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(a’)babbled of green fields One of the most pleasing touches to be found in all of Shakespeare may not have been his at all. In Henry V (II.iii.17), the Hostess (formerly Mistress Quickly) relates the death of Falstaff: ‘A’parted ev’n just between twelve and one, ev’n at the turning o’ th’ tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers’ end, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a’babbled of green fields.’ The 1623 Folio of Shakespeare’s plays renders the last phrase as ‘and a Table of green fields’, which makes no sense, though some editors put ‘as sharp as a pen, on a table of green field’ (taking ‘green field’ to mean green cloth.) Shakespeare may well have handwritten ‘babld’ and the printer read this as ‘table’ – a reminder that the text of the plays is far from carved in stone and a prey to mishaps in the printing process, as are all books and newspapers. The generally accepted version was inserted by Lewis Theobald in his 1733 edition. As the 1954 Arden edition comments: ‘“Babbled of green fields” is surely more in character with the Falstaff who quoted the Scriptures…and who lost his voice hallooing of anthems. Now he is in the valley of the shadow, the “green pasture” of Psalm 23 might well be on his lips.’ Francis Kilvert, the diarist, makes a pleasant allusion to the phrase in his entry for 15 May 1875: ‘At the house where I lodge there is a poor captive thrush who fills the street with his singing as he “babbles of green fields”.’

babes in the wood (1) Simple, inexperienced, trustful people who are easily fooled. Known by 1866. So called by way of allusion to ‘The Children in the Wood’, an old ballad based on the case of two Norfolk children whose uncle plotted to kill them in order to obtain their inheritance. But one of the ruffians employed to do the deed prevented it, and the children were left in a wood to perish. The story (sometimes held to be true and to have taken place in Wayland Wood near Watton) was published in Norwich by Thomas Millington in 1595. In ballad form, it is mentioned in a play by Rob Yarrington (1601) and in Percy’s Reliques (1765). The story also forms the basis of the popular British pantomime format, Babes in the Wood.

(2) The name has also been applied to Irish ruffians who ranged the Wicklow mountains and the Enniscorthy woods towards the end of the 18th century.

(3) It was also given to men in the (wooden) stocks or pillory.

babies See KILL YOUR DARLINGS.

baby See DON’T THROW.

---Babylon PHRASES. Used to describe groups of people or whole societies where high living and scandals abound. The link to the biblical Babylon is not direct. Although heathen, that was rather a place of magnificence and luxury. In 588BC, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, took Jerusalem and carried away many of the inhabitants to Babylon where they became slaves. These somewhat stuffy Jews reacted strongly to the amorality of the Babylonians (described by Herodotus), and Babylon became a byword for cruelty and vice. When the Romans took Jerusalem in AD 70, some Jewish writers (including the author of the Book of Revelation) referred to Rome as Babylon. The modern connotation of Babylon probably goes back at least as far as Disraeli, who wrote in Lothair (1847): ‘London is a modern Babylon’. Dickens has Mr Micawber make the same comparison in David Copperfield (1850), but here Babylon is evoked only to signify a magnificent, big city. So Brewer (1894) may have been a touch off the mark in saying that ‘The Modern Babylon’ is ‘London…on account of its wealth, luxury and dissipation’. The key to why, since film-maker Kenneth Anger entitled his book of movie scandals Hollywood Babylon in 1975, we have had a spate of titles like Rock’n’Roll Babylon (1982), Washington Babylon (1996), TV Babylon (1997) and Hamptons Babylon (1997) seems to lie in the popularization of the idea of Babylon as a city of decadence promoted by D. W. Griffith in his film Intolerance (US 1916). The Anger book is prefaced by a poem by Don Blanding ‘as recited by Leo Carillo in the 1935 musical Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove’: ‘Hollywood, Hollywood…/ Fabulous Hollywood…/ Celluloid Babylon, / Glorious, glamorous…/ City delirious, / Frivolous, serious…/ Bold and ambitious, / And vicious and glamorous…’ This led to Gary Herman, for example, writing of the original Babylon in his preface to Rock’n’Roll Babylon: ‘[It] was the capital of a vast and profligate empire. [Similarly] in the rock world, its citizens may start from humble beginnings, but soon they are ushered into lush hanging gardens where there are no dreams of democracy and change, only dreams of power, wealth and the perfect tan.’ In a separate development, because the Babylonians had enslaved the Israelites, Afro-Caribbean people with a history of enslavement have taken to referring to their oppressors – and by extension prosperous and privileged members of racist white society – as ‘Babylon’. In particular, ‘The Babylon’ means the police. A No.1 hit of 1977 for Boney M, the West Indies group, was ‘Rivers of Babylon’, based on ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, and wept’ (Psalm 137:1) – which in the Book of Common Prayer is, ‘By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept.’ But, equally, this Babylonic allusion has also been used in what would seem to be the more traditional sense: in 1945, Elizabeth Smart likened New York to Babylon in the title of her novel, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, a short, account of a love affair written in ‘poetic prose’. Much earlier, in a letter of 12 June 1775, Horace Walpole wrote: ‘By the waters of Babylon we sit down and weep, when we think of thee, O America!’

(a) bachelor gay Someone who puts himself about in a way characteristic of the unmarried male. ‘A Bachelor Gay (Am I)’ is the title of a song by James W. Tate in The Maid of the Mountains (1917). An arch phrase, to be used only within quotation marks, even before the change in meaning of ‘gay’ from the 1960s onwards. ‘“He was a bachelor gay,” says Diana. “He left his first wife and small child, years before I knew him…After that he’d lived at separate times with two other women and walked out on both of them. He said to me: “You must appreciate I’ve been around a lot.” It was part of the appeal’ – Daily Mail (29 November 1993).

back See—IS BACK.

back burner See PUT (SOMETHING ON).

back in the knife-box, little Miss Sharp! A nannyism addressed to a person with a sharp tongue. Compare the similar you’re so sharp you’ll be cutting yourself. Casson/Grenfell also has: ‘Very sharp we are today, we must have slept in the knife box / we must have slept on father’s razor case / we must have been up to Sheffield’. Also there is Mr Sharp from Sheffield, straight out of the knife-box! Paul Beale found a homely example of the knife-box version in Donald Davie’s autobiographical study These the Companions (1982): ‘More than twenty-five years ago I [composed] a poem which has for epigraph what I remember my mother [in Barnsley, Yorkshire] saying when I was too cocky as a child: “Mr Sharp from Sheffield, straight out of the knife-box!”’ Earlier than all this, Murdstone referred to David – Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chap. 2 (1849) – as ‘Mr Brooks of Sheffield’, to indicate that he was ‘sharp’. There was indeed a firm of cutlery makers called Brookes of Sheffield – a city that has for centuries been the centre of the English cutlery trade.

back of a lorry See FELL OFF THE.

backroom boys Nickname given to scientists and boffins – and specifically to those relied on to produce inventions and new gadgets for weaponry and navigation in the Second World War. Compare The Small Back Room, the title of a novel (1943) by Nigel Balchin. The phrase was originated, in this sense, by Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production when he paid tribute to his research department in a broadcast on 19 March 1941: ‘Let me say that the credit belongs to the boys in the backrooms [sic]. It isn’t the man who sits in the limelight who should have the praise. It is not the men who sit in prominent places. It is the men in the backrooms.’ In the US, the phrase ‘backroom boys’ can be traced to the 1870s at least, but Beaverbrook can be credited with the modern application to scientists and boffins. The inspiration quite obviously was his favourite film, Destry Rides Again (1939), in which Marlene Dietrich jumped on the bar of the Last Chance saloon and sang the Frank Loesser song ‘See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have’.

(with our) backs to the wall This expression, meaning ‘up against it’, dates back to 1535 at least but was memorably used when the Germans launched their last great offensive of the First World War. On 12 April 1918, Sir Douglas Haig, the British Commander-in-Chief on the Western Front, issued an order for his troops to stand firm: ‘Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end.’ A. J. P. Taylor in his English History 1914–45 (1966) commented: ‘In England this sentence was ranked with Nelson’s last message. At the front, the prospect of staff officers fighting with their backs to the walls of their luxurious chateaux had less effect.’

back to basics John Major, the British Prime Minister, launched this ill-fated slogan in a speech to the Conservative Party Conference in 1993: ‘The message from this Conference is clear and simple. We must go back to basics…The Conservative Party will lead the country back to these basics, right across the board: sound money, free trade; traditional teaching; respect for the family and the law.’ A number of government scandals in the ensuing months exposed the slogan as hard to interpret or, at worst, suggesting rather a return to ‘the bad old days’. The alliterative phrase (sometimes ‘back to the basics’) may first have surfaced in the USA where it was the mid-1970s’ slogan of a movement in education to give priority to the teaching of the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic.

back to normalcy Together with ‘Return to normalcy with Harding’, this was a slogan effectively used by US President Warren G. Harding. Both were based on a word extracted from a speech he had made in Boston during May 1920: ‘America’s present need is not heroics but healing, not nostrums but normalcy, not revolution but restoration, not agitation but adjustment, not surgery but serenity, not the dramatic but the dispassionate, not experiment but equipoise, not submergence in internationality but sustainment in triumphant nationality.’ Out of such an alliterative bog stuck the word ‘normalcy’ – a perfectly good Americanism, though it has been suggested that Harding was actually mispronouncing the word ‘normality’. He himself claimed that ‘normalcy’ was what he had meant to say, having come across it in a dictionary.

back to square one Meaning ‘back to the beginning’, this phrase is sometimes said to have gained currency in the 1930s through its use by football commentators on British radio. Radio Times used to print a map of the football field divided into numbered squares to which commentators would refer. Thus: ‘Cresswell’s going to make it – FIVE. There it goes, slap into the middle of the goal – SEVEN. Cann’s header there – EIGHT. The ball comes out to Britton. Britton manoeuvres. The centre goes right in – BACK TO EIGHT. Comes on to Marshall – SIX’ (an extract from the BBC commentary on the 1933 Cup Final between Everton and Manchester City). The idea had largely been abandoned by 1940. Against this proposition is the fact that square ‘one’ was nowhere near the beginning. The game began at the centre spot, which was at the meeting point of squares three, four, five and six. On the other hand, when the ball was passed to the goal-keeper (an event far commoner than a re-start after a goal), then this would indeed have been ‘back to square one’ (though, equally, two, seven or eight). Indeed, Partridge/Catch Phrases prefers an earlier origin in the children’s game of hopscotch or in the board game Snakes and Ladders. If a player was unlucky and his or her counter landed on the snake’s head in Square 97 or thereabouts, it had to make the long journey ‘back to square one’.

(ah, well,) back to the drawing-board! Meaning ‘We’ve got to start again from scratch’, this is usually said after the original plan has been aborted. It is just possible this phrase began life in the caption to a cartoon by Peter Arno that appeared in The New Yorker (3 January 1941). An official, with a rolled-up engineering plan under his arm, is walking away from a recently crashed plane and saying: ‘Well, back to the old drawing board.’

back to the jungle A return to primitive conditions, nearly always used figuratively (as in ‘a return to the Dark Ages’). Winston Churchill, in a speech about post-Revolution Russia on 3 January 1920, referred to a recent visitor to that country: ‘Colonel John Ward…has seen these things for many months with his own eyes…[and] has summed all up in one biting, blasting phrase – “Back to the jungle”.’

back to the land The cry ‘Back to the land!’ was first heard at the end of the 19th century when it was realized that the Industrial Revolution and the transfer of the population towards non-agricultural work had starved farming of labour. From The Times (25 October 1894): ‘All present were interested in the common practice that it was desirable, if possible, to bring the people back to the land.’ At about this time, a Wickham Market farmer wrote to Sir Henry Rider Haggard, who was making an inventory of the decline, published as Rural England (1902): ‘The labourers “back to the land”. That is the cry of the press and the fancy of the people. Well, I do not think that they will ever come back; certainly no legislation will ever bring them. Some of the rising generation may be induced to stay, but it will be by training them to the use of machinery and paying them higher wages. It should be remembered that the most intelligent men have gone: these will never come back, but the rising generation may stay as competition in the town increases, and the young men of the country are better paid.’ By 1905, the Spectator (23 December) was saying: ‘“Back-to-the-land” is a cry full not only of pathos, but of cogency.’ In the 1970s, a British TV comedy series was called Backs to the Land, playing on the phrase to provide an innuendo about its heroines – ‘Land Girls’, members of the Women’s Land Army conscripted to work on the land during the Second World War (though the WLA had first been established in the First World War.)

(either) back us or sack us From a speech by James Callaghan, when British Prime Minister, at the Labour Party Conference (5 October 1977). This became a format phrase in British politics, usually spoken by an individual rather than a whole government. From The Independent (25 October 1989): ‘The Chancellor of the Exchequer [Nigel Lawson] was last night challenged by the Opposition to stand up to the Prime Minister, say “Back me or sack me” and end confusion over who is running the economy…“It is time to say (to the Prime Minister) either back me or sack me”…Mr Smith said.’ Compare PUT UP OR SHUT UP.

bacon See BRING HOME THE.

bad See ANYONE WHO; CAN’T BE.

bad egg See GOOD EGG.

badger See BALD AS A.

(a) bad hair day A day on which you feel depressed, possibly because – as it used to be put – you ‘can’t do a thing’ with your hair. American origin, early 1990s. ‘I’m fine, but you’re obviously having a bad hair day’ – line delivered by Kristy Swanson in the film Buffy, The Vampire Slayer (US 1992); ‘“Having a bad hair day”, in the fastchanging slang favoured by Californian teenagers, is how you feel when you don’t want to leave the house: out of sorts, ugly and a bit depressed…having a bad hair day is meant to be a metaphor for a bad mood’ – The Daily Telegraph (19 December 1992); ‘The Chanel public relations director is having what Manhattanites describe as a bad hair day. But, somewhat perversely, she is quite enjoying herself’ – The Times (13 January 1993); ‘[Hillary Clinton] stopped saying “two-fer-one” and “vote for him, you get me” – but still, one bad hair day was following the next. Soon she started making jokes about it with her campaign staff. “How ‘bout it?” she’d say. “Another bad hair day?”’ – The Guardian (19 January 1993).

bah, humbug! Dismissive catchphrase, derived from Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave 1 (1843): ‘“Bah,” said Scrooge. “Humbug!”’ Ebenezer Scrooge, an old curmudgeon, userer and miser, has this view of the Christmas spirit until frightened into changing his ways by the appearance of visions and a ghost. The derivation of the word ‘humbug’ meaning ‘deception, sham’ is uncertain but it suddenly came into vogue circa 1750.

(a) baker’s dozen Thirteen. In use by the 16th century, this phrase may have originated with the medieval baker’s habit of giving away an extra loaf with every twelve to avoid being fined for providing underweight produce. The surplus was known as ‘inbread’ and the thirteenth loaf, the ‘vantage loaf’. A devil’s dozen is also thirteen – the number of witches who would gather when summoned by the devil.

(the) balance of power The promotion of peace through parity of strength in rival groups – an expression used by the British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, in the House of Commons (13 February 1741). Safire (1978) states that the phrase had earlier been used in international diplomacy by 1700. Initially, the phrase appears to have been ‘the balance of power in Europe’. In 1715, Alexander Pope wrote a poem with the title ‘The Balance of Europe’: ‘Now Europe’s balanc’d, neither side prevails; / For nothing’s left in either of the scales.’

bald See FIGHT BETWEEN.

(as) bald as a badger/bandicoot/coot Completely bald. ‘Bald as a coot’ has been known since 1430. The aquatic coot, known as the bald coot, has the appearance of being bald. The Australian marsupial, the bandicoot, is not bald but is presumably evoked purely for the alliteration and because the basic ‘coot’ expression is being alluded to. As for badger, the full expression is ‘bald as a badger’s bum’. There was once a belief that bristles for shaving brushes were plucked from this area. Christy Brown, Down All the Days (1970), has, rather, ‘bald as a baby’s bum’.

bald-headed See GO AT SOMETHING.

(Mr) Balfour’s poodle A reference to the House of Lords. David Lloyd George spoke in the House of Commons on 26 June 1907 in the controversy over the power of the upper house. He questioned the Lords’ role as a ‘watchdog’ of the constitution and suggested that A. J. Balfour, the Conservative leader, was using the party’s majority in the upper chamber to block legislation by the Liberal government (in which Lloyd George was President of the Board of Trade). He said: ‘[The House of Lords] is the leal and trusty mastiff which is to watch over our interests, but which runs away at the first snarl of the trade unions. A mastiff? It is the Right Honourable Gentleman’s poodle. It fetches and carries for him. It bites anybody that he sets it on to.’ Hence, all subsequent ‘—’s poodle’ jibes usually applied to one politician’s (or government’s) subservience to another. ‘Ninety per cent of respondents feared military action against Baghdad would result in more September 11-style attacks on the West, while 54 per cent thought it fair to describe Mr Blair as “Bush’s poodle”’ – The Age (Australia) (13 August 2002).

(the) ball of clay I.e. ‘planet earth, the world’. Known by 1635. Also in the song ‘Look for Small Pleasures’ (‘…upon this ball of clay’) written by Michaels/Sandrich for the musical Ben Franklin in Paris (Broadway 1964). Compare WHOLE BALL OF WAX.

balloon See GO DOWN.

(the) balloon’s gone up Current by 1924 and meaning ‘the action or excitement has commenced’, particularly in military activities. The expression derives from the sending up of barrage balloons (introduced during the First World War) to protect targets from air raids. The fact that these balloons – or manned observation balloons – had ‘gone up’ would signal that some form of action was imminent. C. H. Rolph in London Particulars (1980) suggests that the phrase was in use earlier, by 1903–4.

ballroom See IS SHE A.

balls See ALL; COLD ENOUGH TO.

balm in Gilead See IS THERE NO.

(the) banality of evil ‘The fearsome word-and-thought-defying banality of evil’ was how the German-born philosopher Hannah Arendt summed up the lessons to be learned from the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who was executed in Israel as a war criminal in 1962. Her book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) was subtitled ‘A Report on the Banality of Evil’ and caused controversy because it seemed to suggest that Eichmann was not personally responsible for his deeds during the Holocaust.

band See AID; AND THE.

(a) band of brothers Band of Brothers was the title of a Steven Spielberg TV film series (US 2001) based on a non-fiction book (1992) by Stephen E. Ambrose that told the history of a single company in the 101st US Airborne Division 1942–5. It comes from Shakespeare, Henry V, IV.iii.60 (1599), where the King says before the Battle of Agincourt: ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…/ And gentlemen in England now a-bed / Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here.’

bang See ALL BALLS.

bang, bang, you’re dead! A child’s apt summary of the manner of TV Westerns, probably dating from the 1950s. Compare the slightly later KISS-KISS, BANG-BANG.

bang goes sixpence! A lightly joking remark about one’s own or another person’s unwillingness to spend money. The origins of this lie in the caption to a Punch cartoon (5 December 1868). A Scotsman who has just been on a visit to London says: ‘Mun, a had na’ been the-rre abune two hours when – bang – went saxpence!’ Benham (1948) has it that the story was communicated to the cartoonist Charles Keene by Birket Foster who had it from Sir John Gilbert. The saying was repopularized by Sir Harry Lauder, the professional stage Scotsman (1870–1950).

(she) bangs like a shithouse door She copulates regularly and noisily. Australian, 1930s. A variation is (she) bangs like a shithouse rat.

bang to rights As in ‘You’ve got me bang to rights!’ said by a criminal to an arresting policeman, this is an alternative to ‘It’s a fair cop [You are quite right to have caught me, constable]!’ There is also an element of ‘You’ve caught me red-handed, in an indefensible position’. Partridge/Slang dates this from the 1930s, but OED2 finds a US example in 1904. Possibly derived from 19th-century usage – from the idea of being ‘bang-on right’ in absolute certainty. Compare the somewhat rare Americanism ‘bang’ for a criminal charge or arrest, as in ‘it’s a bum bang’, that may have been coined with reference to the banging of a cell door.

bank See CRY ALL THE WAY TO.

ban the bomb One of the simplest and best-known alliterative slogans, current in the US from 1953 and marginally afterwards in the UK. The (British) Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament – whose semi-official slogan it became – was not publicly launched until February 1958. The phrase was in use by 1960. (Richard Crossman referred to ‘Scrap the Bomb’ in a 1957 press article.)

Banzai! From a hundred war films and cheap comics we are familiar with the cry used by Japanese forces in the Second World War, meaning ‘[May you live] ten thousand years!’ During the war – and after it – this traditional cry came to mean ‘Ten thousand years to the Emperor’ or to ‘Japan’. M. R. Lewis observed (1986): ‘The root of the problem is that a language written in the Chinese ideographic characters is often difficult to translate sensibly into a West European language, because it is often not apparent when the literal meaning is intended and when the figurative. “Banzai” literally means no more than “ten thousand years”, but what it more usually means is “for a long time”. So, a pen in Japanese is, when literally translated, a “ten thousand year writing brush”, which is gibberish in any language! What it actually means is “a long-lasting writing instrument”…For the suicide pilots, the ritual shout of “Banzai!” swept up many layers of meaning, of which the most immediate was undoubtedly “Tenno heika banzai” – “Long live the Emperor”, a phrase which goes back into the mists of Japanese history, despite its appropriation by the nationalist movements of the 1930s. The phrase is still in use on such occasions as the Emperor’s birthday, as I can testify from recent experience. When he stepped out on to the balcony and the shouts rose around me, I began to feel that I was in the wrong movie! As for the oddity of the phrase – if literally translated, is it really so different from: “Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, anointed Solomon king. And all the people rejoiced and said, God save the king. Long live the king, may the king live for ever. Amen. Alleluia” – which has been sung at the coronation of almost every English sovereign since William of Normandy was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066?’ Jonathan Swift includes may you live a thousand years among the conversational chestnuts in Polite Conversation (1738). The Sergeant in Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Chap. 5 (1860–1), incorporates it in a toast.

(a) baptism of fire A testing initial experience. Originally the phrase described a soldier’s first time in battle (compare the French baptême du feu) and is said to derive from ecclesiastical Greek. Matthew 3:11 has ‘I [John the Baptist] indeed baptize you with water…but he that cometh after me…shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.’ ‘The first American troops to receive a baptism of fire in Europe in this war were the men of the United States Ranger Battalion who fought in the Dieppe raid today’ – The New York Times (20 August 1942); ‘The past four months have been a baptism of fire for Mr Georges-Christian Chazot, Eurotunnel’s chief executive. Appointed in January to turn a large construction project into a profitable transport undertaking, he has been faced with a succession of postponements to the start of commercial operations’ – Financial Times (6 May 1994); ‘I was in the Dundee Repertory Theatre when I had a call asking me to test for For Them That Trespass. To my amazement I got the part and starred in the first film I ever made. It certainly was a baptism of fire but I was very lucky because my producer, Victor Skutezky, and the director Alberto Cavalcanti took me in hand’ – Richard Todd, quoted in The Daily Telegraph (14 May 1994).

bar See ALL OVER.

(the) barbarians are at the gates Meaning, ‘the end of civilization is at hand’. Hyperbole. In 1990, Barbarians at the Gate was used as the title of a book by Bryan Burrough (filmed US 1993). Subtitled ‘The Fall of RJR Nabisco’, it was about goings-on in Wall Street – suggesting that unregulated, or at least ungentlemanly, behaviour had broken out. Appropriately enough, the phrase is used literally in Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I.303 (1776–88): ‘Such was the public consternation when the barbarians were hourly expected at the gates of Rome.’ Compare, from the journal Queen (5 September 1914): ‘Stand up and meet the war. The Hun is at the gate!’

(the) Bard of Avon One of several sobriquets for William Shakespeare and alluding to the river running through the town of his birth, Stratford in Warwickshire. Ben Jonson called Shakespeare ‘Sweet Swan of Avon’ (in a verse prefacing the First Folio of plays, 1623), and David Garrick, who excelled in Shakespearean parts at the Drury Lane Theatre, London, felt intimate enough to nickname him ‘Avonian Willy’. The Bard on its own is also, unfortunately, common, though anything is better than the assumed familiarity, chiefly among actors, of ‘Will’ or ‘Bill’ Shakespeare. ‘Pen introduced [the topic of Shakespeare because he] professed an uncommon respect for the bard of Avon’ – William Thackeray, Pendennis, Chap. 6 (1848–50); ‘But there may well be more subtle influences at work than the Bard of Avon was aware of. An American scientist has recently published results which suggest that the rate at which human beings procreate is influenced by variations in terrestrial magnetism no matter how constant the human or animal attractiveness may be’ – Irish Times (3 October 1994); ‘This man who killed two people in his former life as a numbers racketeer in Cleveland…acquired the rudiments of a classical education. I once heard him react to an English accent with the line: ‘As yo’ great Bard of Avon truly said, “To be or not to be – that’s what they askin’, baby”’ – The Mail on Sunday (26 March 1995).

barefaced cheek Assertive behaviour that is accomplished without a blush of embarrassment. A cliché by the late 1980s. Barefaced Cheek – title of book about Rupert Murdoch by Michael Leapman (1983); ‘Garden-rustling is Britain’s fastestgrowing crime, as thieves twig that all you need to nurture a flourishing fortune is a spade – and a wheelbarrow-load of barefaced cheek’ – Today (25 May 1993); ‘When it was announced recently that HM the Q had graciously consented to allow taxpayers to view their own property for £8 a head…It was left to newspaper cartoonists to characterize it as the kind of barefaced cheek which could only happen in a country which, as Cobbett observed, has a Royal Mint but a National Debt’ – The Observer (6 June 1993).

(the) bare necessities The minimum requirements needed to keep alive – food, drink and possibly a roof over one’s head. Known by 1913, when Punch (10 December) referred to ‘The Bare Necessity Supply Association [having] the honour to announce their list of Daintiest Recencies for the Yule-Tide Season’. A cliché not so much in its original form but as a veiled allusion to the song ‘Bare Necessities’ in the Walt Disney film of Kipling’s The Jungle Book (US 1967) – which was sung by a bear. ‘Profits in the bare necessities of life’ – headline in The Independent (13 May 1995).

Barkis is willing A catchphrase that derives from Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chap. 5 (1850). Mr Barkis, a Yarmouth carrier, asks young David Copperfield to convey his willingness to marry Peggotty, in the words, ‘Barkis is willin’.’ Eventually they do marry.

(to) bark up the wrong tree This phrase meaning ‘to follow a false scent’ is of US origin (by 1832) and is said to come from racoon hunting. As this activity is done at night (racoons being nocturnal animals) and as, if chased, racoons run up trees, it would be quite possible for a dog to bark mistakenly under the wrong tree.

barmy See I’VE GOT A LETTER.

(to) bash the bishop (or flog the bishop) Meaning, ‘to masturbate’. Partridge/Slang dates this from the late 19th century and suggests it derives from the resemblance between the penis and a chess bishop or a bishop in ecclesiastical mitre. It was unfortunate, therefore, that Labour MPs should have accused the Conservative minister, John Selwyn Gummer MP, of bishop-bashing when he was involved in criticisms of various Anglican bishops in March 1988. The—bashing phrases had been used before, of course – as in the practice of Paki-bashing circa 1970 (i.e. subjecting Pakistani immigrants to physical assault) and as in the old ‘square-bashing’ (army slang for drill).

basics See BACK TO.

(a) basket case This phrase now has two applications – firstly, to describe a mental or physical cripple and, secondly, a totally ruined enterprise. Either way, it seems to be an American term, and the OED2’s earliest citation is from the U.S. Official Bulletin (28 March 1919) in the aftermath of the First World War: ‘The Surgeon General of the Army…denies…that there is any foundation for the stories that have been circulated…of the existence of “basket cases” in our hospitals.’ Indeed, another definition of the term is ‘a soldier who has lost all four limbs’ – thus, presumably, requiring transportation in something like a basket. To complicate matters, Flexner (1976) describes this as being originally British Army slang. It has been suggested, probably misguidedly, that the association with mental disability comes from the fact that basket-weaving is an activity sometimes carried out in mental hospitals. The second meaning was established by about 1973 and is still frequently used in business journalism when describing doomed ventures: ‘On a continent that is full of economic basket cases, the small, landlocked nation is virtually debt free’ – Newsweek (11 January 1982). Here, one might guess that the original phrase has been hi-jacked and the implication changed. What the writer is now referring to is something that is so useless that it is fit only to be thrown into a waste-paper basket.

bath See DON’T THROW.

(to have) bats in the belfry Meaning ‘to be mentally deficient, harmlessly insane, mad, batty’, this expression conveys the idea that a person behaves in a wildly disturbed manner, like bats disturbed by the ringing of bells. Stephen Graham wrote in London Nights (1925): ‘There is a set of jokes which are the common property of all the comedians. You may hear them as easily in Leicester Square as in Mile End Road. It strikes the unwonted visitor to the Pavilion as very original when Stanley Lupino says of some one: “He has bats in the belfry.” It is not always grasped that the expression belongs to the music hall at large.’ Attempts have been made to derive ‘batty’, in particular, from the name of William Battie (1704–76), author of a Treatise on Madness, though this seems a little harsh, given that he was the psychiatrist and not the patient. On the other hand, there was a Fitzherbert Batty, barrister of Spanish Town, Jamaica, who made news when he was certified insane in London in 1839. The names of these two gentlemen merely, and coincidentally, reinforce the ‘bats in the belfry’ idea – but there do not seem to be any examples of either expression in use before 1900.

(a) bat’s squeak of sexuality Use of this phrase probably derives from Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, Chap. 3 (1945): ‘As I took the cigarette from my lips and put it in hers, I caught a thin bat’s squeak of sexuality, inaudible to any but me’ (Charles Ryder of Lady Julia). A later use of ‘bat’s squeak’, not otherwise much recorded: at the Conservative Party Conference in 1981, a then upwardly rising politician called Edwina Currie was taking part in a debate on law and order. To illustrate some point, she held aloft a pair of handcuffs. Subsequently, the Earl of Gowrie admitted to having felt ‘a bat’s squeak of desire’ for Mrs Currie at that moment.

(the) Battle of Britain The urge to give names to battles – even before they are fought and won – is well exemplified by Winston Churchill’s coinage of 18 June 1940: ‘What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.’ It duly became the name by which the decisive overthrowing of German invasion plans by ‘the Few’ is known. The order of the day, read aloud to every pilot on 10 July, contained the words: ‘The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Members of the Royal Air Force, the fate of generations is in your hands.’ Another Churchill coinage – ‘The Battle of Egypt’ (speech, 10 November 1942) – caught on less well.

(to wage a) battle royal Meaning ‘to take part in a keenly fought contest, a general free-for-all’, this term originated in cockfighting, or at least has been specifically used in that sport. In the first round, sixteen birds would be put into a pit to fight each other until only half the number was left. The knock-out competition would then continue until there was only one survivor. OED2 finds the phrase for general use by 1672; by 1860 for cockfighting.

battle-scarred (veterans) A mostly journalistic cliché. ‘Our leaders battle-scarred’ wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes in an open letter To General Grant (1865). In Nat J. Ferber, I Found Out (1939), it is related that once on the New York American the printing error ‘battle-scared hero’ was hastily corrected in a later edition and came out reading ‘bottle-scarred hero’. ‘Can a bunch of battle-scarred old pols…gang up to stop a brash young lawyer named Brian Mulroney?’ – Toronto Star (14 February 1976); ‘The man who made it possible – bringing a new lease of life to his own political career in the process – was Mr Peres, one of the most battle-scarred veterans of Israeli politics’ – The Sunday Telegraph (5 September 1993); ‘“Just be the benevolent old maestro, Bob, battle-scarred and wordly-wise in the ways of the biz,” Moir advised’ – Bob Monkhouse, Crying With Laughter (1993); ‘Battle-scarred veterans of the women’s movement can be forgiven for sighing wearily at some of this; like the youngsters who “think sex was invented the year they reached puberty,” she seems unaware that the Sixties movement was greatly about women’s right to love freely’ – The Observer (5 December 1993); ‘Okay, so he has more important priorities in life now like setting up a new wine bar with a partner, and the Dump Truck and his fellow young professional monsters will never have to worry about a 36-year-old battle-scarred dad-of-three from England, but he reckons he could make a sizeable mark in the amateur ranks for a couple of years’ – The Sunday Times (27 November 1994).

BBC See AUNTIE.

be afraid – be very afraid Slogan for film The Fly (US 1986) and also included as a line spoken by Geena Davis (Veronica) to a date of Seth Brundle’s (he is the man who half-turns into a fly): ‘No. Be afraid. Be very afraid.’

beam me up, Scotty! Catchphrase popularly associated with the US TV science-fiction series Star Trek (1966–9). According to Trekkers, however, Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) never actually said to Lt. Commander ‘Scotty’ Scott, the chief engineer, ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’ – which meant that he should transpose body into matter, or transport someone from planet to spaceship, or some such thing. In the fourth episode, however, he may have said, ‘Scotty, beam me up!’ The more usual form of the injunction was, ‘Enterprise, beam us up’ or, ‘Beam us up, Mr Scott.’

beans See AMOUNT TO.

Beanz meanz Heinz This slogan for Heinz Baked Beans in the UK (from 1967) is the type of advertising line that annoys teachers because it appears to condone wrong spelling. Johnny Johnson wrote the music for the jingle that went: ‘A million housewives every day / Pick up a tin of beans and say / Beanz meanz Heinz.’ ‘I created the line at Young & Rubicam,’ copywriter Maurice Drake stated in 1981. ‘It was in fact written – although after much thinking – over two pints of bitter in the Victoria pub in Mornington Crescent.’

bear See GLADLY MY CROSS-EYED.

(to) beard the lion in his den To confront a person with impunity. This phrase derives from the notion of taking a lion by the beard and partly from the use of the word ‘beard’ to mean the face. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1, IV.i.12 (1591), has: ‘No man so potent breathes upon the ground, / But I will beard him’, but the ‘lion’ image seems first to have been employed in Tobias Smollet, Regicide, II.vii (1777): ‘Sooner wouldst thou beard The lion in his rage.’ W. S. Gilbert, Iolanthe (1882) has: ‘Beard the lion in his lair – None but the brave deserve the fair.’ R. D. Blackmore, Perlycross, II.iv.68 (1894), has the complete phrase: ‘Nothing less would satisfy her than to beard – if the metaphor applies to ladies – the lion in the den, the arch-accuser, in the very court of judgment.’

—bears eloquent testimony Pompous phrase used by writers of opinion columns and by speech-makers. Date of origin unknown. Listed in The Independent (24 December 1994) as a cliché of newspaper editorials and well established as such by that date. ‘Mr Hamilton said last night: “I entirely refute the allegations and the writ will make that perfectly clear.” When asked if there was any grain of truth in the Guardian report Mr Hamilton said: “My writ I think is eloquent testimony to the view that I have as to their veracity. Nobody issues a writ to launch a libel action for fun”’ – The Times (21 October 1994).

(the) beast of—Nickname formula. (1) The ‘Beast of Belsen’ was Josef Kramer, German commandant of the Belsen concentration camp during the worst period of its history from December 1944 to the end of the Second World War. He was executed for his crimes in 1945. (2) The ‘Beast/Bitch of Buchenwald’ was Ilse Koch (d. 1967), wife of the commandant of the concentration camp near Weimar. Infamous for having had lampshades made out of the skin of her victims. (3) The ‘Beast of Bolsover’ is Dennis Skinner (b. 1932), the aggressive and outspoken Labour MP for Bolsover in Derbyshire (since 1970). Noted for interrupting speeches and making loud comments in the House of Commons. (4) The ‘Beast of Jersey’ was E. J. L. (Ted) Paisnel, convicted of 13 sex offences against children and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in 1971. The name was applied to him during the 11 years he evaded arrest on the island.

beasts of the field See BIRDS OF THE AIR.

(to) beat a path to someone’s door Sarah Yule claimed (1889) that she had heard Ralph Waldo Emerson say the following in a lecture: ‘If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, ‘tho he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.’ Elbert Hubbard also claimed authorship. Either way, this is a remark alluded to when people talk of ‘beating a path to someone’s door’ or a better mousetrap. In his journal for February 1855, Emerson had certainly entertained the thought: ‘If a man…can make better chairs or knives…than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.’

beaten the panel See IS IT BIGGER.

(the) Beat Generation ‘Beatniks’ were young people who opted out of normal society in the 1950s (first of all in the USA) because they were unable or unwilling to conform to conventional standards. Careless of appearance, critical of the Establishment, they were less intellectual than the average angry young man, but rebellious like the teddy boys who preceded them (in the UK) and the hippies who followed. The name with its Yiddish or Russian suffix (compare the Russian sputnik satellite orbiting the earth in 1957) derived from the phrase ‘Beat Generation’, coinage of which is usually credited to Jack Kerouac, although in his book The Origins of the Beat Generation, he admitted to borrowing the phrase from a drug addict called Herbert Huncke. In Randy Nelson’s The Almanac of American Letters (1981), there is a description of the moment of coinage. Kerouac is quoted as saying: ‘John Clellon Holmes…and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the lost generation and the subsequent existentialism and I said: “You know, this is really a beat generation,” and he leapt up and said: “That’s it, that’s right”.’ Holmes himself attributed the phrase directly to Kerouac in The New York Times Magazine of 16 November 1952.

beautiful See ALL THINGS; BUT MISS.

(the) beautiful game Football. This description is usually credited to the Brazilian player Pelé, and his autobiography (written with Robert L. Fish) has the English title My Life and the Beautiful Game (1977). But whether he said it first in Portuguese (o jogo lindo) or in English is not known. The Beautiful Game was the title of a musical (London 2000) about football and the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland (book by Ben Elton, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber). The phrase had much earlier been applied to cricket by Arnold Wall (1869–1966) in a poem called ‘A Time Will Come’ during the First World War.

(the) beautiful people Coinage of this term is credited in Current Biography (1978) to the American fashion journalist Diana Vreeland (circa 1903–89). Whether she deserves this or not is open to question, although she does seem to have helped launch the similar term SWINGING LONDON. The earliest OED2 citation with capital letters for each word is from 1966, though there is a Vogue use from 15 February 1964 that would appear to support the link to Vreeland. The OED2 makes the phrase refer primarily to ‘“flower people”, hippies’ though the 1981 Macquarie Dictionary’s less narrow definition of ‘a fashionable social set of wealthy, well-groomed, usually young people’ is preferable. The Lennon and McCartney song ‘Baby You’re a Rich Man’ (released in July 1967) contains the line ‘How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?’ William Saroyan’s play The Beautiful People had first been performed long before all this, in 1941, and Oscar Wilde in a letter to Harold Boulton (December 1879) wrote: ‘I could have introduced you to some very beautiful people. Mrs Langtry and Lady Lonsdale and a lot of clever beings who were at tea with me.’

beauty See AGE BEFORE; AHA, ME.

beauty and the beast The story of the beast who insists on marrying a beautiful princess is one of the classic fairy tales. One version is that of Marie Leprince (or Le Prince) de Beaumont, a French governess working in London, who published Le Magasin des enfans (1756–7), a booklet in French with dialogues meant for educating young girls. The fifth dialogue of Vol. 1 is ‘La Belle et la Bête’. The title and version (though much shortened) were mostly taken from another French author, Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve in Les Contes Marins (1740), which in turn harks back to Straparola’s telling in Piacevoli Notti (1550) and the traditional story of Amor and Psyche. The Villeneuve story (which was the first with the title La Belle et la Bête) was not apparently intended for children. Where the Leprince version has the Beast saying, ‘Would you be my wife?’, Villeneuve has him saying he wants to go to bed with her. When she finally agrees, all the Beast does is sleep and snore, and wake up as a beautiful prince. Jean Cocteau made a film version of the story, as La Belle et la Bête (France 1946), and a Disney animated musical Beauty and the Beast (US 1991) has kept the story alive. The phrase might now be used to describe a couple where the woman is good-looking and the man is definitely not.

beauty sleep ‘Sleep before midnight, supposedly conducive to good looks and health’, according to Partridge/Slang. Apparently, this phrase appeared in Frank Smedley’s novel, Frank Fairleigh (1850). It was certainly in Charles Kingsley, Two Years Ago (1857).

Beaver! (1) The cry identifying a man with a beard appears to have been common among children in the 1910s and 1920s, though it is now obsolete. In 1922, Punch had several jokes and cartoons on the theme and noted (19 July) in a caption: ‘To Oxford is attributed the credit of inventing the game of “Beaver” in which you score points for spotting bearded men.’ But why beaver? Flexner (1976) notes the use of the animal’s name to describe a high, sheared-fur hat in the USA. The beaver’s thick dark-brown fur, he says, also refers ‘to a well-haired pudendum or a picture showing it, which in pornography is called a “beaver shot”.’ Beaver for beard may derive rather from the Middle Ages when the ‘beaver’ was the part of a soldier’s helmet that lay around the chin as a face-guard (the ‘vizor’ was the bit brought down from the forehead). In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, I.ii.228 (1600), the Prince asks: ‘Then saw you not his face?’ (that of his father’s ghost). Horatio replies: ‘O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.’ (2) Nickname of William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (1879–1964), newspaper magnate and politician in Britain. He took his title from the town in New Brunswick, Canada, where he had a home. Called ‘Max’ by his friends, he was known to his staff as ‘the Beaver’, a name explained by Tom Driberg (his first ‘William Hickey’ columnist on the Daily Express) as being a ‘zoological symbol of tireless industry’.

be British! Jingoistic phrase. In 1912, Captain Edward Smith reputedly said, ‘Be British, boys, be British’ to his crew some time in the hours between his command, the Titanic, hitting the iceberg and his going down with the ship. Michael Davie in his book on the disaster describes the evidence for this as ‘flimsy’, but the legend was rapidly established. ‘Be British! was the cry as the ship went down’ is the first line of a commemorative song, ‘Be British’, written and composed by Lawrence Wright and Paul Pelham. In 1914, when a statue to Smith was erected in Lichfield, it had ‘Be British’ as part of the inscription.

because I’m worth it! Phrase from TV commercial for L’Oréal. ‘Shamelessly vainglorious claim voiced by a succession of blandly pretty actresses (and the French football Adonis, David Ginola) on a TV commercial to justify, implicitly, the shockingly exorbitant price of L’Oréal hair products’ – John Walsh in The Independent (2 December 2000). By October 2002, in the UK, there was a poster ad proclaiming, ‘Discover the beauty of science. Because you’re worth it. L’Oréal.’ The French version, seen in 2003, was: ‘Les progrès de la science se reflètent dans vos cheveux. Parce que vous le valez bien.’

because it’s there As a flippant justification for doing anything, this makes use of a phrase chiefly associated with the British mountaineer George Leigh Mallory (1886–1924). He disappeared on his last attempt to climb Mount Everest. The previous year, during a lecture tour in the USA, he had frequently been asked why he wanted to achieve the goal. He replied, ‘Because it is there.’ The saying has become a catchphrase in situations where the speaker wishes to dismiss an impossible question about motives and also to express acceptance of a challenge that is in some way daunting or foolish. There have been many variations (and misattributions). Sir Edmund Hillary repeated it regarding his own successful attempt on Everest in 1953. From Private Eye (circa April 1962): ‘Someone once asked me why I married the Queen. And I replied “Because she was there”’ – caption to a cartoon of the Duke of Edinburgh.

because the scenery is better An overworked and inevitable argument in promoting the superior imaginative qualities of radio as a medium. It supposedly originated in a letter to Radio Times in the 1920s, quoting a child who had said rather: ‘The pictures are better’. A cliché by the 1970s. ‘Do you ever listen [to the radio]? I do. I like it best. As a child I know says: “I see it much better on radio than on TV”’ – Joyce Grenfell in a letter of 22 September 1962 and included in An Invisible Friendship (1981); ‘“I like the wireless better than the theatre,” one London child wrote in a now legendary letter, “because the scenery is better”’ – Derek Parker, Radio: The Great Years (1977); ‘By way of illustration a young lad was quoted as saying he preferred radio to television – because the scenery is better. A proof of the power of imagination!’ – Prayer Book Society Newsletter (August 1995).

Becket See DO A THOMAS.

bed See AND SO TO; HE CAN LEAVE.

bedpost See BETWEEN YOU AND ME.

(to have) been and gone and done it Emphatic form of expression suggesting that one has finally done something and from which there may be no escape – for example, getting married. P. G. Wodehouse describes it as ‘language of the man of the street’ in his Tales of St Austin’s (1903). Even earlier, W. S. Gilbert has: ‘The padre said, “Whatever have you been and gone and done?”’ in The Bab Ballads, ‘Gentle Alice Brown’ (1869).

(to have) been there To have shared in or to have knowledge of some experience – often of an emotional nature. Of American origin. ‘Some reasons why I left off drinking whiskey, by one who has been there’ – headline in the Saturday Evening Post (1877). Whether the title of the film Being There (US 1980) is related is not clear. ‘The agony and ecstasy of La bohème are the agony and ecstasy of adolescence…one reason why we weep harder at La bohème than at any other opera is that we were all there once’ – Germaine Greer, quoted in Glyndebourne Festival Opera programme (2003). As for, been there, done that…: ‘Michael Caine was once asked if he had a motto: “Yeah – Been There, Done That. It’ll certainly be on my tombstone. It’ll just say, ‘Been There, Done That’”’ – quoted in Elaine Gallagher et al, Candidly Caine (1990). This is what might be called a T-shirt motto and is certainly not original to Caine. Ian Dury used the phrase ‘been there’ in the song ‘Laughter’ (The Ian Dury Songbook, 1979) to indicate that a seduction has been accomplished, but the motto is not solely concerned with sex. It can cover all human activity. About 1989 there were T-shirts for jaded travellers with the words: ‘Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.’

(I have) been to the mountain top As in Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s speech at Memphis (3 April 1968), the night before he was assassinated: ‘I’ve been to the mountain top…I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land.’ The original promised land (not called as such in the Bible but referring to Canaan, western Palestine, and by association, Heaven) was promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In Numbers 14:39–40: ‘Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel…And they rose up early in the morning and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised.’

beer See I’M ONLY HERE.

beer and sandwiches at No. 10 An encapsulation of the informal (and often eleventh-hour) style of negotiation held at senior level (and quite often at the Prime Minister’s residence, No. 10, Downing Street) between British trade unionists and politicians to avert threatened strikes and stoppages. These only really took place under the Labour administrations of Harold Wilson (1964–70, 1974–6). Nothing like it was known under Margaret Thatcher, who seldom, if ever, conversed with union leaders, let alone offered them any form of hospitality. Some called it a pragmatic approach; others viewed it less favourably. Phillip Whitehead (a one-time Labour MP) was quoted in The Independent (25 April 1988) as having said of Wilson that he ‘bought the hours with beer and sandwiches at No. 10 and the years with Royal Commissions’. Compare ‘coffee and Danish at the White House’ – an expression from the Carter administration for the breakfasts of coffee and Danish pastries offered by the President to Congressional leaders and others to win them over.

(life isn’t all) beer and skittles An apparently late-appearing proverb (1855), urging that life is not just about simple pleasures or unalloyed enjoyment – specifically the drinks and games you would find in a pub, the British yeoman’s idea of heaven on earth. From Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857): ‘Life isn’t all beer and skittles, – but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.’

(the) beer that made Milwaukee famous The Schlitz Brewing Company had its roots in an operation begun in Milwaukee in 1849. By 1871, the year of the great Chicago fire, it was a thriving concern. The fire left Chicago thirsty; the city was desperately short of drinking water, and its breweries had virtually been destroyed. So Joseph Schlitz floated a shipload of beer down Lake Michigan to refresh his parched neighbours. They liked and remembered Milwaukee beer long after the crisis passed. It is not known who coined the phrase, but this is the incident that inspired it. The slogan was incorporated and registered in 1895, and was in use until production ceased in the 1980s.

(the) bee’s knees ‘The very best around; absolutely top hole’. There has always been a fascination with bees’ knees. In the 18th century there was the expression ‘as big as a bee’s knee’ and, in the 19th, ‘as weak as a bee’s knee’. But the bee whose knees became celebrated in US slang by 1923 was probably only there because of the rhyme. At about the same time, we find the kipper’s knickers, the cat’s whiskers (perhaps because of the importance of these in tuning wireless crystal sets in the 1920s), the cat’s pyjamas (still new enough to be daring), ‘the cat’s miaow/eyebrows/ankles/tonsils/adenoids/ galoshes/cufflinks/roller skates’. Not to mention ‘the snake’s hips’, ‘the clam’s garter’, ‘the eel’s ankle’, ‘the elephant’s instep’, ‘the tiger’s spots’, ‘the flea’s eyebrows’, ‘the canary’s tusks’, ‘the leopard’s stripes’, ‘the sardine’s whiskers’, ‘the pig’s wings’ – ‘and just about any combination of animal, fish, or fowl with a part of the body or clothing that was inappropriate for it’ – Flexner (1976).

before See HERE AND NOW.

before one can say ‘Jack Robinson’ (or as quick as…) This expression, meaning ‘immediately; straight away’, appears to have been alluded to by Richard Brinsley Sheridan in the House of Commons (some time after 1780) to avoid using a fellow member’s name (as was, and is partly still, the custom there). Having made a derogatory reference to the Secretary to the Treasury, John Robinson, and been asked by members shouting ‘Name, name’ to disclose the person he was referring to, Sheridan said, ‘You know I cannot name him, but I could – as soon as I can say Jack Robinson’ – quoted in Hesketh Pearson, Lives of the Wits (1962). Clearly, Sheridan was alluding to an already established expression. Neil Ewart in Everyday Phrases (1983) cites the theory that it ‘refers to an erratic [18th-century] gentleman of that name who rushed around to visit his neighbours, rang the front-door bell, and then changed his mind and dashed off before the servant had time to announce his name’. Eric Partridge in his Name Into Word (1949) suggests that it was a made-up name using very common first and last elements. Fanny Burney has ‘I’ll do it as soon as say Jack Robinson’ in her novel Evelina, Letter 82 (1778), so that pushes back the date somewhat. A promising explanation is that the phrase may have something to do with Sir John Robinson who was Officer Commanding the Tower of London 1660–79. In that case, the original reference may have been to the speed of beheading with an axe – as discussed in The Observer (24 April 1988).

(it) beggars all description A light literary turn of phrase for what is indescribable and originating with the meaning of the verb ‘to beggar’ in the sense ‘to exhaust the resources of’. Apparently this was an original coinage of Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra, II.ii.197 (1607), where Enobarbus says of Cleopatra: ‘For her own person, / It beggar’d all description’. ‘Let us begin the tale in 1755 when an entranced visitor to the park [Painshill] wrote: “Pray follow me to Mr Hamilton’s. I must tell you it beggars all description, the art of hiding art is here in such sweet perfection”’ – Financial Times (23 April 1988); ‘A place which beggars all description’ – Mrs Piozzi, Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey Through France &c. (1789); ‘Of the massacre itself that followed, where shall I begin and what shall I tell? It simply beggars all description. Occidentals of the 19th century cannot comprehend it. Still, I will try to give a few facts’ – The Times (29 March 1895).

be good – and if you can’t be good be careful! A nudging farewell, possibly originating with the American song ‘Be Good! If You Can’t Be Good, Be Careful!’ (1907). It is the same sort of farewell remark as don’t do anything I wouldn’t do! that probably dates from the same period.

be good but not so frightfully good that someone says to you, ‘Ah, and now what mischief are you up to?’ A rather extended catchphrase. On the BBC radio Children’s Hour by 1932 and into the early 1940s, there was a man called Commander Stephen King Hall who gave talks in an unhurried, avuncular voice, explaining current events (of which there were quite a few in those days) to his young listeners. And at the end he would sign off in this characteristic way. On 17 February 1941, after talking about the progress of the war, he ended: ‘And now I think I’ll give you a saying which some of you will know: Be Good but not so frightfully good that someone at once says, “Mmm, and now what mischief are you up to?” Well, goodbye and good luck.’

be good to yourself Sign-off from Don McNeill, homely American radio star, on the air 1934–68.

(to) beg the question Nowadays an expression frequently misused in place of ‘to pose a question’. For example, ‘I had a ghastly holiday in France which begs the question of why I went there in the first place.’ The phrase (in English by 1581) really means ‘to take for granted the matter in dispute, to assume without proof.’ Or, more precisely, ‘to take into consideration as part of your proof the thing you are trying to prove’. The process is apparent from these two exchanges: ‘Q. Why do parallel lines never meet?’ ‘A. Because they are parallel.’ ‘Q. Why do you think police series on TV are so popular?’ ‘A. Because people like them.’ H. W. Fowler in Modern Engish Usage (1965 Gowers’ edn) relates the matter to petitio principii – ‘the fallacy of founding a conclusion on the basis that as much needs to be proved as the conclusion itself’ and includes under ‘Misapprehensions’ that ‘to beg a question is to avoid giving a straight answer.’

behind See ALL BEHIND.

behind closed doors Secretively, out of sight. There was a novel entitled Behind Closed Doors (1888) by A. K. Kreen, but the phrase does not seem to have caught on until the 1920s. Washington: Behind Closed Doors was the title of a fictional TV series about presidential politics (US 1977–8) – based on the Watergate affair; ‘Strange goings-on behind the closed doors of that exotic building just off Great Queen Street, Covent Garden…Freemasons’ Hall they call it, a secret world, a world of secrets’ – The Independent (19 May 1995); ‘This unique and fascinating tour uncovers a Venice normally hidden behind closed doors’ – Ultimate Travel Company brochure (January 2003).

behind every—man stands a—woman A much used, unascribed format that is probably most often encountered nowadays in parodied versions. Working backwards, here are some of the parodies: ‘Behind every good man is a good woman – I mean an exhausted one’ – the Duchess of York, speech, September 1987. ‘As usual there’s a great woman behind every idiot’ – John Lennon (quoted 1979). ‘Behind every successful man you’ll find a woman who has nothing to wear’ – L. Grant Glickman (quoted 1977) or James Stewart (quoted 1979). ‘We in the industry know that behind every successful screenwriter stands a woman. And behind her stands his wife’ – Groucho Marx (quoted 1977). ‘The road to success is filled with women pushing their husbands along’ – Lord (Thomas R.) Dewar, quoted in Stevenson, The Home Book of Quotations (1967). ‘And behind every man who is a failure there’s a woman, too!’ – John Ruge, cartoon caption, Playboy (March 1967). ‘Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law’ – Hubert Humphrey, speech (1964). An early example of the original expression occurs in an interview with Lady Dorothy Macmillan, wife of the then just retired British Prime Minister (7 December 1963). In the Daily Sketch, Godfrey Winn concluded his piece with the typical sentiment (his capitals): ‘NO MAN SUCCEEDS WITHOUT A GOOD WOMAN BEHIND HIM. WIFE OR MOTHER. IF IT IS BOTH, HE IS TWICE BLESSED INDEED.’ The Evening Standard (London) (18 April 1961) carried an advertisement showing a spaceman (Yuri Gargarin was in the news at that time) drifting off into space with the slogan, ‘Behind every great man there’s a bottle of Green Shield’ (Worthington beer). In the film The Country Girl (US 1954), William Holden spoke the lines: ‘That’s what my ex-wife used to keep reminding me of, tearfully. She had a theory that behind every great man there was a great woman.’ In Love All, a little known play by Dorothy L. Sayers, that opened at the Torch Theatre, Knightsbridge, London, on 9 April 1940 and closed before the end of the month, was this: ‘Every great man has a woman behind him…And every great woman has some man or other in front of her, tripping her up.’ Even earlier, Sayers herself referred to it as an ‘old saying’ in Gaudy Night, Chap. 3 (1935). Harriet Vane is talking to herself, musing on the problems of the great woman who must either die unwed or find a still greater man to marry her: ‘Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him – or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.’

behind me See GET THEE.

behind you See OH NO THERE ISN’T.

being for the benefit of—A standard 19th-century phrase used in advertising for ‘testimonial’ performances. The title of Chapter 48 of Nicholas Nickleby (1838–9) by Charles Dickens is: ‘Being for the benefit of Mr Vincent Crummles, and Positively his last Appearance on this Stage.’ ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’ is the title of a track on the Beatles’ Segeant Pepper album (1967). The lyric, largely written by John Lennon, though credited jointly to him and Paul McCartney, derive almost word for word, as Lennon acknowledged, from the wording of a Victorian circus poster dated 1843 and in his possession.

belfry See BATS IN THE.

Belgium See IF IT’S TUESDAY.

believe it or not! This exclamation was used as the title of a long-running syndicated newspaper feature, and radio and TV series, in the USA. Robert Leroy Ripley (1893–1949) created and illustrated a comic strip, Ripley’s Believe It or Not (circa 1923), but citations for the phrase before this are lacking.

believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear Mencken (1942) finds an early quotation of this proverbial saying in A Woman’s Thoughts by Dinah Mulock Craik (1858) where it is described as a ‘cynical saying, and yet less bitter than at first appears’. As such, it builds upon the simpler ‘Don’t believe all you hear’, which CODP finds in some form before 1300, perhaps even as a proverb of King Alfred the Great’s.

be like dad, keep mum British security slogan of the Second World War, emanating from the Ministry of Information in 1941. Another version was keep mum, she’s not so dumb and showed a very un-Mum-like blonde being ogled by representatives of the three services. The security theme was paramount in both the UK and US wartime propaganda. Civilians as well as military personnel were urged not to talk about war-related matters lest the enemy somehow got to hear. Compare MUM’S THE WORD.

be like that (as also be that way)! A joshing remark made to someone who has said something, or is doing something, of which you disapprove. American and British use by the mid-20th century.

bell, book and candle Phrase from a solemn form of excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. Bartlett (1980) says the ceremony has been current since the 8th century AD. There is a version dating from AD 1200 which goes: ‘Do to the book [meaning, close it], quench the candle, ring the bell.’ These actions symbolize the spiritual darkness the person is condemned to when denied further participation in the sacraments of the church. Sir Thomas Malory in Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) has: ‘I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.’ Shakespeare has the modern configuration in King John, III.ii.22 (1595): ‘Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back.’ Bell, Book and Candle was the title of John Van Druten’s play (1950; filmed US 1958) about a publisher who discovers that his girlfriend is a witch.

(the/la) belle époque Literally ‘the beautiful time, fine era’, this phrase is used to describe the period of assured and comfortable living, particularly in France, from the last years of the 19th century until the outbreak of the First World War. It is particularly applied to the life of artistic and literary people of the time. Catalogues show that the phrase appears – first of all in French book titles – around 1948, with one possible case in 1936. From 1948 onwards it became generally known. The phrase without its modern meaning has been current since at least the late 18th century, in the more general sense of ‘the best period’ of, for example, Egyptian or mediaeval art, or the happiest days in someone’s life. Victor Hugo, in a letter written before 1848, put: ‘Quoi qu’on en dise, l’époque où nous vivons est une belle époque.’

Bellman and True See FROM A VIEW.

bells and smells Phrase characterizing Anglo-Catholicism or the ‘High’ Anglican church with its emphasis on incenseburning and other rites more usually associated with Roman Catholicism. Sometimes given as ‘bells and spells’, the phrase was established by the early 1980s. Such rites (and their adherents) are also described as way up the candle.

(the) bells! the bells! Supposed cry of Mathias, a burgomaster, who constantly sees visions of a man that he long ago murdered and robbed, in The Bells, an adaptation by Leopold Lewis of Erckmann-Chatrian’s play Le Juif Polonais. Chiefly associated with the actor (Sir) Henry Irving who had his first great success with it when it was produced at the Lyceum Theatre, London, in 1871. Impressions of Irving invariably include the line in which Mathias is haunted by the sound of the sledge bells of the man he murdered. In Bring On the Girls (1954), P. G. Wodehouse reproduces the Irving as: ‘Eah! daun’t you hear…the sund of bell–ll–s?’

(to) bell the cat To undertake a dangerous mission. This expression derives from the fable (told, for example, in Piers Plowman, circa 1377) about the old mouse who suggested putting a bell round the neck of a cat so that mice would be warned of its approach. It was generally agreed among the mice that this was a very good idea – except that one young mouse pointed out the only flaw in it: ‘But who shall hang the bell about the cat’s neck?’ The nickname ‘bell-the-cat’ was applied to Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus (circa 1450–1514) who earned it by devising a scheme to get rid of Robert Cochrane, hated favourite of James III of Scotland. He is reputed to have said that he would ‘bell the cat’, and he began the attack by pulling Cochrane’s gold chain from his neck. Cochrane and others were hanged. Douglas switched allegiance and led the rebellion against James.

belly See BETTER THAN A SLAP.

—belongs to—A modestly used but memorable format for titles. London Belongs To Me was the title of a novel (1945) by Norman Collins (filmed UK 1948 but known in the US as Dulcimer Street). Paris Belongs To Us was the English title of Jacques Rivette’s film Paris nous appartient (France 1960).

belt and braces A term applied to a system with its own back-up, suggesting that if one part falls down, the other will stay up; a double check. It is an engineer’s expression, used for example by a BBC man to describe the two microphones placed side-by-side when broadcasting the sovereign’s Christmas message. In the days when this was broadcast live, it ensured radio transmission. Belt and Braces was the name of a British theatre group of the 1970s. An Australian engineer commented (1993) that some of his colleagues would talk of ‘belt, braces and bowyangs, too’ – ‘bowyangs’ being ties round a worker’s trousers to keep out cold and mud.

be my guest American Speech in 1955 had ‘be my guest’ as a way of saying ‘go right ahead; do as you wish’. Hilton hotels may also have used ‘be my guest’ as a slogan at some time. Certainly, Be My Guest was the title of a book (1957) by the hotelier, Conrad Hilton. What is not clear is when the phrase originated.

bend See CLEANS ROUND.

benefit See BEING FOR THE.

benign neglect When he was a counsellor to President Nixon, the American Democratic politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003) quoted this phrase in a memorandum dated 2 March 1970: ‘The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of “benign neglect”. The subject has been too much talked about…We may need a period in which negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.’ This was leaked to The New York Times and the inevitable furore ensued, though all Moynihan suggested was that racial tensions would be lessened if people on both sides were to lower their voices a little. He was repeating an 1839 phrase of an Earl of Durham to Queen Victoria regarding Canada. It had done so well ‘through a period of benign neglect’ by the mother country, the Earl said, that it should be granted self-government.

Bentley See BLACK MARK.

be prepared The motto of the Boy Scout movement (founded 1908), which shares its initials with the movement’s founder, Sir Robert Baden-Powell. With permission, the words were subsequently used as an advertising slogan for Pears’ soap. They were also used, as a motto, by police in South Africa.

(a right) berk Morris (1977) cites Dudley Moore as saying of Peter Cook (in a magazine interview): ‘It is hard to distinguish sometimes whether Peter is being playful or merely a berk.’ Morris then goes on, coyly, to say ‘berk is British slang – originally a bit of Cockney rhyming slang – meaning “fool”’ – and leaves it at that. In fact, ‘berk’ is short for ‘Berkeley/Berkshire Hunt’, which is rhyming slang for ‘cunt’. Spelling the word ‘birk’ or ‘burk(e)’ helps obscure the origin. Theoretically, if it comes from this source, the word should be pronounced ‘bark’. The use probably does not date from before 1900.

Berlin by Christmas See BY CHRISTMAS.

Bernie, the bolt! Bob Monkhouse, host of ATV’s game show The Golden Shot 1967–75, explained in 1979: ‘Lew Grade had bought the Swiss-German TV success The Golden Shot and the host had to repeat one line in each show – the word of instruction to the technician to load the dangerous crossbow and simultaneously warn the studio of the fact that the weapon was armed…“Heinz, the bolt!” [was the original phrase]. When I took over in 1967, Heinz went home. He stayed long enough to train an ATV technician, Derek Young. I said, “’Derek, the bolt’ sounds lousy. Let’s make it alliterative. What’s funny and begins with B?” We were reckoning without the man himself. Derek liked Derek. “Well, you think of a name that begins with B and won’t embarrass you,” I said. And Bernie it became. I found out later that his wife liked it.…Only blokes called Bernie grew to loathe it…’ The phrase stayed the same even when Derek was replaced by another technician. At one time, viewers watching the programme at home could ring and instruct the operator to aim the gun. Hence: Left a bit, – stop! Down a bit, – stop! Up a bit, – stop! Fire! This acquired a kind of catchphrase status, not least because of the possible double entendre.

be soon See SHE KNOWS YOU KNOW.

best See AND THE BEST; HAPPIEST DAYS OF; IT’S ALL DONE.

(the) best and the brightest This alliterative combination is almost traditional: ‘Political writers, who will not suffer the best and brightest of characters…to take a single right step for the honour or interest of the nation’ – Letters of Junius (1769); ‘Best and brightest, come away!’ – Shelley, ‘To Jane: The Invitation’ (1822); ‘Brightest and best of the sons of the morning’ – from the hymn by Bishop Heber (1827); ‘The best, the brightest, the cleverest of them all!’ – Anthony Trollope, Dr Thorne, Chap. 25 (1858); ‘So we lose five thousand of the best and brightest [i.e. coins/money] – P. G. Wodehouse, ‘Anselm Gets His Chance’ (1930). In David Halberstam’s book The Best and the Brightest (1972), the phrase applies to those young men from business, industry and the academic world whom John F. Kennedy brought into government in the early 1960s but who were ultimately responsible for the quagmire of American involvement in the Vietnam War.

best beloved Term of endearment (also ‘O My Best Beloved’ and ‘O Best Beloved’) addressed to the reader of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories (1902). These comic fables explaining the distinguishing characteristics of animals (‘How the Camel Got His Hump’ and so on) were originally told by Kipling to his own children.

(to put one’s) best foot forward Meaning ‘to walk as fast as possible; to make a good impression’, this probably derives from an earlier form: ‘To put one’s best foot/leg foremost’. In Shakespeare’s King John, IV.ii.170 (1595), we find: ‘Nay, but make haste; the better foot before.’ The right foot has from ancient times been regarded as the best foot, right being associated with rationality, the left with emotion. To put your right foot forward is thus to guard against ill-luck.

best friends See EVEN YOUR.

(the) best fucks are always after a good cry A seldom recorded observation. In Peter Hall’s Diaries (1983) – entry for 22 May 1979 – it is quoted as having been said at Glyndebourne after Elizabeth Söderström had burst into tears at being given tough direction and then gone on to give ‘a very good first act’.

be still, my beating heart! A common phrase from 19th-century verse, now only used in parody or as a cynical comment on an account of young love or a romantic incident. ‘My beating heart’, on its own, appears in innumerable verses between 1700 and 1900. ‘Be still, my beating heart, be still!’ is the first line of ‘All One’ by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907). ‘Oh my soul, my beating heart’ is in Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad (1869). Dr James Beattie’s ‘Elegy: Written in the Year 1758’ has: ‘But peace, bold thought! Be still, my bursting heart!’ W. S. Gilbert, in The Sorcerer, Act 1 (1877), has Dr Daly say, ‘Be still, my fluttering heart!’ Since he is a middle-aged clergyman, might the joke not lie in the audience being familiar with it from a heroine of one of the Victorian melodramas? In HMS Pinafore, Act 1 (1878), Gilbert puts: ‘Oh, my heart, my beating heart’. A little later than all this, there was a song entitled ‘Be Still, My Heart! (I Can Tell Who’s Knocking At My Door)’ (1934).

(the) best-kept secret In its original form, about any well-withheld information, this was a cliché by the mid-20th century, but as used by travel-writers to describe a holiday destination, it was included in the ‘travel scribes’ armoury’ compiled from competition entries in The Guardian (10 April 1993). ‘Seeing that in the last month Lasmo’s share price has drifted northwards from 114p to a peak of 169p (now 149.5p) this was hardly the world’s best-kept secret’ – The Observer (1 May 1994); ‘If this punchy little two-hander from Footpaul Productions of South Africa has ambitions to being the best kept secret of this year’s Mayfest, then it won’t work because wordof-mouth will acclaim it for the gem it is’ – The Herald (Glasgow) (11 May 1994); ‘Once known as “Europe’s best kept secret”, the secret leaked out and now much of [the Algarve’s] wonderful Atlantic coast has been obscured by a wall of concrete – The Herald (Glasgow) (28 May 1994).

(to make the) best of both worlds Meaning, ‘to have the benefits of two contrasting or separate ways of life or circumstances.’ The expression appears to have originated in the title of a book by the Congregationalist preacher Thomas Binney (1798–1874), Is It Possible To Make the Best of Both Worlds? A Book for Young Men (1853). Binney answers his own question affirmatively: not only is it possible for a good Christian to lead a happy life on earth, such a life is even the best preparation for life after death. Released from its religious origins, the phrase became increasingly popular from the 1960s onwards (Robert Palmer had a modest hit with the song ‘Best of Both Worlds’ in 1978), and then an explosion of popularity after 1990.

best of order See GIVE ORDER.

(the) best Prime Minister we have (or never had) R. A. (later Lord) Butler (d. 1982) has sometimes been known as ‘the best Prime Minister we never had’ (so have others, like Denis Healey, for example), and it is to Butler that we probably owe both the positive and the negative formats. In December 1955, having (not for the last time) been passed over for the Conservative leadership, he was confronted by a Press Association reporter just as he was about to board an aircraft at London airport. As criticism was growing over the performance of Anthony Eden, the Prime Minister, the reporter asked: ‘Mr Butler, would you say that this [Eden] is the best Prime Minister we have?’ Butler assented to this ‘well-meant but meaningless proposition…indeed it was fathered upon me. I don’t think it did Anthony any good. It did not do me any good either’ – The Art of the Possible (1973).

best-regulated See ACCIDENTS.

(to give something one’s) best shot To try as hard as possible, to do one’s very best. An American idiom known by 1951 when, in the film His Kind of Woman, Robert Mitchum said, during a card game, ‘Take your best shot.’ Presumably the expression derives from the sporting sense of ‘shot’ (as in golf) rather than the gun sense. ‘“We’re not able to adequately counsel the farmer with the present plan,” he said. “With this, we’ll be able to give him our best shot”’ – The Washington Post (13 February 1984); ‘The editor must keep his powder dry. He is there to sell newspapers and his best shot is to find and project material denied to his rivals’ – The Guardian (14 May 1984); the film Hoosiers (US 1986), about a basketball team, was also known as Best Shot; ‘For Clinton and the Democrats, the issue his candidacy continues to pose is electability. His primary claim to the nomination lies not in ideology and political correctness but in being the Democrat who has the best shot at winning in November’ – The Washington Post (31 January 1992); ‘[Imran Khan] had prepared for marriage like a cricket match. He had no guarantees it would work but he would give it his “best shot”’ – The Independent (21 June 1995).

(the) best swordsman in—(or finest swordsman…) Latterly a cliché of swashbuckling epics, this phrase has quite a history. John Aubrey in his Brief Lives (circa 1697) has a literal use: ‘Sir John Digby yielded to be the best swordsman of his time.’ Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 27 (1841), has a relatively unselfconscious use: ‘I have been tempted in these two short interviews, to draw upon that fellow, fifty times. Five men in six would have yielded to the impulse. By suppressing mine, I wound him deeper and more keenly than if I were the best swordsman in all Europe.’ In the film Son of Monte Cristo (US 1940), Louis Hayward as the Count of Monte Cristo says: ‘Don’t worry. My father was the best swordsman in France!’ ‘He thinks that will protect him against me – the finest swordsman in Bavaria’ is spoken in the film A Night in Casablanca (US 1946). ‘He is the fastest sword in the whole of France’ – spoken by Ernie Wise in a ‘Three Musketeers’ sketch on BBC TV The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show (1970). The Finest Swordsman in All France is the title of a book (1984) by Keith Miles on the subject of clichés in general.

(the) best things in life are free A modern proverb that really does seem to have started life with the song of the title (1927) by De Sylva, Brown and Henderson – featured in the show Good News (filmed US 1930 and 1947).

best years of one’s life See HAPPIEST DAYS OF.

better See BEAT A PATH; COULD IT GET.

better and better See EVERY DAY.

(one’s) better half One’s spouse or partner. General use and pretty inoffensive except to the politically correct who might jib at implied inequality of any kind in a married relationship (even if the better of the two people is invariably the woman). Of long standing: ‘My dear, my better half (said he) I find I must now leave thee’ – Argalus to his wife, in Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia (1580).

better out than in What you say having belched. Quoted in Mary Killen, Best Behaviour (1990). Or when farting, according to Partridge/Catch Phrases, in which Paul Beale dates it to the 1950s.

better red than dead A slogan used by some (mainly British) nuclear disarmers. Bertrand Russell wrote in 1958: ‘If no alternative remains except communist domination or the extinction of the human race, the former alternative is the lesser of two evils’. Time Magazine (15 September 1961) gave ‘I’d rather be Red than dead’ as a slogan of Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The counter-cry: ‘Better dead than red’ may also have had some currency. In the film Love With a Proper Stranger (US 1964), Steve McQueen proposed to Natalie Wood with a picket sign stating ‘Better Wed Than Dead’.

(well, it’s) better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick What you say to someone who is hesitating over accepting something – a small tip, say, or an equivocal compliment: it is ‘better than nothing.’ Certainly established usage by the time it was uttered on BBC Radio, Round the Horne (15 February 1967). Indeed, Partridge/Catch Phrases dates it and other similar phrases to ‘circa 1920’ and adds: ‘Most seem to have originated late in C19. Compare Grose (1788): “this is better than a thump on the back with a stone”.’ An English Midlands variant, dating from the mid-20th century is: ‘Better than a poke in the eye with a hedge stake’ (which is, of course, a sharp stick). Compare also:

(well, it’s) better than a slap in your belly with a wet fish What you say to someone who may be hesitating over accepting something. Partridge/Catch Phrases has ‘…than a slap across the kisser’. The art critic Brian Sewell revealed on BBC Radio Quote…Unquote (12 April 1994) that his nurse, when bathing him, would not only inquire ‘Have you done down there?’ but also command him to stand up at the conclusion of the proceedings and whack him with a sopping wet flannel, saying, ‘There’s a slap in the belly with a wet fish.’

(it is) better to die on your feet than live on your knees A Republican slogan from the Spanish Civil War, 1936. Dolores Ibarruri (‘La Pasionaria’) said it in a radio speech from Paris calling on the women of Spain to help defend the Republic (3 September 1936). According to her autobiography (1966), she had used the words earlier, on 18 July, when broadcasting in Spain. Emiliano Zapata (circa 1877–1919), the Mexican guerilla leader, had used the expression long before her in 1910: ‘Men of the South! It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees […Es mejor preferible morir a pie que vivir en rodillas]!’ Franklin D. Roosevelt later picked up the expression in his message accepting an honorary degree from Oxford University (19 June 1941): ‘We, too, are born to freedom, and believing in freedom, are willing to fight to maintain freedom. We, and all others who believe as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.’

Betty See ALL MY EYE.

between a rock and a hard place In a position impossible to get out of, literally or metaphorically. Popular in the 1970s and almost certainly of North American origin, despite its almost biblical resonance. The UK/Canada group Cutting Crew had a song with the title, ‘(Between a Rock) And A Hard Place’, in 1989. An early appearance is in John Buchan, The Courts of the Morning (1929), but the phrase was being discussed in Dialect Notes, No. 5 (1921), where it was defined as ‘to be bankrupt…Common in Arizona in recent panics; sporadic in California’. Some have attempted to suggest that it is a modern version of between Scylla and Charybdis where Scylla was a sea monster on a rock and Charybdis was a whirlpool – two equal dangers one could not avoid. This is not the meaning of ‘between a rock and a hard place’ – besides, a whirlpool is not exactly a ‘hard’ place, except in the sense of a problematical one to get out of. A few years ago, the late King Hussein of Jordan (or P.L.K. = Plucky Little King) was said to be ‘Between Iraq and a Hard Place.’

between you and me and the gatepost (or bedpost or doorpost) Confidentially – a phrase suggesting (lightly and not very seriously) that a secret is about to be imparted and that it should be kept. Known by 1832. Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 10 (1839), has: ‘Between you and me and the post, sir, it will be a very nice portrait.’ The previous year, Dickens had written in a letter: ‘Between you and me and the general post.’

betwixt the devil and the deep blue sea Meaning, ‘having two courses of action open to one, both of them dangerous’ (as with the classical Scylla and Charybdis, see just above). The phrase should not be taken too literally. The ‘devil’ here may refer to the seam of a wooden ship’s hull or to a plank fastened to the side of a ship as a support for guns. Either of these was difficult of access, a perilous place to be, but better than in the deep blue sea. An earlier form was ‘between the devil and the Dead Sea’ (known by 1894).

bet you can’t eat just one A slogan for Lay’s potato chips in the USA (quoted in 1981). By 1982, bet you can’t eat three was being used by the cricketer Ian Botham to promote Shredded Wheat in the UK.

Beulah – peel me a grape! A catchphrase expressing dismissive unconcern, first uttered by Mae West to a black maid in the film I’m No Angel (1933), after a male admirer has stormed out on her. It has had some wider currency since then but is nearly always used as a conscious quotation.

be upstairs ready, my angel See BURMA.

beware Greeks bearing gifts A warning against trickery, this is an allusion to the most famous Greek gift of all – the large wooden horse that was built as an offering to the gods before the Greeks were about to return home after besieging Troy unsuccessfully for ten years. When it was taken within the city walls of Troy, men leapt out from it, opened the gates and helped destroy the city. Virgil in the Aeneid (II.49) has Laocoön warn the Trojans not to admit the horse, saying ‘timeo Danaos et dona ferentes [I still fear the Greeks, even when they offer gifts].’ ‘Upon my admiring some gooseberry wine at dinner, she turned to the Butler, and ordered him to send half-a-dozen to the Parsonage the following day, which I did all I could to decline, under the old feeling, Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’ – Reverend John Skinner, diary entry for 28 April 1822 (Journal of a Somerset Rector 1803–1834, pub. 1930/1971).

beyond See ABOVE AND.

beyond the Fringe Beyond the Fringe was the title of a trend-setting, somewhat satirical, revue (London 1961 and then on Broadway). It had first been shown, however, at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival as part of the main programme of events, where it was ‘beyond’ the unofficial series of theatrical manifestations at Edinburgh known as the ‘Fringe’. Note also an allusion to the following:

beyond the pale Meaning, ‘outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour’. The Pale was the area of English settlement around Dublin in Ireland, dating from the 14th century, in which English law had to be obeyed, but there have also been areas known as pales in Scotland, around Calais and in Russia. The derivation is from the Latin palus, meaning ‘a stake’. Anyone who lived outside this fence was thought to be beyond the bounds of civilization. The allusive use does not appear earlier than the mid-19th century.

BFN – ‘bye for now See MORNING ALL.

bicycle See AS SURE.

(the) Big Apple As a nickname for New York City, this expression seems to have arisen in the 1920s/30s. There are various possible explanations: the Spanish word for a block of houses between two streets is manzana which is also the word for apple; in the mid-1930s there was a Harlem night club called ‘The Big Apple’, which was a mecca for jazz musicians; there was also a jitterbugging dance from the swing era (circa 1936) that took its name from the nightclub; ‘big apple’ was racetrack argot, and New York City had a good reputation in this field – hence, the phrase was used to describe the city’s metropolitan racing (as in a column ‘On the Big Apple’ by John J. Fitzgerald in the Morning Telegraph, mid-1920s.) OED2 has ‘Big Apple’ for New York City in 1928 before the dance explanation, but Safire plumps for the jazz version, recalling a 1944 jive ‘handbook’ defining ‘apple’ as: ‘the earth, the universe, this planet. Any place that’s large. A big Northern city’. Hence, you called New York City the Big Apple if you considered it to be the centre of the universe. In 1971, Charles Gillett, president of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau, attempted to revitalize NYC’s economy by re-popularizing it as ‘the Big Apple’ (compare I LOVE NEW YORK). In the 18th century, Horace Walpole had called London ‘The Strawberry’ because of its freshness and cleanliness in comparison with foreign cities.

(a) big boy did it and ran away The classic child’s excuse when insisting that something which has happened is not its fault. Hence, A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away, the title of a novel (2001) by Christopher Brookmyre.

Big Brother is watching you A fictional slogan from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948). In a dictatorial state, every citizen is regimented and observed by a spying TV set in the home. The line became a popular catchphrase following a sensational BBC TV dramatization of the novel in 1954. Aspects of the Ministry of Truth in the novel were derived not only from Orwell’s knowledge of the BBC (where he worked) but also from his first wife Eileen’s work at the Ministry of Food, preparing ‘Kitchen Front’ broadcasts during the Second World War (circa 1942–4). From 2000, Channel 4 in the UK showed an annual series of Big Brother, a so-called ‘reality’ TV programme in which the behaviour of a group of people contained in a house was continuously recorded and shown in edited excerpts.

(a) big butter and egg man This description of a small-town businessman trying to prove himself a big shot in the city was much used by Texas Guinan, the US nightclub hostess (d. 1933). Cyril Connolly in his Journals (1983) characterized the man in question as a small-town success, often a farmer who produced such commodities as butter and eggs, and who attempted to pass for a sophisticate in the big city. Finding it first in the 1920s, OED2 emphasizes that the man in question – ‘wealthy, unsophisticated’ – spends his money freely. The Butter and Egg Man was the title of a play (1925) by George S. Kaufman.

big conk, big cock (or big nose, big cock)! A phrase expressing the age-old superstition that there is a correlation between the size of a man’s nose and his penis. Erasmus (1466–1536), of all people, is supposed to have included the aphorism (in Latin) in one of his works, as ‘Bene nasati, bene menticulati’. Compare large feet, large cock and its corollary, small feet, small cock – recorded in my book The Gift of the Gab (1985). Hence, the playful exchange in the film Notting Hill (UK 1999): Anna: ‘You have big feet.’ William: ‘Yes, always have had.’ Anna: ‘You know what they say about men with big feet?’ William: ‘No, what’s that?’ Anna: ‘Big feet, large shoes.’

big deal! A deflating (mostly American) exclamation. DOAS has it in ‘wide student use since circa 1940’ and ‘popularized by comedian Arnold Stang in the Henry Morgan network radio program circa 1946 and on the Milton Berle network program circa 1950’. Leo Rosten in Hooray for Yiddish! (1982) emphasizes its similarity with sarcastic, derisive Jewish phrases and notes how ‘it is uttered with emphasis on the “big”, in a dry disenchanted tone’.

(the) Big Enchilada Nickname of John Mitchell (1913–88), US Attorney General, who led President Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972 and subsequently was sentenced to a gaol term for associated offences. An enchilada is a Mexican dish. The term was evoked (like ‘Big Cheese’) by a Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, during a 1973 taped conversation in the White House. He sought to describe the size of the sacrificial victim who was being thrown to the wolves.

(the) Big Fellow (or Big Fella) Nickname of Michael Collins (1890–1922), the Irish politician and Sinn Fein leader. Tim Pat Coogan in his biography (1990) notes that the sobriquet indicated: ‘Swollen-headedness as much as height, just under six feet.’ Sometimes also known as the Long Fellow.

(too) big for one’s boots Meaning, ‘conceited’. In use by 1879. Perhaps originally ‘…for one’s breeches’ (US by 1835). An example: in 1948, reports of a speech by Harold Wilson, then President of the Board of Trade, wrongly suggested he had claimed that when at school, some of his classmates had gone barefoot. Ivor Bulmer-Thomas consequently remarked at the 1949 Conservative Party Conference: ‘If ever he went to school without any boots it was because he was too big for them.’ This remark is often wrongly attributed to Harold Macmillan.

bigger See IS IT.

(a) bigger splash Title of David Hockney’s 1967 painting – one of his California swimming pool series – that shows a splash as a diver enters the water but does not show his body. Accordingly, A Bigger Splash became the title of a 1973 British documentary for the cinema about Hockney’s life as an artist and as a homosexual.

(the) bigger they come, the harder they fall A proverbial phrase often attributed to Bob Fitzsimmons (1862–1917), a Britishborn boxer in the USA, referring to an opponent of larger build (James L. Jeffries), prior to a fight in San Francisco (9 June 1899). This was quoted in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (11 August 1900) as, ‘The bigger they are, the further they have to fall.’ Also attributed to the boxer John L. Sullivan but probably of earlier proverbial origin in any case. Hence, presumably, The Harder They Fall, title of a novel by Budd Schulberg and a film (US 1956) about boxing. The Harder They Come was also the title of a film (US 1973).

(a) big girl’s blouse Phrase used about a man who is not as manly as he might be. A rather odd expression, possibly of Welsh origin, and suggesting what an effeminate football or rugby player might wear instead of a proper jersey. Could it have something to do with the wobbliness of the image conjured up? Street Talk (1986) states that it ‘describes an adult male who has a low pain threshold, a “sissy”. When trying to remove a splinter someone might say: “Hold still you big girl’s blouse. It won’t hurt”.’ Confirming its mostly North country use, the phrase has also been associated with the British comedienne Hylda Baker (1908–86) in the form ‘You big girl’s blouse’, probably in the situation comedy Nearest and Dearest (ITV 1968–73). From The Guardian (20 December 1986) – about a nativity play: ‘The house is utterly still (except where Balthazar is trying to screw the spout of his frankincense pot into Melchior’s ear, to even things up for being called a big girl’s blouse on the way in from the dressing room.)’ From The Herald (Glasgow) (20 October 1994): ‘His acid-tongued father [Prince Philip] might be reinforced in his view of him as a big girl’s blouse, but Prince Charles is actually a big boy now. His children, locked away in the posh equivalent of care, are not.’ From The Sunday Times (6 November 1994): ‘Men, quite naturally, are equally unwilling to accept paternity leave, because of the fear that this will mark them for ever as a great big girl’s blouse.’

big head (or big ‘ead)! Said of a conceited person and achieving catchphrase status when spoken by Max Bygraves in the BBC radio show Educating Archie (mid-1950s). He ran into trouble with educationists for not pronouncing the ‘h’, but he persisted and also recorded a song with the refrain ‘Why does everybody call me “Big ‘ead”?’

big-hearted Arthur, that’s me! Arthur Askey (1900–82) has good cause to be acclaimed as the father of the British radio catchphrase. He had such a profusion of them from the BBC’s Band Waggon (1938–39) onwards, that he may be said to have popularized the notion that broadcast comedians were somehow incomplete without a catchphrase. ‘There had been radio comedians before this who used catchphrases,’ he commented in 1979, ‘like Sandy Powell, but ours was the first show which really made a thing of them. I was the one who was on the air most and kept banging them in.’ Band Waggon was the first BBC comedy show specifically tailored for radio – as opposed to being made up of variety acts. The basic format was that of a magazine, but the best-remembered segment is that in which Askey shared a flat with Richard Murdoch (1907–90) on the top of Broadcasting House in London, bringing added meaning to the term ‘resident comedians’. A catchphrase that stayed with Askey for the rest of his life was spoken in the first edition of the show on 5 January 1938. ‘I have always used this expression – even when I was at school. When playing cricket, you know, if the ball was hit to the boundary and nobody would go and fetch it – I would…saying “Big-hearted Arthur, that’s me!”’ ‘Big-Hearted Arthur’ was also Askey’s bill matter.

(the) big lie From the German grosse Lüge – a distortion of the truth so brazen that it cannot fail to be accepted, a technique that was the cornerstone of Nazi propaganda. Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (1925): ‘The great mass of the people…will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.’ Together with Josef Goebbels, his propaganda chief, Hitler perceived that the bigger a lie was and the more frequently it was told, the greater was the likelihood of its mass acceptance.

big money See LOADSAMONEY.

(the) big one This boast, beloved – in particular – of a certain type of advertiser, almost certainly dates back to 1907 when, in the USA, Ringling Brothers Circus bought up its rival, Barnum and Bailey. The two together were billed, understandably, as ‘The Big One’. When the outfit closed in 1956, the New York Post had the headline, ‘THE BIG ONE IS NO MORE!’ The term may be applied to any product or event that an advertiser wishes to promote as important. From the BBC radio show Round the Horne (14 May 1967): ‘Rousing fanfare: “This is the big one” – “Watch out for it” – “It’s coming your way” – “It’s coming soon” – “Don’t miss it”.’ Since the 1960s at least, the phrase ‘Big One’ has also been applied to the feared and inevitable major earthquake expected in southern California, of which there have been several harbingers. From The Washington Post (2 October 1987): ‘Shaken Californians’ Thoughts Turn To The Future “Big One” –…Southern Californians spent most of their day today reliving the earthquake and almost everybody’s wild fear that this would be what is generally referred to in this state as “the Big One”…a reference to the earthquake all Californians know has been building for decades along the San Andreas Fault, and which is predicted, when it hits, to cause massive devastation along the West Coast.’ The British TV commentator David Vine caused a good deal of inappropriate laughter in about 1974 when, at athletic competitions, he would talk of competitors ‘pulling out the big one’ – i.e. making the supreme effort. Note also a ‘big one’ in the sense of a drink offered as a thank-you, literally or metaphorically. From Christopher Ogden, Life of the Party (1994): ‘Pamela had introduced Clinton to the Washington power circuit and she had helped organize and pay for the overhaul of the Democratic party. The president-elect owed her a big one.’ DOAS points out that a ‘big one’ is also a $1,000 bill (from gambling) [£100 in the UK] and a nursery euphemism for a bowel movement. Partridge/Slang has ‘big one’ or ‘big ‘un’ for ‘a notable person’ and dates it from between 1800 and 1850. Pierce Egan in Boxiana (1829) has: ‘Jem had now reduced the “big one” to his own weight, and had also placed him upon the stand-still system.’

(a) big shot A powerful man, especially in the worlds of crime, politics and business. Of American origin, since about 1929, it carries a suggestion of disapproval. From Norman Lewis, The Honoured Society (1964): ‘By 1914, and the outbreak of the First World War, Zu Calo was the undisputed head of the Mafia of the province of Caltanisetta, and as such, in Mafia jargon, a pezzo di novanta [gun of ninety] – a term of honour derived from an unwieldy but impressive piece of siege artillery of the epoch of Garibaldi, firing a shell 90 millimetres in diameter (hence the translated Americanism, “big shot”)…’

(the) big sleep A synonym for death, as in the title of the novel The Big Sleep (1939; filmed US 1946 and 1977) by Raymond Chandler.

(the) Big Yin Nickname of Billy Connolly, the Scots comedian (b. 1942). It means ‘Big One’ and probably derives from a routine he did in the early 1970s called ‘Last Supper and Crucifixion’ in which he referred to Christ as such.

Bill’s mother’s See IT’S DARK.

(the) Bill See OLD BILL.

bill stickers will be prosecuted Form of words that used to appear on advertisement hoardings or board fencing in the UK in an attempt to discourage fly-posting. The notice is shown in a Punch cartoon in the edition of 26 April 1939. The term ‘billsticker’ has been known since 1774 at least. Perhaps the phrase has fallen out of use because of the graffitoed addition, recorded in the 1970s: ‘…Bill Stickers is innocent.’

Bingo! A generalized exclamation on achieving anything, similar to ‘Eureka!’. In 1919, at a carnival near Jacksonville, Florida, Edwin Lowe saw people playing what they called ‘bean-o’ – putting beans on a numbered card. This game of chance was already established elsewhere under the names ‘Keno’, ‘Loo’, and ‘Housey-Housey’. Lowe developed the idea and launched a craze that netted him a fortune. One of his friends stuttered, ‘B–b–bingo!’ on winning, and that is how the game is said to have got its name. The word had already been applied to brandy in the 17th century, but – as a result of this development from ‘bean-o’ – it turned not only into an exclamation on winning Lowe’s game but also into a generalized cry of success.

bird See GET THE.

(the) birds of the air This is essentially a biblical phrase – for example, Matthew 8:20: ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.’ However, it makes a later notable appearance in the rhyme ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’ (first recorded in the 18th century): ‘All the birds of the air / Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing, / When they heard the bell toll / For poor Cock Robin.’ The Birds of the Air is the title of a novel (1980) by Alice Thomas Ellis. A variant is ‘fowl(s) of the air’ (Genesis 1:26), though much more commonly one finds ‘fowls of the heavens’ in (mostly) the Old Testament. The ‘fish(es) of the sea’ occurs at least three times in the Old Testament (e.g. Genesis 1:26). ‘All the beasts of the forest’ is biblical, too (Psalms 104:20), though more frequent is beasts of the field (e.g. Psalms 8:7).

birth pangs Denoting initial difficulties in any sphere of activity, as though comparable to those experienced when a mother gives birth. Date of origin unknown. ‘The inevitable transformation of universities everywhere into “multi-versities” is being achieved with appalling birth pangs in the University of California’ – The Guardian (30 November 1968); ‘The boom in DIY retailing in the 1980s had been fuelled by the growth in home ownership and the number of house moves. Once that engine was switched off, retail price wars and “20pc off everything” promotions followed. Do It All, still in its painful birth pangs, was thrust into the firing line’ – The Daily Telegraph (7 May 1994).

bishop See AS THE BISHOP; BASH THE; DO YOU KNOW.

Bisto See AHH!

bitch See EVERY DOG.

(the) bitch-goddess Success This phrase was coined by the American psychologist William James (1842–1910) in a letter to H. G. Wells (11 September 1906): ‘The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success. That – with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success – is our national disease.’ In Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), D. H. Lawrence uses the term ‘bitch-goddess Success’ on no fewer than ten occasions – and then attributes it to William James’s brother, Henry…

(to) bite the bullet Meaning, ‘to face up to adversity with courage’. The phrase probably derives from the days of field surgery in battle before anaesthesia was available. A wounded man would literally be given a bullet to bite on to distract him from the pain. ‘Brace up and bite the bullet. I’m afraid I’ve bad news for you’ – P. G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves, Chap. 2 (1923).

bite the dust See KICK THE BUCKET.

bitter See ALL.

(the) bitter end Meaning, ‘the last extremity; the absolute limit’, and a common phrase by the mid-19th century. Bitterness doesn’t really enter into it: the nautical ‘bitt’ is a bollard on the deck of a ship around which cables and ropes are wound. The end of the cable that is wrapped round or otherwise secured to the bollard is the ‘bitter end’. On the other hand, ends have – for possibly longer – been described as bitter in other senses. Proverbs 5:4 has: ‘But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword’. ‘The rather shallow stretch of water we call “la Manche” has always masked a gaping chasm of a different sort – between the island and the Continent (what a strange word!) in general, and France in particular. Right to the bitter end, some island fundamentalists have feared that the tunnel will bring some foreign plague or other, be it rabies, frogs’ legs or garlic’ – The Guardian (6 May 1994); ‘The maverick anti-Maastricht MP, Denzil Davies, indicated that he would continue fighting for nominations until the bitter end. The former Treasury minister and MP for Llanelli is not expected to attract more than a handful’ – The Independent (16 June 1994).

bitter experience An inevitable pairing of words. Date of origin unknown. A cliché by the 1920s/30s and listed in The Independent (24 December 1994) as a cliché of newspaper editorials. ‘Breeders know from bitter experience that matings do not always “nick” and that…they are sure to suffer many a disappointment’ – The Daily Telegraph (4 January 1971); ‘The bitter experience of 1960 affected Nixon deeply. Watergate was born in the way the Kennedys and the Kennedy money treated him then. Nobody was ever going to cheat him again’ – The Scotsman (2 May 1994); ‘The battery alone in my laptop weighs just marginally less than the combined weight of a Psion computer and modem – and I know from bitter experience you always have to carry at least one spare battery’ – Lloyd’s List (28 June 1994).

black See ANY COLOUR; AS BLACK.

(the) blackboard jungle One of several phrases that suggest that there are urban areas where the ‘law of the jungle’ may apply – in this case, the educational system. The Blackboard Jungle was the title of a novel (1954; film US 1955) by Evan Hunter. Earlier, there had been W. R. Burnett’s novel The Asphalt Jungle (1949), though OED2 finds that phrase in use in 1920. A little later, in 1969, came references to ‘the concrete jungle’.

(a) black box After a plane crash there is usually a scramble to retrieve the aircraft’s ‘black box’ – or, more properly, its ‘flight data recorder’. This contains detailed recordings of the aircraft’s performance prior to the crash and can be of value in determining what went wrong. The name has been used since the Second World War. Originally it was RAF slang for a box containing intricate navigational equipment. Flight recorders are in fact orange so as to be more easily seen. The popular name arose probably because black is a more mysterious colour, appropriate for a box containing ‘secret’ equipment (Pye produced a record player with the name in the 1950s) and because of the alliteration.

black-coated workers Referring to prunes as laxatives, this term, of earlier origin, was popularized from 1941 onwards in an early-morning BBC programme The Kitchen Front by the ‘Radio Doctor’, Charles (later Lord) Hill. He noted in his autobiography, Both Sides of the Hill (1964): ‘I remember calling on the Principal Medical Officer of the Board of Education…At the end of the interview this shy and solemn man diffidently suggested that the prune was a blackcoated worker and that this phrase might be useful to me. It was.’ Earlier, the diarist MP Chips Channon was using the phrase in a literal sense concerning the clerical and professional class when he wrote (8 April 1937): ‘The subject was “Widows and Orphans”, the Old Age Pensions Bill, a measure which affects Southend and its black-coated workers’ – Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon, ed. Robert Rhodes James (1967).

(the) black dog Used notably by Winston Churchill to describe the fits of depression to which he was sometimes subjected, this is an old phrase. It was known by the late 18th century, as in the country/nursery saying about a sullen child: ‘The black dog is on his back’. Brewer (1894) has the alternative, ‘a black dog has walked over him’. The reference here is to the devil, as in J. B. Priestley’s The Good Companions (1929): ‘He [Jess Oakroyd] was troubled by a vague foreboding. It was just as if a demoniac black dog went trotting everywhere at his heels.’ A perfect explanation appears in a letter from Samuel Johnson to Mrs Thrale (28 June 1783): ‘The black Dog I hope always to resist, and in time to drive though I am deprived of almost all those that used to help me…Mrs Allen is dead…Mrs Williams is so weak that she can be a companion no longer. When I rise my breakfast is solitary, the black dog waits to share it…’

black dwarf See POISONED CHALICE.

Black Friday Originally this was a description of Good Friday, when clergymen wore dark vestments. However, there have been any number of specific ‘Black Fridays’ so designated. In Britain, on one such day (15 April 1921), certain trade unions withdrew support from the hard-pressed miners, a general strike was cancelled, and this is recalled in the Labour movement as a day of betrayal. In the USA, the ‘first’ Black Friday was on 24 September 1929 when panic broke out on the stock market. During the Wall Street crash there were similarly a Black Wednesday, a Black Thursday – the actual day of the crash – and a Black Tuesday. In 1987, on stock markets round the world, there was a Black Monday (October 19) and another Black Thursday (October 22).

(a) black hole A term in astronomy for what is left when a star collapses gravitationally, thus leaving a field from which neither matter nor radiation can escape. The term was in use by 1968 and is sometimes used figuratively to describe the place to which a person has gone who has inexplicably just disappeared.

(the) Black Hole of Calcutta In 1756, 146 Europeans, including one woman, were condemned by the Nawab of Bengal to spend a night in the ‘Black-Hole’ prison of Fort William, Calcutta, after it had been captured. Only 23, including the woman, survived till morning. Subsequently the phrase has been applied to any place of confinement or any airless, dark place. From Francis Kilvert’s diary entry for 27 October 1874 (about a Church Missionary Society meeting): ‘The weather was close, warm and muggy, the room crowded to suffocation and frightfully hot, like the Black Hole of Calcutta, though the doors and all the windows were wide open’ (Kilvert’s Diary, Vols.1–3, ed. William Plomer, 1961).

black is beautiful The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jnr launched a poster campaign based on these words in 1967, but Stokely Carmichael had used the phrase earlier at a Memphis Civil Rights rally in 1966, and it had appeared in Liberation (NY) on 25 September 1965. The phrase may have had its origins in the Song of Solomon 1:5: ‘I am black, but comely.’

black list See ENEMIES LIST.

black mark, Bentley! Jimmy Edwards chiding Dick Bentley in the BBC radio show Take It From Here (1948–59). Frank Muir, the co-scriptwriter, commented (1979) that it arose from the use of ‘black mark!’ by James Robertson Justice in Peter Ustinov’s film of Vice Versa (UK 1947).

black power A slogan encompassing just about anything that people want it to mean, from simple pride in the black race to a threat of violence. Adam Clayton Powell Jnr, the Harlem congressman, said in a baccalaureate address at Howard University in May 1966: ‘To demand these God-given rights is to seek black power – what I call audacious power – the power to build black institutions of splendid achievement.’ On 6 June the same year, James Meredith, the first black person to integrate the University of Mississippi (in 1962), was shot and wounded during a civil rights march. Stokely Carmichael, heading the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, continued the march, during which his contingent first used the phrase as a shout. Carmichael used it in a speech at Greenwood, Mississippi, the same month. It was also adopted as a slogan by the Congress for Racial Equality. However, the notion was not new in the 1960s. Langston Hughes had written in Simple Takes a Wife (1953): ‘Negro blood is so powerful – because just one drop of black blood makes a coloured man – one drop – you are a Negro!…Black is powerful.’

black velvet Name of a drink made up of equal parts of champagne and stout (especially Guinness) and which derives from its appearance and taste. Also used to describe the sexual attributes of a black woman, according to Partridge/Slang. Known by 1930 in both senses.

blah-blah-blah ‘Blah’ or ‘blah-blah’, signifying ‘empty talk; airy mouthings’, are phrases that have been around (originally in the USA) since the end of the First World War. More recently the tripartite version (although known by 1924) has become marginally more frequent to denote words omitted or as another way of saying ‘and so on’. Ira and George Gershwin wrote a song called ‘Blah, Blah, Blah’ for a film called Delicious (1931) which contains such lines as ‘Blah, blah, blah, blah moon…Blah, blah, blah, blah croon’. Other examples are: ‘Burt [a journalist]: “You wouldn’t object to that angle for the piece? Here’s what he says: The Family bla-bla-bla, here’s how he lives…”’ – Peter Nichols, Chez Nous (1974); ‘Saul Kelner, 19…was the first person in line to see the president. He arrived at the White House…11¹/₂ hours before the open house was to begin. “We didn’t sleep,” he said. “What we did, we circulated a list to ensure our places on line. ‘We the people, blah, blah, blah,’ and we all signed it”’ – The Washington Post (22 January 1989); ‘Bush referred to the diplomatic language [after a NATO summit conference in Bonn] in casual slang as “blah, blah”’ – The Washington Post (31 May 1989). The latter caused foreign journalists problems: ‘After all, how do you translate “blah, blah” into Italian?’

(the) bland leading the bland This coinage is anonymous and is quoted in Leslie Halliwell, The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes (1973). It probably alludes to ‘Television is the bland leading the bland’, which occurs in Murray Schumach, The Face on the Cutting Room Floor (1964). The trope also occurs in J. K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958): ‘These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification, the bland lead the bland.’ That same year (2 November 1958), The Sunday Times reported critic Kenneth Tynan’s view on his joining another paper: ‘They say the New Yorker is the bland leading the bland…I don’t know if I’m bland enough.’ Compare (THE) BLIND LEADING THE BLIND.

(to kiss the) Blarney Stone Meaning, to bestow on oneself the gift of the gab. The custom of kissing (the somewhat inaccessible) stone at Blarney Castle near Cork in Ireland is of relatively recent origin, having not been mentioned in print until the late 18th century. The word ‘blarney’ seems, however, to have entered the language a little while before. The origin traditionally given is that in 1602, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, one Cormac Macarthy (or Dermot McCarthy) was required to surrender the castle as proof of his loyalty. He prevaricated and came up with so many excuses that (it is said) the Queen herself exclaimed: ‘Odds bodikins, more Blarney talk’.

(a) blazing inferno An inevitable pairing, especially in journalistic use. Date of origin unknown. Singled out as a media cliché by Malcolm Bradbury in Tatler (March 1980) in the form: ‘As I stand here in the blazing inferno that was once called Saigon/ Beirut/ Belfast…’ ‘Hex’s favourite Stephen Jones hats remain the series of fabulous kitchen follies which included a frying-pan (complete with bacon and eggs) and a colander brimming with vegetables. Does Jones have a particular favourite? From a blazing inferno in his showroom he might try to save a gigantic layered tulle confection’ – The Scotsman (11 May 1994); ‘In June a 13-year-old schoolgirl died as she saved her two young sisters and brother after a massive gas explosion ripped through their home. The blast turned their home in Ramsgate, Kent, into a blazing inferno’ – Daily Mirror (29 December 1994).

bleats See EVERY TIME.

bless (his) little cotton socks A pleasant remark to make about a child, meaning, ‘Isn’t (he) sweet, such a dear little thing’. As ‘bless your little cotton socks’, it just means ‘thank you’. Partridge/Slang dates the expression from circa 1900 and labels it heavily ‘middle-class’.