I was before’ – from Anon., Sophonisba, or Hannibal’s Overthrow: a Tragedy, Act 2, Sc 1 (1676); ‘Pallid grew every face; and man on man, / Speechless with horror, looked; for well they knew / The bloody deed was done’ – Edwin Atherstone, The Fall of Nineveh, Bk 24 (1868). These quotations, taken together, encourage one to think that the original coinage will not be found: it is simply a proverbial expression.

Bloody Sunday As with BLACK FRIDAY, there have been a number of these. On 13 November 1887, two men died during a baton charge on a prohibited socialist demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London. On 22 January 1905, hundreds of unarmed peasants were mown down when they marched to petition the Tsar in St Petersburg. In Irish history, there was a Bloody Sunday on 21 November 1920 when, among other incidents, fourteen undercover British intelligence agents in Dublin were shot by Sinn Fein. More recently, the name was applied to Sunday 30 January 1972 when British troops killed thirteen Catholics after a protest rally in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Perhaps the epithet sprang to mind readily on this last occasion because of the film Sunday Bloody Sunday (UK 1971). This story had a screenplay by Penelope Gilliatt. It was about a ménage à trois and, although not explained explicitly, the title probably referred to the pivotal day on which the relationships ran further into the sand. Since the 19th century there has been the exclamation ‘Sunday, bloody Sunday!’ to express the gloom and despondency of the day. In 1973, the UK/US group Black Sabbath released an album with the title Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

blooming See AIN’T IT.

(to) blot one’s copybook To make a serious blunder, misdemeanour or gaffe that affects one’s hitherto good record – as though one had spilled ink on a copybook, which was an aid to learning handwriting much in use until the mid-20th century. The student would imitate writing sentences in the correct style, in spaces below what was printed on the page. A ‘copy book’ is mentioned in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (1588) and Dorothy L. Sayers has the expression in Gaudy Night, Chap. 5 (1935): ‘Now, it was the College that had blotted its copybook and had called her in as one calls in a specialist.’

(a) blot on one’s escutcheon A stain on one’s character or reputation. An escutcheon is a shield with armorial bearings on it. The earliest appearance would seem to be in John Dryden, Virgil, II, ‘Dedication’ (1697): ‘The banishment of Ovid was a blot in his escutcheon.’ A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon is the title of a play (1843) by Robert Browning. In W. S. Gilbert, The Sorcerer, Act 1 (1877), Sir Marmaduke Pointdextre says: ‘Aline is rich, and she comes of a sufficiently old family, for she is the seven thousand and thirty-seventh in direct descent from Helen of Troy. True, there was a blot on the escutcheon of that lady – that affair with Paris – but where is the family, other than my own, in which there is no flaw?’

(a) blot on the landscape Anything that spoils or disfigures a view in an unsightly way (not least a person), or, figuratively, that is simply objectionable. Since the 16th century, ‘blot’ on its own was used in this sense. The first citation to have the whole phrase is in a letter from T. E. Lawrence (dated 20 February 1938): ‘His two Kufti people…will be rather a blot on the landscape.’ A Baumer cartoon in Punch uses it (25 April 1934). From P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, Chap. 1 (1960): ‘“And a rousing toodle-oo to you, you young blot on the landscape,” she replied cordially.’ Tom Sharpe’s novel Blot on the Landscape (1975) features a character called ‘Blott’. ‘Their makeshift shanties have always been a blot on the landscape (they creep right up to the hard shoulder of the motorway that brings visitors in from the airport) and they are now not only a blot on the conscience but a blot, too, on the immediate scrutiny of the immaculate dream to which some whites still subscribe’ – The Times (9 December 1995). ‘It is a blot on the landscape – and it’s lost its flavour. Now Wrigley, the chewing-gum manufacturer, is trying to teach Britain’s estimated 22 million chewers where not to stick the gluey residue’ – The Sunday Telegraph (11 February 1996).

blouse See BIG GIRL’S.

blow See DON’T BLOW.

(to) blow a raspberry To make a farting noise by blowing through the lips. This is rhyming slang, raspberry tart = fart. From Barrère & Leland, Dictionary of Slang (1890): ‘The tongue is inserted in the left cheek and forced through the lips, producing a peculiarly squashy noise that is extremely irritating. It is termed, I believe, a raspberry, and when not employed for the purpose of testing horseflesh, is regarded rather as an expression of contempt than of admiration.’

(to) blow hot and cold Meaning ‘to vacillate between enthusiasm and apathy’, this expression has been known in English since 1577 and is to be found in one of Aesop’s Fables. On a cold day, a satyr comes across a man blowing his fingers to make them warm. He takes the man home and gives him a bowl of hot soup. The man blows on the soup, to cool it. At this, the satyr throws him out, exclaiming that he wants nothing to do with a man who can ‘blow hot and cold from the same mouth’.

(to) blow one’s own trumpet Meaning, ‘to boast of one’s own achievements’. This is sometimes said to have originated with the statue of ‘Fame’ on the parapet of Wilton House, near Salisbury. The figure – positioned after a fire in 1647 – originally held a trumpet in each hand. But why does one need a precise origin? Besides, the OED2 cites Abraham Fleming, A Panoplie of Epistles (1576) – ‘I will…sound the trumpet of mine owne merites’, which is virtually the modern phrase. Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews, Chap 5. (1742), has, ‘Fame blew her brazen trumpet’. Apperson has an example of ‘blowing the trumpet of my own praise’ from 1799. Brewer (1894), more reasonably, states that in ‘to sound one’s own trumpet’, the ‘allusion is to heralds, who used to announce with a flourish of trumpets the knights who entered a list’ (as, for example, in jousting). It is also possible that Diogenianus (2nd century AD) originated the expression (unverified). Lord Beaverbrook used to say that if you did not blow your own trumpet, no one else would do it for you – quoted in The Observer (12 March 1989).

blow some my way A slogan used from 1926 when a woman made her first appearance in US cigarette advertising (some thought suggestively). The brand was Chesterfield whose other slogan, ‘I’ll tell the world – they satisfy’, was current the same year.

(to) blow the gaff Meaning, ‘to blab about something; to let the secret out; give the game away.’ An earlier (18th-century) form was ‘to blow the gab’ and, conceivably, ‘gaff’ could have developed from that. ‘Gaff’ may here mean ‘mouth’ (like gab/gob) and, coupled with ‘blow’, gives the idea of expelling air through it and letting things out. Known by 1812. ‘As she invariably uses her travels with a friend as the basis for her pieces, I really do not see why there needed to be any hiatus. Or has she found someone else to travel with and does not want to blow the gaff?’ – The Sunday Times (29 October 1995).

(to) blow the whistle on Meaning, ‘to call a halt to something by exposing it’ (alluding to the police use of whistles). ‘Now that the whistle has been blown on his speech…’ – P. G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, Chap. 17 (1934). More recently, The Listener (3 January 1980) reported: ‘English as she is murdered on radio became an issue once more. Alvar Liddell stamped his foot and blew the whistle in The Listener.’ Sir Robert Armstrong was quoted in The Observer (2 March 1986) as saying: ‘I do not think there could be a duty on a civil servant to blow the whistle on his Minister.’

blue See ENOUGH.

(the) blue bird (of happiness) An allusion to the title of a children’s play, L’Oiseau bleu by Maurice Maeterlinck, that was translated as The Blue Bird in 1909. Hence, the prevalence of Blue Bird cafés, Blue Bird toffees and song lyrics such as ‘There’ll be blue birds over / The White Cliffs of Dover…’ (1941).

blue for a boy, pink for a girl Colour coding for babies along these lines may be comparatively recent. Although the Daily Chronicle (18 November 1909) had ‘Brief drawing-room appearances in a nurse’s arms with robes and tie-ups – blue for a boy, pink for a girl’, according to The Independent (7 February 1994), ‘there are also indications that the Women’s Institute were advising blue for girls and pink for boys as late as 1920’. Indeed, blue has for centuries been the colour of the Virgin Mary’s robe. Possibly it is the case that greetings card manufacturers happened upon the revised guidelines by emphasizing the alliterative qualities of ‘blue for a boy’.

blue murder See GET AWAY.

(to) blue-pencil To censor. In the BBC wartime radio series Garrison Theatre (first broadcast 1939), Jack Warner as ‘Private Warner’ helped further popularize this well-established synonym (the OED2’s first citation is an American one from 1888). In reading blue-pencilled letters from his brother at the Front, expletives were deleted (‘not blue pencil likely!’) and Warner’s actual mother boasted that, ‘My John with his blue-pencil gag has stopped the whole nation from swearing.’ In his autobiography, Warner recalled a constable giving evidence at a London police court about stopping ‘Mr Warner’, a lorry driver. The magistrate inquired, ‘Did he ask what the blue pencil you wanted?’ ‘No, sir,’ replied the constable, ‘this was a different Mr Warner…’ It is said that when the Lord Chamberlain exercised powers of censorship over the British stage (until 1968), his emendations to scripts were, indeed, marked with a blue pencil.

(the) blue-rinse brigade (or set) A blue rinse is a hair preparation (known since the 1930s) designed to disguise grey or white hair with a temporary blue tint. As this is favoured by middle-class women of advancing years, the term has come to be applied to them collectively, suggesting their respectable, conservative tastes and views. ‘The blue-rinse vote went down the drain’ – Punch (28 October 1964). ‘During his 16-year tenure with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mehta was at once a matinée idol of the blue-rinse brigade and a favorite target of critical barbs’ – Los Angeles Times (16 August 1986).

(a) blue stocking Denoting ‘a literary or studious woman’, this phrase derived from the gatherings of cultivated females and a few eminent men at the home of Elizabeth Montagu in London around 1750. Boswell in his Life of Johnson (1791) explains that a certain Benjamin Stillingfleet was a popular guest, soberly dressed but wearing blue stockings: ‘Such was the excellence of his conversation, that his absence was felt as so great a loss, that it used to be said, “We can do nothing without the blue stockings,” and thus by degrees the title was established.’

blue velvet A film (US 1986), directed by David Lynch, about drugs and menace, has the title Blue Velvet. This alludes firstly to the song ‘Blue Velvet’ (1951), written by Wayne and Morris, which is sung by the night-club singer heroine in the film, and secondly – as DOAS describes – to the name for ‘a mixture of paregoric, which contains opium and…an antihistamine, to be injected’, which is also relevant to the film.

boats See BURN ONE’S.

(and) Bob’s your uncle! An almost meaningless expression of the type that takes hold from time to time. It is another way of saying ‘there you are; there you have it; simple as that’. It was current by the 1880s but doesn’t appear to be of any hard and fast origin. It is basically a British expression – and somewhat baffling to Americans. There is the story of one such [the director and playwright Burt Shevelove – according to Kenneth Williams on BBC Radio Quote…Unquote (24 July 1980)] who went into a London shop, had it said to him, and exclaimed: ‘But how on earth do you know – I do have an Uncle Bob!?’ In 1886, Arthur Balfour rose meteorically from the Scottish Office to be Chief Secretary for Ireland. He was appointed by his uncle, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquis of Salisbury. Could this be a possible source? There is slang use, too, of the expression ‘one’s uncle’, meaning a pawnbroker, which might perhaps be linked.

(in) bocca del lupo See BREAK A LEG.

(the) bodger on the bonce Referring to the horn of a rhinoceros, as in the Flanders and Swann song ‘The Rhinoceros’ (1956): ‘(Chorus) Oh the Bodger on the Bonce! / The Bodger on the Bonce! / Oh pity the poor old Rhino with / The Bodger on the Bonce!’. Few dictionaries seem to have recorded the word ‘bodger’ in the sense of a pointed instrument, though it has long been used to mean a stick for picking up litter or for a tool used to make holes in the ground for seeds. And ‘to bodge’ is Black Country dialect for poking or making a hole. A link between bodgers in this sense and with the name given to skilled, itinerant wood-turners who worked in the beech woods on the chalk hills of the Chilterns and who led to the establishment of the chair-making trade in the High Wycombe area has yet to be proved. Or with ‘The Bodgers’ as the nickname of the Wycombe Wanderers football team and with bodgers as the name given to people who do a bodged job (a variation on ‘botchers’).

(a) body blow Meaning ‘a severe knock to one’s esteem or activities’, this clearly derives from boxing. ‘That body-blow left Joe’s head unguarded’ – Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown (1857). ‘Its latest action is a body-blow to the growers’ – Daily Chronicle (24 August 1908); ‘Criminalizing squatters, New Age travellers and the like is hardly a body-blow to the well-established underworld. No matter how many times Mr Howard says the word “people” (count it, next time you hear him), he will not convince me that he is really going to deal with the real problems of crime in this country’ – Independent on Sunday (1 May 1994); ‘In unambiguous terms they declared he was technically bust, and so it proved. It was a body blow from which Bond never recovered’ – The Sunday Times (6 November 1994).

(a) body count A phrase from the Vietnam War (in use by 1968), referring to the number of enemy dead. In 1981, the American horror film Friday the 13th Part II was promoted with the line, ‘The body count continues’. From Time Magazine (15 April 1985): ‘In the field, the Americans were encouraged to lie about their “body counts” (measuring progress in the war by lives taken, not land taken).’ Later, used less literally to describe the number of people (not necessarily dead) in a specific situation.

body fascism In July 1980, Anna Ford, then a television newcaster with ITN, popularized this phrase in a speech given to the Women in Media group in London. Attacking the obsession with the looks and clothes of women who appear on television, she added: ‘Nobody takes pictures of Richard Baker’s ankles or claims that Peter Woods only got his job because of the bags under his eyes.’ Ford did not invent the feminist phrase, however. It is not a very clear one, except that ‘fascism’ is often invoked simply to describe something that the speaker dislikes. ‘Sexism’ and ‘lookism’ would have conveyed what Ford meant; possibly even ‘glamour-abuse’.

body odour (or BO) This worrying concept was used to promote Lifebuoy soap, initially in the USA, and was current by 1933. In early American radio jingles, the initials ‘BO’ were sung basso profundo, emphasizing the horror of the offence: ‘Singing in the bathtub, singing for joy, / Living a life of Lifebuoy – / Can’t help singing, ‘cos I know / That Lifebuoy really stops BO.’ In the UK, TV ads showed pairs of male or female friends out on a spree, intending to attract partners. When one of the pair was seen to have a problem, the other whispered helpfully, ‘BO’.

(the) body politic The nation in its corporate character, the state-organized society. In a legal document of 1532, in the reign of King Henry VIII, there is the usage: ‘This Realm of England is an Empire…governed by one supreme Head and King…unto whom a Body politick, compact of all Sorts and Degrees of people…’ Compare the soul politic, a phrase used by Margaret Thatcher in speeches in the 1980s. But Thomas Carlyle had anticipated her in Signs of the Times (1829).

boets and bainters The ODQ has long had the remark ‘I hate all Boets and Bainters’ ascribed to King George I (1660–1727), finding it in Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices (1849). However, as it is said that George I never learned to speak English (even German-accented), a more believable account is that George II (1683–1760), who did speak English, was the one who actually said it. And as it is given that, whichever George it was, he was discussing Hogarth’s print ‘The March to Finchley’ at the time – a picture not published until 1750/1 – this would square better with the dates. John Ireland’s Hogarth Illustrated (2nd edn, 1793) specifically records that the picture was brought to George II: ‘Before publication it was inscribed to his late Majesty, and the picture taken to St James’s, in the hope of royal approbation. George the Second was an honest man, and a soldier, but not a judge of either a work of humour, or a work of art…[Hence] his disappointment on viewing the delineation. His first question was addressed to a nobleman in waiting – “Pray, who is this Hogarth?” “A painter, my liege.” “I hate bainting and boetry too! neither the one nor the other ever did any good! Does the fellow mean to laugh at my guards?”’ The print was returned to Hogarth, who dedicated it instead to the King of Prussia. Obviously this was a story that could have been aimed at both father and son (in Lord Campbell’s Lives of the Justices, George I has ‘I hate all Boets and Bainters’ attached to him in the context of a poem being read), but Ireland’s anecdote is rooted in a particular circumstance and is written closer to the events described, so it is to be favoured.

bog standard Average. From the 1980s on. Tony Thorne defines ‘bog-standard’ in his Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (1990) as, ‘Totally unexceptional, normal and unremarkable. Bog is here used as an otherwise meaningless intensifier.’ It has been suggested that before the Second World War, ‘bog’ was an acronym for ‘British Or German’, as a mark of distinction in a product, but there is no confirmation of this unpromising theory.

(the) bohemian life Life as lived by artists and writers, often poverty-stricken and amoral. Puccini’s opera La Bohème (1896) was based on Henry Murger’s novel Scènes de la Vie de Bohème (1847), set in the Latin Quarter of Paris. At first, the term ‘Bohemian’ was applied to gypsies because they were thought to come from Bohemia (in what is now the Czech Republic) or, at least, because the first to come to France had passed through Bohemia. The connection between the irregular life of gypsies and that of artists is just about understandable – they are on the margins of society.

boil your head See GO AND.

bold See OH HELLO.

(as) bold as brass Very bold indeed, possibly also reflecting that brass was sometimes looked upon as a cheap substitute for gold. Obviously the alliteration is attractive, but the word brass may have been chosen because of its connection with ‘brazen’, meaning ‘flagrant, shameless’ (the Old English word braesen actually means brass). The OED2’s earliest citation is from 1789, which is interesting because there is a colourful explanation that the phrase derives from a Lord Mayor of London called ‘Brass Crosby’ who died in 1793. He was sent to the Tower for refusing to sentence a printer for the unlawful act of publishing Parliamentary debates and, some believe, ‘bold as brass’ became a popular turn of phrase for the way he supported reforms. There may, however, be no connection.

boldness be my friend Used as the title of a book (1953) by Richard Pape about his exploits in the Second World War, this phrase is taken from what Iachimo says when he sets off to pursue Imogen in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, I.vii.18 (1609–10): ‘Boldness be my friend! / Arm me, Audacity, from head to foot’. In 1977, Richard Boston wrote a book called Baldness Be My Friend, partly about his own lack of hair.

bomb See BAN THE; GO DOWN A.

bombshell See BLONDE.

BOMFOG An acronym for a pompous, meaningless generality. When Governor Nelson Rockefeller was competing against Barry Goldwater for the US Republican presidential nomination in 1964, reporters latched on to a favourite saying of the candidate – ‘the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God’ – and rendered it with the acronym BOMFOG. In fact, according to Safire, they had been beaten to it by Hy Sheffer, a stenotypist on the Governor’s staff who had found the abbreviation convenient for the previous five or six years. The words come from a much quoted saying of John D. Rockefeller: ‘These are the principles upon which alone a new world recognizing the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God can be established…’ Later, BOMFOG was used by feminists to denote the use of language that they thought demeaned women by reflecting patrician attitudes. The individual phrases ‘brotherhood of man’ and ‘fatherhood of God’ do not appear before the 19th century. In As We Are, Chap. 13 (1932), E. F. Benson has: ‘The Fatherhood of God fared no better than the brotherhood of man…His protective paternity had proved that these privileges must be heavily paid for in advance.’

--- bonanza PHRASES A journalistic cliché, used to describe any wildly lucrative deal. Of American origin and known since the 1840s, the derivation is from the Spanish word for ‘fair weather, prosperity’. Initially used by miners with reference to good luck in finding a body of rich ore. Used figuratively, a good deal later. Specifically ‘pay bonanza’ is listed as a cliché to be avoided by Keith Waterhouse in Daily Mirror Style (1981). ‘The show is still, as topical entertainment, a real bonanza’ – The Listener (10 January 1963); ‘Jobs bonanza for ex-ministers…Former Cabinet ministers who served under Margaret Thatcher and John Major hold a total of 125 directorships and 30 consultancies’ – The Independent (2 May 1995).

bonce See BODGER ON THE.

(the) Boneless Wonder A spineless character named after a fairground freak, notably evoked by Winston Churchill in an attack on Ramsay MacDonald in the House of Commons (28 January 1931). During a debate on the Trades Disputes Act, Churchill referred to recent efforts by the Prime Minister to conciliate Roman Catholic opinion regarding education reform (including the lowering of the school-leaving age to fifteen): ‘I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described as the Boneless Wonder. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing for my youthful eyes, and I have waited fifty years to see the Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury bench.’ There have been several circus or fairground attractions with this bill matter. The specific one may be that of ‘Valentine’, who died in 1907.

Boney will get you! A curiously enduring threat. Although Napoleon died in 1821 (and all possibility of invasion had evaporated long before that), it was still being made to children in the early 20th century. In 1985, the actor Sir Anthony Quayle recalled it from his youth and, in 1990, John Julius Norwich remembered the husband of his nanny (from Grantham) saying it to him in the 1930s. He added: ‘And a Mexican friend of mine told me that when she was a little girl her nanny or mother or whoever it was used to say, “Il Drake will get you” – and that was Sir Francis Drake!’

(the) bonfire of the vanities The title of Tom Wolfe’s 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities is derived from Savonarola’s ‘burning of the vanities’ at Florence in 1497. The religious reformer – ‘the puritan of Catholicism’ – enacted various laws for the restraint of vice and folly. Gambling was prohibited, and Savonarola’s followers helped people burn their costly ornaments and extravagant clothes.

(to cast/throw one’s) bonnet over the windmill To act unrestrainedly and defiantly; to throw caution to the winds. This is a translation of the French expression ‘jeter son bonnet par-dessus les moulins’ that had entered the English language by 1885 as ‘flung his cap over the windmill’. According to Valerie Grove, Dear Dodie (1996), when Dodie Smith entitled one of her plays Bonnet Over the Windmill (in 1937), ‘she enlisted Sir Ambrose Heal’s help in establishing where the expression…came from.’ A London University professor ‘reported that the phrase…was originally a lazy way of finishing off a story for children.’

book See ANOTHER PAGE; EVERYONE HAS ONE.

book ‘em, Danno! A stock phrase from the American TV series Hawaii Five-O (1968–80). On making an arrest, Detective Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) would say to Detective ‘Danno’ Williams (James MacArthur), ‘Book ‘em, Danno!’ – adding ‘Murder One’ if the crime required that charge.

boom, boom! Verbal underlining to the punchline of a gag. Comedian Ernie Wise commented (1979) that it was like the drum-thud or trumpet-sting used, particularly by American entertainers, to point a joke. Music-hall star Billy Bennett (1887–1942) may have been the first to use this device, in the UK, to emphasize his comic couplets. Morecambe and Wise, Basil Brush (the fox puppet on British TV), and many others, took it up later. ‘Boom boom’ has also been used as a slang/lingua franca expression for sexual intercourse, especially by Americans in South-East Asia during the Vietnam War.

(a) boon companion Literally, ‘a good fellow’ and used originally in a jovial bacchanalian sense. Now only used in a consciously archaic manner and referring to a close companion of either sex. ‘With such boon companions Pepys loved to broach a vessel of ale and be merry’ – Arthur Bryant, Samuel Pepys: The Man in the Making, Chap. 5 (1933); ‘Only after Saudi pressure, it is said, did the president relent and two months ago allow Rifaat to return from six months in exile. The Saudi crown prince, Abdullah, is a brother-in-law and boon companion of Rifaat, and the Saudis like Rifaat’s pro-western views’ – The Economist (26 January 1985).

boop-boop-a-doop This phrase originated in the Kalmar/Stothart/Ruby song ‘I Wanna Be Loved By You’, sung by the ‘Boop Boop a Doop’ girl, Helen Kane, in a 1928 musical. Then ‘Betty Boop’ became a cartoon character – sexy, baby-faced, baby-voiced – in Max Fleischer cinema cartoons of the 1930s. Marilyn Monroe sang the song in the film Some Like It Hot (US 1959). More recently there was a British pop singer who called herself ‘Betty Boo’.

boots See BIG FOR ONE’S; DIE WITH ONE’S; HE CAN LEAVE.

border See BREAK FOR THE.

bored! Jo Ann Worley used to exclaim this loudly on NBC TV, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In (1967–73). Could this be connected with ‘bor-ring!’ said by people in a sonorous, two-note sing-song way at about this time?

bored stiff Meaning, ‘extremely bored’ (possibly a pun on ‘stiff as a board’). Known by 1918, according to the OED2, which is unable to find citations for any of the various boredom phrases before the 20th century: ‘bored rigid’ (earliest citation 1972), ‘bored to death’ (1966), ‘bored to hell’ (1962), ‘(to) bore the pants off’ (1958) and ‘crashing bore’ (1928). There are no citations at all for ‘bored to tears’, ’bored out of one’s mind/skull’, or ’bored to distraction’. What does this have to tell us – that before the 20th century there was no expectation that you shouldn’t be bored? Or were the Victorians so bored that they couldn’t even be bothered to find words for it? Either way, there are one or two relatively new arrivals in the field. To say that something is ‘as exciting as watching paint dry’, though popular, does not seem very old. The earliest citation to hand is of a graffito from 1981, which stated that ‘Living in Croydon is about as exciting as watching paint dry’. As for ‘boring as a wet weekend in Wigan’, referring to the town in the northwest of England, the earliest use found is in the Today newspaper for 16 July 1991. As so often, alliteration is the main force behind this piece of phrase-making. ‘Wet weekends’ have long been abhorred, but Wigan appears to have been tacked on because it has a downbeat sound, it alliterates and because people recall the old music-hall joke about there being a WIGAN PIER.

born-again Applied to evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in the Southern USA since the 1960s, this adjective derives from the story of Jesus Christ and Nicodemus in John 3 (‘Ye must be born again’). Originally suggesting a re-conversion or first conversion to Christianity, this adjectival phrase took on a figurative sense of ‘re-vitalized’, ‘zealous’, ‘newly converted’ around the time when Jimmy Carter, from a born-again Baptist background in the South, was running for the US presidency in 1976. Carter said in an interview with Robert L. Turner (16 March 1976): ‘We believe that the first time we’re born, as children, it’s human life given to us; and when we accept Jesus as our Saviour, it’s a new life. That’s what “born again” means.’ Hence, usages like ‘born-again automobiles’ (for reconditioned ones) and such like.

born 1820 – still going strong Johnnie Walker whisky has used this advertising line since 1910. There was a John Walker but he was not born in 1820 – that was the year he set up a grocery, wine and spirit business in Kilmarnock. In 1908, Sir Alexander Walker decided to incorporate a portrait of his grandfather in the firm’s advertising. Tom Browne, a commercial artist, was commissioned to draw the firm’s founder as he might have appeared in 1820. Lord Stevenson, a colleague of Sir Alexander, scribbled the phrase ‘Johnnie Walker, born 1820 – still going strong’ alongside the artist’s sketch of a striding, cheerful Regency figure. It has been in use ever since. From Randolph Quirk, Style and Communication in the English Language (1983): ‘English lexicography knocks Johnnie Walker into a tricuspidal fedora. Over four hundred years, and going stronger than ever.’

bosom See ABRAHAM’S.

boss, boss, sumpin’ terrible’s happened! From the BBC radio show ITMA (1939–49). Spoken in a gangster drawl by Sam Scram (Sydney Keith), Tommy Handley’s henchman.

(the) Boston Strangler Nickname of Albert de Salvo, who strangled thirteen women during 1962–4 in the Boston, Mass., area. Not forgotten, the man’s reputation led to the creation of a joke format: from Today (24 May 1987), ‘Liberal David Steel said earlier this year: “Mrs Thatcher seems to have done for women in politics what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen”.’ From The Independent (20 January 1989): ‘Mr Healey also had a pithy word for President Reagan: “He has done for monetarism what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen”.’ From The Washington Post (16 October 1991): ‘Shields introduced Hatch, the starched shirt of the Senate hearings, as “the man who has done for bipartisanship what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen”.’ From The Sunday Times (9 February 1992): ‘Denis Healey, who claimed to have tried to do for economic forecasters what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen…’

(the) bottomless pit A description of Hell from Revelation 20:1: ‘And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit’; also in Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk 6, line 864 (1671): ‘Headlong themselves they threw / Down from the verge of Heaven, eternal wrath / Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.’ William Pitt the Younger, British Prime Minister in the years 1783–1801 and 1804–6, was nicknamed ‘the Bottomless Pitt’, on account of his thinness. A caricature with this title, attributed to Gillray, shows Pitt as Chancellor of the Exchequer introducing his 1792 budget. His bottom is non-existent.

(the) bottom line The ultimate, most important outcome. Originally an American expression referring to the last line of a financial statement that shows whether there has been profit or loss – and still very much in use (‘They’re only interested in the bottom line, those investors’) – but also used in the figurative sense of the final analysis or determining factor; the point, the crux of the argument. ‘George Murphy and Ronald Reagan certainly qualified because they have gotten elected. I think that’s the bottom line’ – San Francisco Examiner (8 September 1967); in the 1970s, Henry Kissinger spoke of the ‘bottom line’ as the eventual outcome of political negotiations, disregarding the intermediate arguments; ‘Our “bottom-line” has always been to protect jobs and services in our boroughs. In London, with a good deal of help from the GLC, we should survive’ – The Guardian (21 June 1985); ‘The bottom line / Protecting Miami’s heritage…The billboard’s protan message in the era of thinning ozone layers is no longer consistent with Coppertone’s new emphasis on sunscreens…Baring little girls’ bottoms is not so politically correct either’ – headline and text, The Economist (14 September 1991); Arthur Jacobs took an Independent editorial to task for a ‘splendidly meaningless example [on 14 April 1995]: “The bottom line is that there are too many boats chasing too few fish”. Surely this, as the statement of the problem, would be a top line and a true bottom line would be the solution.’ ‘According to a leaked memo seen by The Independent…“The bottom line is that the waste cannot be dumped at sea. The only option is to take ashore and treat’ – The Independent (20 June 1995); ‘The IRA’s bottom line is a united Ireland, so what happens when they realise they’re not going to get that?’ – The Independent (1 September 1995).

bounce See ANSWER IS.

bounden duty A consciously archaic phrase, meaning ‘conduct that is expected of one or to which one is bound by honour or position’. Best known from its use in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (1662): ‘It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord’ – though the phrase pre-dates this. ‘Had Evan Hunter been dealing with the Lizzie Borden case under his other hat as Ed McBain it would have been one’s bounden duty to keep the solution dark’ – The Guardian (23 August 1984); ‘These were the people who promoted and supported public libraries, municipal swimming baths and playing fields, museums and art galleries, free access to which was part of the spiritual provision the Victorians saw as their bounden duty towards their fellow citizens’ – The Sunday Telegraph (6 May 1990); ‘John Nott also wished to resign. But I told him straight that when the fleet had put to sea he had a bounden duty to stay and see the whole thing through’ – Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993).

bourgeois See DISCREET CHARM.

Bovril prevents that sinking feeling Slogan for Bovril (meat extract) in the UK. This line first appeared in 1920. On H. H. Harris’s cheery poster of a pyjama-clad man astride a jar of Bovril in the sea, However, the slogan was born in a golfing booklet issued by Bovril in 1890 that included the commendation: ‘Unquestionably, Bovril…supplies…the nourishment which is so much needed by all players at the critical intermediate hour between breakfast and luncheon, when the sinking feeling engendered by an empty stomach is so distressing, and so fruitful of deteriorated play.’ It is said that Bovril had intended to use the phrase earlier but withheld it because of the Titanic disaster of 1912. With updated illustrations, it lasted until 1958. Heading from The Independent (12 April 1989): ‘Crucible challenge for a champion [Steve Davis, snooker player] who thinks rivals under the table before relishing that sinking feeling.’

(the) box A slightly passé term for a TV set (having earlier been applied to wirelesses and gramophones) and one of several derogatory epithets that were applied during the medium’s rise to mass popularity in the 1940s and 50s. Groucho Marx used the expression in a letter (1950). Maurice Richardson, sometime TV critic of The Observer, apparently coined the epithet idiot’s lantern prior to 1957.

Box and Cox Meaning, ‘by turns, turn and turn about, or alternately.’ From a story (originally French) about a deceitful lodging-house keeper who lets the same room to two men, Box and Cox. Unbeknown to each other, one occupies it during the day and the other during the night. J. M. Morton’s farce Box and Cox was staged in 1847. A short musical version called Cox and Box with music by Sullivan and lyrics – not by W. S. Gilbert but by F. C. Burnand – followed in 1867.

(it’s a) box of birds (or box of fluffy ducks) A New Zealandism/Australianism for ‘fine, excellent, OK’. Known by 1943.

box-office poison Meaning (of a film star, in particular) that he or she is capable of repulsing potential film-goers through his or her reputation. A term perhaps applied in the first instance to Katharine Hepburn in 1938 by members of the Independent Motion Picture Theatre Proprietors organization in the USA. Alexander Walker in Stardom (1970) refers, however, to ‘the notorious red-bordered advertisement placed by a group of exhibitors in a trade paper which listed the stars [sic] who were deemed to be “box-office poison”.’ So perhaps she was not alone. ‘British films are box-office poison’ – Michael Caine, quoted in Screen International (29 July 1978).

boy See BIG BOY.

(the) boy done well Although now used in any context (for example as the headline to an article about Rod Stewart, the singer, in The Independent on 4 April 1991), this phrase of approbation is unquestionably of sporting origin. The question is, which sport? It sounds like the kind of thing a boxer’s manager might say – ‘All right, he got KO’d in the first round – but my boy done well…’ – although the citations obtained so far are from every sport but boxing. Working backwards: ‘Back on dry land he took victory well and, like all good managers had words of praise for his team, in this case Derek Clark. “It’s a good result, they done well the lads,” he said. “Class will always tell and it did today but everything happened that quick I didn’t have time to enjoy it.” The boy Ron done well’ – ‘Cowes Diary’ (yachting), The Times (7 August 1991); ‘Particularly noteworthy were two goals by Mark Robins, one with his right, then a left-foot chip. It prompted manager Alex Ferguson to utter the immortal words: “The boy has done well”’ – ‘Football Focus’, The Sunday Times (9 September 1990); ‘The boy Domingo done good. The boy Carreras done well. The boy Pavarotti done great’ – TV operatic concert review, The Guardian (9 July 1990); ‘It wasn’t all death and destruction…England reached the quarter finals of the World Cup [football]. The boy Lineker – the competition’s top scorer – done well…The boy Andrew done well, too. Sarah Ferguson, proved a popular bride’ – ‘Review of the Year’, The Guardian (31 December 1986). Quite the best suggestion for an origin was Fagin in Oliver Twist, but, no, he did not say it. Compare this letter to The Guardian on the ungrammatical World Cup TV commentaries of Emlyn Hughes and Mike Channon (1986): ‘Conjugate the verb “done great”: I done great. He done great. We done great. They done great. The boy Lineker done great.’

boy meets girl Short form of what might seem to be the most popular plot in all fiction: ‘Boy meets girl. Boy woos girl. Boy marries girl.’ Known as a concept by 1945 and possibly originating in discussion of Hollywood movies in the 1930s. In a letter from P. G. Wodehouse (24 August 1932): ‘Don’t you find that the chief difficulty in writing novels is getting the love interest set? Boy meets girl. Right. But what happens then?’

(the) boy next door Admirably defined by Photoplay (October 1958) as: ‘The boy who’s within reach of every girl fan’ – hence, a straightforward, unsophisticated young man figuring in a conventional romance, particularly on the cinema screen. The female equivalent, girl next door, seems to have emerged a fraction later. From the Times Educational Supplement (23 February 1968): ‘Diana Quick’s Ophelia was very much the girl-next-door.’

(a) boy’s best friend is his mother Norman Bates in the Hitchcock film Psycho (1960) gets to say ‘A boy’s best friend is his mother’ – with good reason, but we won’t go into all that – and, indeed, the line was used to promote the picture. It has been suggested that earlier the line was originally ‘a girl’s best friend is her mother’. Either way, the saying seems to have been set in concrete – if not in treacle – by an American songwriter called Henry Miller in 1883. The music was by the prolific Joseph P. Skelly, who was also a plumber. Their song with the expression as title contains the chorus: ‘Then cherish her with care, / And smooth her sil’vry hair, / When gone you will never get another. / And wherever we may turn, / This lesson we shall learn, / A boy’s best friend is his Mother.’ There are no citations for the phrase earlier than this.

boys will be boys! A comment on the inevitability of youthful male behaviour. Thackeray has it in Vanity Fair (1848).

(the) boy who put his finger in the dike A figure of speech for someone who staves off disaster through a simple (albeit temporary) gesture. Hans Brinker is the hero of the children’s book Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (1865) by the American author Mary Mapes Dodge. What he is not – as often erroneously asserted – is ‘the boy who put his finger in the dike.’ The connection is that the tale of the (nameless) legendary Dutch boy who spotted a tiny leak in his local dam, or dike, and stuck his finger in it and stopped it from getting worse, is related in Chapter 18 of Hans Brinker: ‘He looked up and saw a small hole in the dike through which a tiny stream was flowing. Quick as a flash, he saw his duty. His chubby finger was thrust in, the flowing was stopped! “Ah!” he thought, with a chuckle of boyish delight, “the angry waters must stay back now! Haarlem shall not be drowned while I am here!’” Mary Mapes Dodge (who had never been to Holland) included the story of this ‘Hero of Haarlem’ in her novel and, as a result, various Dutch towns claimed the boy as their own. A statue was erected to him – but he was never more than a legend. Hence, however, from The Times (9 October 1986): ‘To try to stand in front of the markets like the Little Dutch Boy with his finger in the dike would have been an act of folly if the Government were not convinced that the dike was fundamentally sound’; (27 July 1989): ‘“It was finger-in-the-dike stuff for us throughout the match,” the Oxbridge coach, Tony Rodgers, said. “Ultimately the flood walls cracked”.’

boy wonder See HOLY—.

bra See BURN YOUR.

bracket See ARE YOU LOOKING.

brain(s) trust The Brains Trust was the title of a BBC radio discussion programme (1941 onwards), originating from the American term for a group of people who give advice or who comment on current issues. In his first campaign in 1932, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up a circle of advisers which became known as his ‘brain trust’. In Britain, the term was borrowed and turned into ‘brains trust’. Curiously, the Roosevelt coinage, attributed to James Michael Kieran Jnr, was at first ‘the brains trust’ also.

brand new (or bran…) This expression for ‘very new’ comes from the old word meaning ‘to burn’ (just as a ‘brand’ is a form of torch). A metal that was brand (or bran) new had been taken out of the flames, having just been forged. Shakespeare has the variation ‘fire-new’ – e.g. in Love’s Labour’s Lost, I.i.177 (1592–3) – which points more directly to the phrase’s origin.

brandy–y–y–y! Catchphrase from the BBC radio Goon Show (1951–60). Accompanied by the sound of rushing footsteps, this was the show’s beloved way of getting anybody out of a situation that was proving too much for him. Most often, however, it was shouted by Neddie Seagoon (Harry Secombe) as a signal to clear off before the musical interludes of Max Geldray (harmonica). The Goons – Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan – first appeared in a BBC radio show called Crazy People in May 1951. At that time, Michael Bentine was also of their number. The Goon Show proper ran from 1952 to 1960, with one extra programme in 1972 and numerous re-runs. The humour was zany, often taking basic music-hall jokes and giving them further infusions of surrealism. The cast of three did all the funny voices, though Harry Secombe concentrated on the main character, Neddie Seagoon.

brass See BOLD AS; COLD ENOUGH TO.

(to get down to) brass tacks Probably of US origin, this phrase means ‘to get down to essentials’ and has been known since 1897, at least. There are various theories as to why we say it, including: (1) In old stores, brass tacks were positioned a yard apart for measuring. When a customer ‘got down to brass tacks’, it meant he or she was serious about making a purchase. (2) Brass tacks were a fundamental element in 19th-century upholstery, hence this expression meant to deal with a fault in the furniture by getting down to basics. (3) ‘Brass tacks’ is rhyming slang for ‘facts’, though the version ‘to get down to brass nails’ would contradict this.

(the) brat pack Name for a group of young Hollywood actors in the mid-1980s who tended to behave in a spoiled, unruly fashion. Coined by David Blum in New York Magazine (10 June 1985) and fashioned after rat pack, the name given in the 1950s to the then young Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jnr, etc. Has also been applied to other young cliques of writers, performers. The original bratpackers, including Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze and Tom Cruise, had all appeared together in Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Outsiders (1983).

(a) brave new world A future state, particularly one where ‘progress’ has produced nightmarish conditions. Nowadays a slightly ironic term for some new and exciting aspect of modern life. Brave New World was the title of a futuristic novel (1932) by Aldous Huxley. It is taken from Miranda’s exclamation in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, V.i.183 (1612): ‘O brave new world, / That has such people in’t!’ ‘Perhaps as much a cliché as it is a vogue-term’ – Eric Partridge, Usage and Abusage (1947). ‘Its title is now a pervasive media catch phrase, automatically invoked in connection with any development viewed as ultra-modern, ineffably zany or involving a potential threat to human liberty’ – David Bradshaw, Introduction to a 1994 edition of Huxley’s novel. ‘Consequently, when the pair signed to Virgin a couple of years back, the record company was keen to talk them up as a multi-media outfit, the kind of band best suited to the brave new world of interactive CDs’ – The Observer (1 May 1994); ‘Will there still be a [BBC radio] drama department in 10 years or, in the multi-skilled brave new world, will producers be billeted on different departments and everyone else be casualised?’ – The Guardian (13 March 1995).

breach See CUSTOM MORE.

bread See CAST ONE’S.

bread and butter! Phrase uttered when two people – who are a couple – walk along and come to an obstacle and separate to go round it. Mostly American usage, though a Russian origin has been suggested. Marian Bock remembered (2002) saying it in the 1960s: ‘Approaching we would say, “Bread and butter” and rejoining hands on the other side of the obstacle we would say, “All good wishes come true”. I was grown before I realized that my sisters were in the habit of making a wish in the interim.’ There is obviously a superstition involved, but why say ‘bread and butter’ (or ‘salt and pepper’, another version)? Is it because these are things that belong together? Apparently, the expression occurs in a number of Hollywood films of the 1930s/40s.

bread and butter issues Fundamental matters of direct concern to ordinary people – as important to them as the basic food they eat. Of quite recent origin and a cliché by about 1990. ‘The second problem is more fundamental: what does the party stand for? The dilemma was highlighted in a thoughtful speech to a fringe meeting by Mr Matthew Taylor, MP for Truro, who pointed out that “we have a higher profile on Bosnia than on any bread-and-butter domestic policy issue that determines how people vote”’ – Financial Times (14 March 1994); ‘This is precisely why Tony Blair has devoted much time and thought to softening up the ground to be more fertile to accept the reasons for widespread change in the way the country is governed. It is very much a bread and butter issue’ – letter to the editor, The Guardian (3 January 1995).

bread and circuses What the citizen is chiefly concerned about, having been bribed by whoever is in office with public entertainments and free food, as a way of avoiding popular discontent. Coined as panem et circenses by the Roman satirist, Juvenal (circa AD 60-circa 130) in his Satires, No. 10. Circuses here means chariot races and games in a stadium. The Circus was an oval-shaped racecourse.

bread and pullet (or pullit) Grown-up’s fobbing-off phrase, when asked, usually by a small person, ‘What’s for tea?’ – according to the writer Christopher Matthew on BBC Radio Quote…Unquote (16 May 1995) and confirmed by many others. ‘My mother used to say “Bread and Pullett’, supposedly a reference to a poor family who had to take the bread and pull it to make it go round’ – Sylvia Dowling (1998). ‘I recently came across a Victorian recipe for “Pulled Bread”. The white crumb was peeled from the middle of a freshly baked, still warm loaf. This was then put in the oven until golden brown’ – John Smart (2000). The basic phrase would seem to refer to bread without any addition of butter or jam, just plain fare.

breadbox See IS IT BIGGER.

break a leg! A traditional theatrical greeting given before a performance, especially a first night, because it is considered bad luck to wish anyone ‘good luck’ directly. Another version is snap a wrist! Partridge/Slang has ‘to break a leg’ as ‘to give birth to a bastard’, dating from the 17th century, but that is probably unconnected. As also is the fact that John Wilkes Booth, an actor, broke his leg after assassinating President Lincoln in a theatre. Morris (1977) has it based on a German good luck expression, Hals und Beinbruch [May you break your neck and your leg]. Perhaps this entered theatrical speech (like several other expressions) via Yiddish. Compare SEE YOU ON THE ICE! Other theatrical good-luck expressions include merde! [French: shit!], TOY! TOY! and in bocca del lupo [Italian: into the wolf’s jaws], although this last has also been heard in the form ‘bocc’ al lupo‘.

breakfast See CONDEMNED MAN; DOG’S.

break for the border This alliterative phrase has been used as (1) the title of a radio programme presented by the disc jockey Andy Kershaw on the British Forces Broadcasting Service (1987–90); (2) the title of various recorded musical numbers, from 1990 onwards; (3) the name of a group of restaurant/bars in the UK and Ireland in the 1990s. Its origin has not been found (and Andy Kershaw is unable to remember why his programme was called that…)

breakfast of champions An advertising line used to promote Wheaties breakfast cereal in the USA, since 1950 at least. In the 1980s, a series of ads featuring sporting champions showed, for example, ‘Jackie Robinson – one of the greatest names in baseball…this Dodgers star is a Wheaties man: “A lot of us ball players go for milk, fruit and Wheaties,” says Jackie…Had your Wheaties today?’ Kurt Vonnegut used the phrase as the title of a novel (1973). In 1960s’ Australia it was also used as a slang expression for sexual intercourse on awakening – specifically cunnilingus.

(the) breaking of nations The title of Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”’ (conceived at the time of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and written during the First World War) alludes to Jeremiah 51:20: ‘Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms.’

(to) break the mould ‘To start afresh from fundamentals’. When the Social Democratic Party was established in 1981, there was much talk of it ‘breaking the mould of British politics’ – i.e. doing away with the traditional system of one government and one chief opposition party. But this was by no means a new way of describing political change and getting rid of an old system for good in a way that prevents it being reconstituted. In What Matters Now (1972), Roy Jenkins, one of the new party’s founders, had quoted Andrew Marvell’s ‘Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ (1650): ‘And cast the kingdoms old, / Into another mould.’ In a speech at a House of Commons Press Gallery lunch on 8 June 1960, Jenkins had also said: ‘The politics of the left and centre of this country are frozen in an out-of-date mould which is bad for the political and economic health of Britain and increasingly inhibiting for those who live within the mould. Can it be broken?’ A. J. P. Taylor, in his English History 1914–1945 (1965), had earlier written: ‘Lloyd George needed a new crisis to break the mould of political and economic habit’. The image evoked, as in the days of the Luddites, is of breaking the mould from which iron machinery is cast – so completely that the machinery has to be re-cast from scratch.

breath See DON’T HOLD YOUR.

breathing space A phrase generally used to denote a pause in time for consideration when some outside pressure has been taken off. Date of origin uncertain. ‘Their crowd expects results, speed and guts, and particularly results. Playing in Europe, where even the most demanding crowd realizes guile is all, has given Arsenal the breathing space to develop different ideas’ – The Sunday Times (1 May 1994); ‘Alexon Group, the women’s wear retailer, has secured financial breathing-space by striking an agreement with its bankers for a new two-year facility. The shares responded by rising 4p to 26p’ – Financial Times (31 March 1995).

brewed, saucered and blowed A drink of tea that is now ready for drinking – because it has been brewed, poured into a saucer and blown on to cool it a little. A British expression, probably in use by the mid-20th century.

brick See CAN’T THROW A BRICK.

(the) bridegroom on the wedding cake A memorable insult, this phrase is usually attributed to Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884–1980). She said that Thomas Dewey, who was challenging Harry S Truman for the US presidency in 1948, looked like the ‘bridegroom’ or just ‘the man’ ‘on the wedding cake’. Dewey did indeed have a wooden, dark appearance and a black moustache.

(a) bridge over troubled water ‘Like a bridge over troubled water, / I will ease your mind’ comes from the song ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ (1970), by the American singer/songwriter Paul Simon. It sounds positively biblical – but although waters are troubled in Psalm 46:3 and John 5:7, the word ‘bridge’ occurs nowhere in the Bible. In fact, the phrase may have been influenced by ‘I’ll be a bridge over deep water if you trust my name’, spoken by the Reverend Claude Jeter, lead singer of the Swan Silvertones gospel group, in ‘O Mary Don’t You Weep’.

(a) bridge too far A phrase sometimes used allusively when warning of an unwise move or regretting one that has already been made. The clichéd use derives from the title of Cornelius Ryan’s book A Bridge Too Far (1974; film UK/US 1977) about the 1944 airborne landings in Holland. These were designed to capture eleven bridges needed for the Allied invasion of Germany – an attempt that came to grief at Arnhem, the Allies suffering more casualties there than in the Normandy landings. In advance of the action, Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Browning was reported to have protested to Field-Marshal Montgomery, who was in overall command: ‘But, sir, we may be going a bridge too far.’ More recent research has established that Browning did not see Montgomery before the operation and most likely did not make this comment to him. ‘A BRIDGE TOO NEAR. A public inquiry opened yesterday into plans to re-span the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire’ – The Times (20 June 1990); ‘Ratners: A bid too far?’ – The Observer (8 July 1990); ‘The Government is poised to announce legislation to ban [pub lotteries], but is its decision justified? Fran Abrams asks why ministers believe that this is a punt too far’ – The Independent (13 November 1997); ‘In The Path to Power [Lady Thatcher] describes Maastricht as “a treaty too far” and calls for the rolling back of European Union law’ – The Independent (22 May 1995).

bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Alert, especially like a squirrel. The expression appears to have been used in connection with US astronauts (circa 1967). Partridge/Slang suggests a Canadian 1930s’ origin. But the great popularizer must have been B. Merrill’s song with the title in 1953: ‘If the fox in the bush and the squirr’l in the tree be / Why in the world can’t you and me be / Bright eyed and bushy tailed and sparkelly as we can be?’

bright See ALL THINGS; ALWAYS MERRY.

bright young things Young socialites of the 1920s and early 30s whose reaction to the rigours of the First World War was to give parties and dance away the night, copied in more modest style by their poorer contemporaries. During a short period of frivolity, such people disregarded the poverty and unemployment around them and flouted convention. The females were also known as ‘flappers’. The phrase in this form was known by 1927, but Punch (4 August 1926) has: ‘The energies of that exuberant coterie known as the “Bright Young People” whose romps, practical jokes…have contributed to the liveliness of London during the last few months.’ Indeed, ‘Bright Young People’ would appear to be the original form of the phrase, and Evelyn Waugh, in his novel Vile Bodies (1930), continues to call them this, with capital first letters. However, when Waugh’s novel was filmed (UK 2003), it was given the title Bright Young Things.

bring back the cat Long the cry of corporal punishment enthusiasts in Britain demanding the return of beating as an official punishment. Usually associated with right-wing ‘hangers and floggers’ within the Conservative Party who seldom miss their chance to utter the cry (though not in so many words) at their annual conference. The cat-o’-nine-tails was the nine-thong whip once used to enforce discipline in the Royal Navy. A female jury member utters the cry in BBC TV, Hancock, ‘Twelve Angry Men’ (16 October 1959). In a now published letter (19 June 1970), Philip Larkin wrote: ‘Remember my song, How To Win The Next Election? “Prison for Strikers, Bring back the cat, Kick out the niggers, How about that?”’

(to) bring home the bacon Meaning ‘to be successful in a venture’, this may have to do with the Dunmow Flitch, a tradition established in AD 1111 at Great Dunmow in Essex. Married couples who can prove they have lived for a year and a day without quarrelling or without wishing to be unmarried can claim a gammon of bacon. Also, country fairs used to have competitions that involved catching a greased pig. If you ‘brought home the bacon’, you won. In 1910, when Jack Johnson, the American negro boxer, won the World Heavyweight boxing championship, his mother exlaimed: ‘He said he’d bring home the bacon, and the honey boy has gone and done it.’ The Oxford Companion to American History suggests that this ‘added a new phrase to the vernacular’. Unlikely, given the Dunmow Flitch connection, and yet the OED2’s earliest citation is not until 1924 (in P. G. Wodehouse).

bring on the girls (or dancing girls)! Let’s move on to something more entertaining. What any host might say to cheer up his guests, but probably originating in a literal suggestion from some bored American impresario as to what was needed to pep up a show in the 1920s. From P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, Bring On the Girls, Chap. 1 (1954): ‘[There is] a dull spot in the second act…Lending to the discussion the authority of long experience and uttering the slogan which he probably learned at his mother’s knee, [the impresario] says, “Bring on the girls!” It is the panacea that never fails. It dates back, according to the great Bert Williams, to the days of ancient Egypt…’

bring out your dead This was the cry of the carters who went about at night collecting corpses during the Great Plague of London in 1665. Source not found. Quoted in Rudyard Kipling, Stalky & Co., ‘An Unsavoury Interlude’ (1899).

Britain can take it During the Second World War, slogans rained down upon the hapless British as profusely as German bombs. The Ministry of Information, in blunderbuss fashion, fired away with as much material as possible in the hope of hitting something. Some of the slogans were brilliant, others were quite the reverse – hence the Ministry’s abandonment of ‘Britain can take it’ in December 1941. ‘While the public appreciated due recognition of their resolute qualities,’ wrote Ian McLaine in Ministry of Morale (1979), ‘they resented too great an emphasis on the stereotyped image of the Britisher in adversity as a wise-cracking Cockney. They were irritated by the propaganda which represented their grim experience as a sort of particularly torrid Rugby match.’ The notion was resurrected by Winston Churchill in May 1945 in a tribute to Cockney fortitude: ‘No one ever asked for peace because London was suffering. London was like a great rhinoceros, a great hippopotamus, saying: “Let them do their worst. London can take it.” London could take anything.’

British See AND THE BEST; BE BRITISH.

(the) British are coming, the British are coming! Doubt has been cast on Paul Revere’s reputed cry to warn people of approaching British troops during the American War of Independence. On his night ride of 18 April 1775, from Boston to Lexington, it is more likely that he cried ‘The regulars are out’ and, besides, there were many other night-riders involved. Hence, however, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, the title of a film (US 1966). Although this was an obvious allusion to Revere’s cry, it has also been said that these were the last words uttered by US Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, before he committed suicide by jumping from his office window at the Pentagon in 1949. In fact, two months after being replaced as Defense Secretary, Forrestal did commit suicide, but by jumping from a 16th-floor window at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where he was being treated for depression. It is not recorded that he said any words before jumping. All that is known is that he broke off from copying out a translation of Sophocles before killing himself. It is, however, apparently true (at least according to Daniel Yergin, The Shattered Peace, 1977) that within a week of losing his job, Forrestal became deranged and walked the streets saying, ‘The Russians are coming! I’ve seen Russian soldiers!’

(a) broad church A body or group or organization, of any kind, that takes a liberal and tolerant attitude to its members’ beliefs or activities. The use derives from the designation ‘Broad Church’ as applied to the Church of England from the mid-19th century onwards, meaning that it was broad enough to encompass a wide variety of beliefs and attitudes. According to Benjamin Jowett, the Master of Balliol College, Oxford, the term in relation to the Church of England was coined by the poet Arthur Hugh Clough.

broad sunlit uplands In Winston Churchill’s long speaking career, there was one thematic device he frequently resorted to for his perorations. It appears in many forms but may be summarized as the ‘broad, sunlit uplands’ approach. In his collected speeches, there are some thirteen occasions when he made use of the construction. ‘The level plain…a land of peace and plenty…the sunshine of a more gentle and a more generous age’ (1906); ‘I earnestly trust…that by your efforts our country may emerge from this period of darkness and peril once more in the sunlight of a peaceful time’ (at the end of a speech on 19 September 1915 when Churchill’s own position was precarious following the failure of the Gallipoli campaign); in his ‘finest hour’ speech, Churchill hoped that, ‘The life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands’ (1940); ‘It is an uphill road we have to tread, but if we reject the cramping, narrowing path of socialist restrictions, we shall surely find a way – and a wise and tolerant government – to those broad uplands where plenty, peace and justice reign’ (1951, prior to the General Election).

broke See ALL HELL.

(a) broken reed A weak support; something not to be trusted or leant on. In Isaiah 36:6, it is said that Hezekiah could not put his trust in Egypt if the Assyrians made war on Jerusalem: ‘Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed…whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it.’ In II Kings 18:21, a similar passage has ‘bruised reed’.

(a) Bronx cheer A noise of derisive disapproval. DOAS suggests that this form of criticism (known by 1929) originated at the National Theater in the Bronx, New York City, although the Yankee baseball stadium is also in the same area.

broom See AGE BEFORE.

broomstick See LIVE OVER THE.

brother See AM I NOT; BIG BROTHER; CRY ALL THE.

brother of the more famous Jack Brother of the More Famous Jack is the title of a novel (1982) by the English novelist Barbara Trapido (b. 1941). It refers neither to characters in the book nor to Robert and John F. Kennedy (as perhaps might be supposed). No, Chap. 4 has: ‘Yeats, William Butler…Brother of the more famous Jack, of course.’ The Irish poet W. B. Yeats did indeed have a brother, Jack, who was a leading artist. Often alluded to. From Robert Stephens, Knight Errant (1995): ‘The stars were Claude Hulbert, brother of the more famous Jack, his wife Delia Trevor, and another fine comedian called Sonny Hale.’ From Michael Kerrigan, Who Lies Where (1995): ‘Bankside was, of course, theatreland in the seventeenth century. Edmund Shakespeare, brother of the more famous William, is buried here.’

brothers See BAND OF.

brought to a satisfactory conclusion ‘Satisfactory conclusion’ on its own was known by 1825. The full phrase was cited as a ‘resounding commonplace’ by George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’ in Horizon (April 1946). ‘There Richard Cattell, who had unique experience in repairing inadvertently damaged common bile ducts, brought this sad episode to a more or less satisfactory conclusion’ – The Daily Telegraph (19 May 1994).

brown See DON’T SAY.

Brown Eminence See EMINENCE GRISE.

(to earn/win) brownie points Originating in American business or the military and certainly recorded before 1963, this has nothing to do with Brownies, the junior branch of the Girl Guides, and the points they might or might not gain for doing their ‘good deed for the day’. Oh no! This has a scatological origin, not unconnected with brown-nosing, brown-tonguing, arse-licking and other unsavoury methods of sucking up to someone important. Note also the American term ‘Brownie’, an award for doing something wrong. According to DOAS, ‘I got a pair of Brownies for that one’ (1942) refers to a system of disciplinary demerits on the railroads. The name was derived from the inventor of the system, presumably a Mr Brown.

(to be in a) brown study To be in idle or purposeless reverie. Originally from the sense of brown = gloomy and has been so since 1532: ‘Lack of company will soon lead a man into a brown study.’ Samuel Johnson defined the term as ‘gloomy meditation’.

brush See DAFT AS A; LIVE OVER THE.

(a) brush off Meaning ‘a rebuff’, this noun is said to derive from a habit of Pullman porters in the USA who, if they thought you were a poor tipper, gave you a quick brush over the shoulders and passed on to the next customer. However, perhaps the mere action of brushing unwanted dirt off clothing is sufficient reason for the expression. Known by 1941. ‘Later when she began to hate her job at the Evening Standard and made plans to leave, she gave Robert Lutyens the brush-off. She no longer needed him’ – Christopher Ogden, Life of the Party (1994).

brute force and ignorance What is needed to get, say, a recalcitrant machine to work again. Sometimes pronounced ‘hignorance’; sometimes abbreviated to ‘BF & I’. Known by 1930.

(the) buck stops here Harry S Truman (US President 1945–53) had a sign on his desk bearing these words, indicating that the Oval Office was where the passing of the buck had to cease. It appears to be a saying of his own invention. ‘Passing the buck’ is a poker player’s expression. It refers to a marker that can be passed on by someone who does not wish to deal. Later, Jimmy Carter restored Truman’s motto to the Oval Office. Listed in The Independent (24 December 1994) in the form ‘the buck must stop here’ as a cliché of newspaper editorials. When President Nixon published his memoirs (1978), people opposed to its sale went around wearing buttons that said ‘The book stops here’.

buds See DARLING.

bugger Bognor! What King George V said in reply to a suggestion that his favourite watering place be dubbed Bognor Regis (circa 1929). They are not his dying words, as often supposed – for example by Auberon Waugh in his Private Eye diary entry (9 August 1975) that stated: ‘Shortly before the King died, a sycophantic courtier said he was looking so much better he should soon be well enough for another visit to Bognor, to which the old brute replied “Bugger Bognor” and expired.’ The first recorded telling of this incorrect version that I have found is in a letter from R. K. Parkes to the New Statesman (3 March 1967). The correct dating and occasion is given by Kenneth Rose in his biography George V (1983) where it is linked to the King’s recuperative visit to Bognor after a serious illness in the winter of 1928–9: ‘A happier version of the legend rests on the authority of Sir Owen Morshead, the King’s librarian. As the time of the King’s departure from Bognor drew near, a deputation of leading citizens came to ask that their salubrious town should henceforth be known as Bognor Regis. They were received by Stamfordham, the King’s private secretary, who, having heard their petition, invited them to wait while he consulted the King in another room. The sovereign responded with the celebrated obscenity, which Stamfordham deftly translated for the benefit of the delegation. His Majesty, they were told, would be graciously pleased to grant their request.’

bugger’s grips The short whiskers on the cheeks of Old Salts (in the British navy) – fancifully supposed to be useful for a bugger to hold on to. By the early 20th century. Compare love handles, a possibly more heterosexual term for excess folds of fat above the hips, also presumed useful to hold on to during sexual intercourse. A noticeably popular usage in the 1990s but probably dating from the 1950s. Slanguage (1984) comments: ‘Affectionate usage, often by females describing their own bodies. “I haven’t put on weight, these are my love handles.” Synonymous is side steaks.’

Buggins’ turn (more correctly Buggins’s turn) This expression gives the reason for a job appointment having been made – when it is somebody’s turn to get the job rather than because the person is especially well qualified to do so. The name Buggins is used because it sounds suitably dull and humdrum (‘Joseph Buggins, Esq. J.P. for the borough’ appears in one of G. W. E. Russell’s Collections and Recollections, 1898. Trollope gives the name to a civil servant in Framley Parsonage, 1861. The similar sounding ‘Muggins’, self-applied to a foolish person, goes back to 1855, at least). The earliest recorded use of the phrase ‘Buggins’s turn’ is by Admiral Fisher, later First Sea Lord, in a letter of 1901. Later, in a letter of 1917 (printed in his Memories, 1919), Fisher wrote: ‘Some day the Empire will go down because it is Buggins’s turn.’ It is impossible to say whether Fisher coined the phrase, though he always spoke and wrote in a colourful fashion. But what do people with the name Buggins think of it? In February 1986, a Mr Geoffrey Buggins was reported to be threatening legal action over a cartoon that had appeared in the London Evening Standard. It showed the husband of Margaret Thatcher looking through the New Year’s Honours List and asking, ‘What did Buggins do to get an MBE?’ She replies: ‘He thought up all those excuses for not giving one to Bob Geldof’ (the pop star and fund raiser who only later received an Honorary KBE). The real-life Mr Buggins (who had been awarded an MBE for services to export in 1969) said from his home near Lisbon, Portugal: ‘I am taking this action because I want to protect the name of Buggins and also on behalf of the Muddles, Winterbottoms and the Sillitoes of this world.’ The editor of the Standard said: ‘We had no idea there was a Mr Buggins who had the MBE. I feel sorry for his predicament, but if we are to delete Buggins’s turn from the English language perhaps he could suggest an alternative.’

(the) bulldog breed In 1857, Charles Kingsley wrote of: ‘The original British bulldog breed, which, once stroked against the hair, shows his teeth at you for ever afterwards.’ In 1897, the British were called ‘boys of the bulldog breed’ in a music-hall song, ‘Sons of the Sea, All British Born’, by Felix McGlennon. At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Winston Churchill spoke at a ‘Call to Arms’ meeting at the London Opera House. ‘Mr Churchill has made a speech of tremendous voltage and carrying power,’ the Manchester Guardian reported. ‘His comparison of the British navy to a bulldog – “the nose of the bulldog has been turned backwards so that he can breathe without letting go” – will live. At the moment of delivery, with extraordinary appositeness, it was particularly vivid, as the speaker was able by some histrionic gift to suggest quite the bulldog as he spoke.’ Indeed, during the Second World War, small model bulldogs were manufactured bearing Churchill’s facial pout and wearing a tin helmet. John Bull as a symbol and personification of Britain (sometimes shown accompanied by a bulldog) dates from before John Arbuthnot’s The History of John Bull (1712), which was an anti-French tract. The organist and composer John Bull (1563–1628) is believed to have composed the first national anthem. Cartoonists built up an image of a stolid, fearless (sometimes boorish) country gentleman in riding jacket and top boots. Pamphleteers credited him with rugged common sense, patriotism and affability.

bullet See BITE THE.

(a) bull in a china shop A clumsy person. This is a proverbial saying in many languages but, apart from English, the animal named is invariably an elephant. From Captain Marryat, Jacob Faith, Chap. 15 (1834): ‘Whatever it is that smashes, Mrs. T. always swears it was the most valuable thing in the room. I’m like a bull in a china-shop.’

bull’s foot See DOESN’T KNOW HIS.

bully for you! A congratulatory phrase, latterly perhaps used a touch resentfully and ironically. ‘I’ve just won the lottery and married the woman of my dreams…’ ‘Bully for you!’ Established by the mid-19th century. A Punch cartoon (5 March 1881) drawn by Gerald du Maurier has the caption ‘Bully for little Timpkins!’

(a) bumper bundle From the radio record request shows Family Favourites and Two-Way Family Favourites on the BBC (1945–84). Cliff Michelmore, who used to introduce the programme from Hamburg, and later met and married the London presenter, Jean Metcalfe, recalled the origin of the phrase (in 1979): ‘It was invented by Jean. Her road to Damascus was at the crossroads on Banstead Heath one Sunday morning when driving in to do the programme. It was used to describe a large number of requests all for the same record, especially “Top Ten” hits, circa 1952–3.’

buried their own See THEY CAME.

Burleigh’s nod A significant nod of the head, whose meaning may be explained in any way. Referring to William Cecil (1st Lord Burleigh), the English courtier and politician (1520–98). Within R. B. Sheridan’s play The Critic (1779), there is a performance of a mock-tragedy on the Spanish Armada. Burleigh is represented as too preoccupied with affairs of state to be able to say anything, so he shakes his head and the character Puff explains what he means: ‘Why by that shake of the head, he gave you to understand that even though they had more justice in their cause and wisdom in their measures – yet, if there was not a greater spirit shown on the part of the people – the country would at last fall a sacrifice to the hostile ambition of the Spanish monarchy…’ ‘The devil! – did he mean all that by shaking his head?’ ‘Every word of it – if he shook his head as I taught him.’ Hence, also, the expression ‘To be as significant as the shake of Lord Burleigh’s head’.

(a) Burlington Bertie A swell gentleman, named after the one with the ‘Hyde Park drawl and the Bond Street crawl’, commemorated in a song with words and music by Harry B. Norris (first published 1900) and performed by Vesta Tilley. Not to be confused with ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’, a parody written in 1915 by William Hargreaves for his wife, Ella Shields, the male impersonator. In this song, now the better remembered of the two, Bertie is a more down-at-heel character.

BURMA Meaning, ‘Be Upstairs Ready, My Angel’. Lovers’ acronym for use in correspondence and to avoid military censorship. Probably in use by the First World War.

burn, baby, burn! A black extremists’ slogan that arose from the August 1965 riots in the Watts district of Los Angeles when 34 people were killed and entire blocks burnt. The 1974 song with this title by Hudson-Ford had other connotations. Indeed, it has been suggested that the phrase arose as a joke expression of sexual encouragement a year or so before the riots. Popularized by the Black disc jockey Magnificent Montague, it was called out by audiences to singers and musicians.

(to) burn daylight To waste time. Shakespeare twice uses this expression. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, II.i.52 (1601), Mistress Ford says: ‘We burn daylight.’ In Romeo and Juliet, I.iv.43 (1594), Mercutio says, ‘Come, we burn daylight, ho…I mean, sir, in delay / We waste our lights in vain, light lights by day.’ Hence, Burning Daylight, the title of a novel (1910) by Jack London.

(a) burning question The subject of the hour; what really needs to be addressed. Popular from the 19th century onwards. Benjamin Disraeli used the phrase in 1873. ‘The source of the Boulangist election expenditure is a burning question in France’ – St James’s Gazette (16 January 1889). ‘The burning question of the week has been whether a school teacher, now dead, beat boys during the 1960s. More than a quarter of the Times’s letters page was devoted to this urgent subject on Thursday, and nearly as much again on Friday’ – Independent on Sunday (1 May 1994).

(to) burn one’s boats To close off all one’s avenues of retreat. The OED2 is hopeless on this point – it’s earliest citation is from only 1886. Brewer (1894) has a short piece concentrating on the meaning and origin – ‘The allusion is to Julius Caesar and other generals, who burned their boats or ships when they invaded a foreign country, in order that their soldiers might feel that they must either conquer the country or die, as retreat would be impossible.’ So to Notes and Queries, which had a look at the matter three times between 1922 and 1932 and, first of all, found two allusions to the act (if not an actual use of the phrase) in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776). In Chap. 13, Asclepiodotus does it, acting for Constantius in the recovery of Britain from the usurper Allectus (circa AD 296), and in Chap. 56: Robert Guiscard proposes this measure before the battle of Durazzo in October 1081 – whether it was carried out is not very clear. Then Edward J. G. Forse contributes this: ‘The gentleman who “burnt his boats” was Agathocles, Tyrant of Syracuse. The details will be found in Smith’s Dictionary of Biography. This is worth recording, for most dictionaries (even Weekley) give all sorts of more recent instances, and some years ago I had an infinity of trouble in tracing the phrase back to what seems to be the original incident that started the expression.’ Compare (to) burn one’s bridges, meaning exactly the same thing. The earliest citation for this is Mark Twain in 1892.

(to) burn the midnight oil To sit up and work beyond midnight; to slave over something. Known by 1744. ‘Mr Moore, a council member since the mid-1970s, said: “I have three partners (one of whom is about to be a council member of the Irish institute), and I get tremendous support from them. But it does mean that I have to burn a lot of midnight oil to keep my end going”’ – The Independent (3 May 1994); ‘At a time of year when students and staff used to be in the classroom, students are now wandering around like lost sheep while the staff burn the midnight oil trying to get marking completed in a week’ – letter to the editor, Times Higher Education Supplement (24 February 1995).

burn your bra! A feminist slogan from America, circa 1970, encouraging women to destroy an item of apparel quite clearly designed by a male chauvinist and likely to make a woman more of a sex object. There is an analogy with the burning of draft-cards as a protest against the Vietnam War.

(to) bury the hatchet Meaning, to settle an argument – after the American Indian ritual of burying two axes to seal a peace treaty. Recorded by 1680.

bush telegraph See HEAR SOMETHING ON.

(to do the) business See IT’S THE BUSINESS.

business as usual The standard declaration posted when a shop has suffered some misfortune like a fire or is undergoing alterations. However, in the First World War the phrase was adopted in a more general sense. Herbert Morgan, an advertising man, promoted the slogan – that had ‘quite a vogue till it fell terribly out of favour as being, firstly, terribly untrue and, secondly, hopelessly inappropriate’ – Eric Field, Advertising: the forgotten years (1959). In a Guildhall speech on 9 November 1914, Winston Churchill said: ‘The maxim of the British people is “Business as usual”.’ Rather curiously, a cartoon appeared in Punch on 12 August 1914 (i.e. just as war was breaking out) that showed a group of builders renovating a pub (and sitting around drinking thereat) with the caption: ‘BUSINESS AS USUAL DURING ALTERATIONS’. The first occurrence of the phrase (though not used in this way) appears to be in Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722): ‘…the Apprehensions of its being the Infection went also quite away with my Illness, and I went about my Business as usual.’ Dickens, Thackeray and Samuel Butler all used the phrase in the 19th century, but again not quite in this manner.

business before pleasure A golden rule, known by 1767, but in this precise form only since 1837.

(a) busman’s holiday A holiday or break spent doing much the same as you do for a living – as though a bus driver were to go on a motoring holiday. Recorded by 1893. Oddly, the word ‘busman’ has virtually no existence outside this phrase.

bustling nightlife ‘Bustling trade’ was probably the forerunner of this travel writer’s cliché. ‘Bustling nightlife’ was listed in The Independent ‘DIY travel writers’ cliché kit’ (31 December 1988). ‘I had now seen both sides of Ibiza – the bustling nightlife for which it is justly famed, and the less well-known northern coastline where white sandy beaches, hidden coves, beautiful countryside and clean shallow waters makes it an ideal family holiday haven’ – Today (8 May 1993); ‘Suffering businesses have hit on a plan to restore Asakusa’s bustling trade and jazzy nightlife. They have pooled £300,000 to open a geisha school’ – The Daily Telegraph (29 December 1993).

busy See AS BUSY.

(the) Butcher Nickname of Ulysses S. Grant (1822–85), commander-in-chief of Union forces in the American Civil War and 18th President of the US (1869–77). His opponents in the North called him this because they thought he was careless of the lives of men in his army. Critics opposed to tyrannical ways and his running for a third presidential term dubbed him American Caesar.

but I’m all right now Catchphrase from the BBC radio show ITMA (1939–49). Sophie Tuckshop (Hattie Jacques) was always stuffing herself and giggling and pretending to suffer. Then, with a squeal, she would say this.

(the) butler did it! The origins of this phrase – an (often ironic) suggested solution to detective stories in their 1920s and 30s heyday – remain a complete blank. A review of Edgar Wallace’s play The Man Who Changed His Name in Punch (28 March 1928) appears to be alluding to the idea: ‘For a long time, I must say, I thought the butler had something to do with it…I think the play would have been subtler if the unravelling of the mystery had included the butler.’ A possible earlier sighting was recalled by a correspondent (1983) who said he had heard it spoken by a member of the audience after a showing of the last episode of the film series The Exploits of Elaine at a London cinema in circa 1916. Joseph R. Sandy noted: ‘The detective was called Craig Kennedy and the butler’s name was Bennet. I do not remember who played the parts (except the heroine, who was Pearl White) or anything much more about the serial.’ Mary Roberts Rinehart, the American novelist (1878–1938), is sometimes credited with the phrase, though she does not actually use it in The Circular Staircase (1908) or The Door (1930) where butlers may be the guilty parties. The Georgette Heyer thriller Why Shoot a Butler? (1933) manages to avoid any mention of the phrase. Later, however, in Patricia Wentworth’s The Ivory Dagger (1951) the butler really does do it. The earliest use of the phrase it is possible to give chapter and verse for is the caption to a Punch cartoon by Norman Mansbridge in the issue of 14 September 1938. Two policemen are shown standing outside a cinema that is showing The Mansion Murder and on the posters it asks ‘Who killed the duke?’ One policeman is saying to the other: ‘I guessed the butler did it.’ In 1956, Robert Robinson made an allusion in his Oxford thriller Landscape With Dead Dons: ‘“Well, well,” said the Inspector, handing his coffee cup to Dimbleby, who was passing with a tray, “it always turns out to be the butler in the end”.’ The film My Man Godfrey (1957 – not the 1936 original), which is not even a whodunnit, contains the line: ‘The butler did it! He made every lady in the house, oh, so very happy!’ P. G. Wodehouse wrote The Butler Did It (1957), but this was known as Something Fishy in the UK.

but, Miss ---, you’re beautiful (without your glasses on)! Were these phrases (or something like them) ever actually delivered in a Hollywood movie – or only in later parodies of the situation where a boss or producer discovers that his glasseswearing secretary or auditionee is unexpectedly attractive when she takes them off? In Act 2 of William Inge’s 1953 play Picnic, a Mrs Potts delivers the following speech, having just seen the plainer of two teenage daughters get dressed up: ‘It’s a miracle, that’s what it is! I never knew Millie could look so pretty. It’s just like a movie I saw once with Betty Grable – or was it Lana Turner? Anyway, she played the part of a secretary to some very important businessman. She wore glasses and did her hair real plain and men didn’t pay any attention to her at all. Then one day she took off her glasses and her boss wanted to marry her right away! Now all the boys are going to fall in love with Millie!’ So, a search was on for a Turner or Grable movie that fitted the bill. In a pictorial history of Paramount, the plot of Thrill of a Lifetime (US 1937) is summarized as: ‘A prim secretary’s yearning for her playwright boss is unrequited until she takes off her glasses. (It was the boss, Leif Erickson, who needed them, considering she had been Betty Grable all along).’ But the script of the movie does not contain anything approaching the key line. Following an earlier glasses-off moment, Dick Powell says to Ruby Keeler in Footlight Parade (US 1933), ‘Oh, but what a change, you’re beautiful.’ Katharine Hepburn might seem to be alluding to the line when she comments to Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby (US 1938), ‘You’re so good-looking without your glasses.’ There is a particularly delicious moment between Humphrey Bogart and Dorothy Malone when, as a bookseller, she takes her glasses off and lets down her hair in The Big Sleep (US 1946), but the line itself is left unspoken. Indeed, the line only comes into its own when conscious allusions and parodies of the situation begin to occur in Hollywood movies – as, for example, in The Bandwagon (US 1953). In addition, a Peter Arno cartoon appeared in The New Yorker (20 May 1950) that shows a director on a movie set instructing an actor in his role viz-à-viz a hugely sexy actress: ‘You’ve never noticed her, see? She’s just an ordinary Plain Jane an’ you’re oblivious to her. Then alluva sudden she happens t’take off her glasses…’ In fact, one doubts whether the line as such was ever actually spoken in the movies – only in parodies and allusions back to the situation. The line is cited in the song ‘I Love a Film Cliché’ by Dick Vosburgh and Trevor Lyttleton from the show A Day in Hollywood, A Night in the Ukraine (1980) in the form, ‘Why, Miss Murray, without your glasses, you’re…BEAUTIFUL!’ In his introduction to The Faber Book of Movie Verse (1993), Philip French has the cliché as ‘You look beautiful without your glasses’ – ‘a line that in endless variations reaches down to the 1992 Australian film Strictly Ballroom.’

but not in the South…A phrase with which to deflate or obstruct someone you are talking to. Lifemanship (1950) was the second volume of Stephen Potter’s humorous exploration of the art of ‘One-Upmanship’, which he defined as ‘how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly’. In discussing ways of putting down experts while in conversation with them, Potter introduces this ‘blocking phrase’ with which to disconcert, if not totally silence, them: ‘“Yes, but not in the South”, with slight adjustments will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person.’ In a footnote, Potter remarks: ‘I am required to state that World Copyright of this phrase is owned by its brilliant inventor, Mr Pound’ – though which ‘Pound’ he does not reveal. Indeed, the blocking move was known before this. Richard Usborne wrote of it in a piece called ‘Not in the South’ included in The Pick of ‘Punch’ (1941). He introduced a character called Eustace who had found a formula ‘for appearing to be a European, and world, pundit. It was a formula that let me off the boredom of finding out facts and retaining knowledge.’ It was to remark, ‘Not in the South.’

butter See BIG BUTTER; FINE WORDS.

butter fingers! What you cry when a person has dropped something. Date of origin unknown but first found in connection with a cricketer who lets the ball slip through his fingers. ‘At every bad attempt to catch, and every failure to stop the ball, he launched his personal displeasure at the head of the devoted individual in such denunciations as…butter-fingers, muff, humbug, and so forth’ – Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Chap. 7 (1837); ‘Swinging the hammer with a will, [he] discharged a smashing blow on his own knuckles…He crushed down an oath and substituted the harmless comment, “butter fingers!”’ – R. L. Stevenson & Lloyd Osbourne, The Wrong Box, Chap. 5 (1889).

(the) butterfly effect ‘Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?’ was the title of a paper on predictability in weather forecasting delivered to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington DC, on 29 December 1979 by Edward Lorenz (b. 1917), an American meteorologist. Apparently, Lorenz had originally used the image of a seagull’s wing flapping. What is now called ‘The Butterfly Effect’ – how small acts lead to large – appeals to chaos theorists, who view the physical universe as largely irregular and unpredictable. J. Gleick gives another example in Chaos: Making a New Theory (1988), also from weather forecasting: ‘The notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.’

(to look as if) butter wouldn’t melt in one’s mouth A phrase used critically of people who appear more innocent, harmless or demure than they can possibly be. A surprisingly ancient expression: ‘He maketh as thoughe butter wolde nat melte in his mouthe’ – Jehan Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement de la langue françoyse (1530). Presumably the suggestion is that the person so described looks so impossibly ‘cool’ that if butter was put in the (warm) mouth it still would not melt. Perhaps mostly used about women – as in Swift’s Polite Conversation (1738)? Elsa Lanchester is supposed to have said of her fellow actress Maureen O’Hara: ‘She looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Or anywhere else’ – quoted in News Summaries (30 January 1950).

but that’s another story Phrase with which (amusingly) to break off a narrative on the grounds of assumed irrelevance. The popularity of this catchphrase around 1900 derived from Rudyard Kipling. He used it in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), but it had appeared earlier elsewhere. For example, in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1760), it is intended to preclude one of the many digressions of which that novel is full.

buy cheap, sell dear See ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT.

buy some for Lulu See WOT A LOT.

by and large Meaning, ‘generally speaking’. Originally this was a nautical term: to sail by and large meant to keep a ship on course so that it was sailing at a good speed even though the direction of the wind was changing. Brewer (1999) defines it thus: ‘To sail close to the wind and slightly off it, so making it easier for the helmsman to steer and less likely for the vessel to be taken aback.’ The nautical sense was current by 1669, the general sense by 1706.

--- by Christmas PHRASES At first, it was thought that the First World War would not last very long. Having started in August 1914, it would be ‘over by Christmas’, hence the unofficial, anti-German slogan Berlin by Christmas. The phrase all over by Christmas was used by some optimists as it had been in several previous wars – none of which was over by the Christmas in question. The fact that this promise was not fulfilled did not prevent Henry Ford from saying, as he tried to stop the war a year later: ‘We’re going to try to get the boys out of the trenches before Christmas. I’ve chartered a ship, and some of us are going to Europe.’ He was not referring to American boys because the United States had not joined the war at this stage. The New York Tribune announced: ‘GREAT WAR ENDS CHRISTMAS DAY. FORD TO STOP IT.’ In her Autobiography (1977), Agatha Christie remembered that the South African War would ‘all be over in a few weeks’. She went on: ‘In 1914 we heard the same phrase. “All over by Christmas”. In 1940, “Not much point in storing the carpets with mothballs” – this when the Admiralty took over my house – “It won’t last over the winter”.’ In Tribune (28 April 1944), George Orwell recalled a young man ‘on the night in 1940 when the big ack-ack barrage was fired over London for the first time’, insisting, ‘I tell you, it’ll all be over by Christmas.’ In his diary for 28 November 1950, Harold Nicolson wrote, ‘Only a few days ago [General] MacArthur was saying, “Home by Christmas,” and now he is saying, “This is a new war [Korea]”.’ Flexner (1976) comments: ‘The war will be over by Christmas was a popular 1861 expression [in the American Civil War]. Since then several generals and politicians have used the phrase or variations of it, in World War I, World War II, and the Korean war – and none of the wars was over by Christmas.’ (Clever-clogs are apt to point out, however, that all wars are eventually over by a Christmas…)

bye bye, everyone See IZZY-WIZZY.

(a) bygone era Meaning, simply, ‘a period in the past.’ Date of origin unknown. A cliché, especially in tourist promotions, by the 1980s.

by Grand Central Station I sat down and wept See under --- BABYLON.

by gum, she’s a hot ‘un! Characteristic phrase of the (very) North of England comedian Frank Randle (1902–57) one of whose turns was as a randy old hitchhiker chiefly interested in girls’ legs and ale. Randle was an earthy Lancastrian who did not travel well as a performer but has acquired something of a cult following now that he is safely dead. His other phrases included: any more fer sailing? and by gum, ah’ve supped sum ale toneet (compare WE’VE SOOPED SOME STOOFF…under RIGHT MONKEY!) Also: would y’care for a Woodbine? a cigarette-offering joke, believed to have been perpetrated by Randle in the film Somewhere in England (UK 1940). A correspondent suggests that what he actually said was ‘Would you care for a Woodbine? Go on, take a big one’ – and then offered a tin full of fag-ends. For ‘by gum’, see EE, BAH GUM.

by hook or by crook OED2, while finding a couple of references in the works of John Wycliffe around 1380, states firmly that while there are ‘many theories’, there is no firm evidence for the origin of this phrase meaning ‘by some means or another’. In fact, the only real theory is the one about peasants in feudal times being allowed to take for firewood only those tree branches that they could pull down ‘by hook or by crook’ – ‘crook’ here meaning the hooked staff carried by shepherds (and also, symbolically, by bishops). ‘By hook or by crook I’ll be last in this book’ is the cliché you append to the final page of an autograph book when asked to contribute a little something more than your signature.

by jingo! Now a mild and meaningless oath, this phrase derived its popularity from G. W. Hunt’s notable anti-Russian music-hall song ‘We Don’t Want to Fight (But By Jingo If We Do…)’ (1877). The song gave the words ‘jingo’ and ‘jingoism’ their modern meaning (excessive patriotism), but the oath had existed before this. Punch (3 February 1872) had a cartoon caption, ‘Ghosts, by Jingo!’ Motteux in his translation of Rabelais in 1694 put ‘by jingo’ for ‘par dieu‘, and there is some evidence to show that ‘jingo’ was conjuror’s gibberish dating from a decade or two before.

by Jove, I needed that! Used by several comedians, as though after consuming long-awaited alcoholic refreshment. Ken Dodd said it (1960s/70s) after a quick burst on the banjo to relieve tension. It may also have been used in the BBC radio Goon Show.

by their fruits shall ye know them Meaning, ‘you can judge people by the results they produce’. A direct quotation from Matthew 7:20 in the part of the Sermon on the Mount about being wary of false prophets.

by the pale moonlight (sometimes in the pale moonlight) Poetic phrase, first found in Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto 2, St. 1 (1805): ‘If thou would’st view fair Melrose aright, / Go visit it by the pale moonlight.’ Next, ‘in the pale moonlight’ occurs in Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 43 (1840). Then from the song ‘Who Were You With Last Night?’ (1912), written by the British composer of music-hall songs Fred Godfrey (1889–1953) with Mark Sheridan: ‘Who were you with last night? / Out in the pale moonlight’. John Masefield’s ‘Captain Stratton’s Fancy’ (1903) has: ‘And some are all for dancing by the pale moonlight’; and from the much later film Batman (US 1989): ‘Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?’

(to get/have someone) by the short and curlies To have someone in a metaphorical position from which it is impossible to escape – from the fact that if someone is holding you by the short (and sometimes curly) hairs on the back of the neck, it is very painful. The phrase probably does not have anything to do with pubic hairs. Recorded by Eric Partridge as British forces’ slang in 1948 and dated by him to about 1935. This would seem to be an extension of to get/have someone by the short hairs, which dates from 1905 at least and possibly back to the 1890s.

by the sword divided Consciously archaic phrase devised for the title of the BBC TV historical drama By the Sword Divided (1983–5). Set in the English Civil War, this series was created by John Hawkesworth who commented (1991): ‘When I first wrote down the idea for a story about the Civil War I called it The Laceys of Arnescote…[but] I decided the title didn’t convey the sort of Hentyish swashbuckling style that we were aiming at, so I thought again. The title By the Sword Divided came to me as I was walking along a beach in Wales.’ Earlier, in dealing with the Civil War period, Macaulay had written in his History of England, Chaps. 1–2 (1848): ‘Thirteen years followed during which England was…really governed by the sword’; ‘the whole nation was sick of government by the sword’; ‘anomalies and abuses…which had been destroyed by the sword’.