Endangered Phrases: Intriguing Idioms Dangerously Close to Extinction
224
Endangered Phrases: Intriguing Idioms Dangerously Close to Extinction
224eBookProprietary (Proprietary)
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626369733 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Skyhorse |
| Publication date: | 06/22/2011 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 390 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
A
above the salt (see below the salt)
* * *
as accommodating as a hog on ice: very disagreeable.
An old New England expression that imparts a very clear message: swine don't like being very cold any more than people do.
* * *
"As the actress said to the bishop ...": a phrase used to point out or emphasize that a remark had a risqué double meaning, whether or not it was intended.
The phrase, first heard in Britain in the mid-20th century, contrasts a worldly actress and a very proper clergyman to whom such double meanings had to be pointed out. It also took the form of "as the bishop said to the actress," "as the schoolmaster said to the schoolgirl," and any number of other combinations.
Mae West's repartees, such as replying to a man's saying, "I've heard so much about you" with "Yeah, but you can't prove it," coming from almost anyone else would qualify for an "As the actress said to the bishop ..."
* * *
Achilles' heel: a vulnerable spot that leads to a downfall.
According to Greek mythology, anyone who was immersed in the River Styx, which marked the boundary of the underworld, became invulnerable. Thetis dipped her young son Achilles in the river, but she held him by his heel. Because her hand covered that part of his body, the water did not touch it and it became his one vulnerable spot. Achilles, who grew to become a great warrior, died during the Trojan War when an arrow struck his heel.
Even though it's located in the same part of the body, don't confuse "Achilles' heel" with "Achilles tendon," which connects muscles in your lower leg to your heel bone.
* * *
Adam's ale: a jocular term for water, based on the strong likelihood that Adam hadn't discovered anything stronger (and they call the Garden of Eden a paradise?). Apparently no fans of alliterations, Scots used to refer to water as "Adam's beer."
* * *
Adam's off ox: an unrecognizable person or thing.
"I wouldn't know him from Adam's off ox" was the equivalent of the contemporary "I wouldn't know him from a hole in the ground."
Since horses and other beasts of transportation and burden are handled from the left side, the left side is referred to as their "near side" and the right side their "off" side. Not to be able to distinguish between someone and the farther-away animal of the first man on Earth is indeed not too know very much at all about a person.
* * *
albatross around one's neck: a burden or stigma brought on by one's actions.
Sailors considered the albatross bird to be an omen or manifestation of good luck, and to harm one was to invite disaster not only to the shooter or trapper but the entire ship's company.
In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner," the ship's captain killed one such bird that had landed on the deck while the ship was becalmed. When the wind continued to stay away, the crew blamed the captain's action for the bad luck, and he was forced to wear the albatross's carcass around his neck as a reminder of his misdeed.
* * *
all hands to the pumps: help!
The phrase comes from sailing days when a leak in the hull required immediate help in bailing out the incoming seawater. A variant is "all hands and the cook on deck," meaning the entire ship's roster was needed in an emergency, even the cook, who was never expected to participate in mariner activities.
* * *
all tuckered out: exhausted.
"Tucker" was a 19th-century New England word for "tire" or "used up."
* * *
"All-y all-y oxen free!" (also said as "olly olly in-comefree"): it's safe to return home.
This hide-and-seek and kick-the-can game catchphrase assures players that they can return to the starting point without penalty.
Generations of mothers summoned children home to supper by standing on the porch and yelling the phrase.
* * *
animal, vegetable, or mineral?
"20 Questions" was a popular parlor game in which players tried to guess the answer by asking no more than twenty questions. The person who answered the questions gave the players the initial hint of whether the subject was animal, vegetable, or mineral.
The game's becoming the format of a very successful radio and then television quiz show beginning in the early 1940s spread the opening hint into general use. Anyone who innocently began a query with "I have a question" was liable to be met with "Is the answer animal, vegetable, or mineral?"
* * *
another coat of paint: the narrowest of margins.
The phrase was used in such instances as a ballplayer's commenting that "that pitch came awfully close," to which the batter replied, "Yeah, another coat of paint, and I'd have been a goner."
* * *
any port in a storm: assistance or refuge in a predicament especially an unpalatable one.
The metaphor is of sailors happy for any place of safety whatsoever when dangerous weather comes up.
* * *
apple-knocker: a country bumpkin.
One of the many terms that city slickers applied to less sophisticated rural dwellers ("rube," "hayseed," and "Gomer" are others). The phrase came from fruit harvesters using long sticks to dislodge the hanging crop.
* * *
apple of my eye: a most favorite or cherished person.
In Psalm 17:8, the Psalmist asks God to "keep me as the apple of your eye."
* * *
apple pie order: neat, orderly, well organized.
Although the exact derivation is unknown, folk etymology (which word detectives fall back on when there's nothing more authoritative) suggests the following:
New England housewives were so organized at slicing apples for their pies, laying out the slices inside the crust, and then making sure that the top and bottom crusts were evenly pinched together that their meticulousness gave rise to the phrase.
* * *
après moi le deluge: a disaster will follow.
The French phrase, translated as "After me the deluge," has been attributed to King Louis XVI or to his mistress, Madame de Pompadour. He or she was referring to the centuries of excessive living enjoyed by the aristocracy and paid for by the rest of France and what would happen as a result when His Majesty (or Madame) went to their heavenly rest. Whether the king or his main squeeze was predicting a cataclysm or simply indicating that he or she didn't care what came after them isn't clear.
Nevertheless, whoever spoke the words was a prophet in his or her time: fourteen years after Louis's death came the revolution that swept away the old order, including Louis's son.
No one could have been ideologically further from the Bourbon monarchy than Karl Marx, who repeated the phrase in his Das Kapital: "Après moi le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation. Hence capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society."
The phrase is the very appropriate motto of Britain's Royal Air Force 617 Squadron, nicknamed "the Dam Busters" for its sorties against German dams during World War II.
* * *
around the block [also, around the track]: very experienced.
The phrase can be used in two ways. In its nonpejorative sense, you might say, "After all her residencies and years at the hospital, she's been around the block in emergency medicine." On the other hand, to say of a woman that she's been around the block more than a few times suggests that she's of what used to be called "easy virtue."
* * *
Artful Dodger: a sly person, especially one involved in dubious or criminal activities.
It was the nickname of Jack Dawkins, a young pickpocket in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. The character survives in the stage and movie musical Oliver!, which was based on the Dickens novel, but the phrase as applied to a "sneaky Pete" is now rarely if ever heard.
"Dodger" in the sense of evading danger inspired the name of the Brooklyn (now Los Angeles) baseball team; in its early years in Brooklyn, the team was the "Trolley Dodgers." Brooklyn had many streetcar lines, and to play in the streets required youngsters to dodge streetcars, and "trolley dodger" became the slang term for anyone from that borough.
* * *
at bay: to keep someone or something at a safe distance.
The phrase derives from stag hunting, from a French word that also is the source of the English word for the baying howl that hounds make during a chance. A tired and cornered stag that turns to face the pursuing hounds is, for the moment, at a safe distance from its attackers.
* * *
at sixes and sevens: in complete disorder.
The most likely source of the phrase is an old dice game called hazard, in which to bet on cinque and sice (from the French words for "five" and "six") was particularly risky business. Anyone who did so was considered careless or confused. English-speaking players misheard or chose to pronounce cinque and sice as "sixes and sevens."
* * *
B
B movie: the low-budget second part of a movie theater's double feature.
Back in the days of double features, movie houses showed two very distinct types of films. A movies were the hits–"Gone With the Wind," "Casablanca," "Citizen Kane," "The Wizard of Oz" — the ones that drew patrons to the movie houses. Then there were Westerns, horror flicks, and science fiction movies that didn't cost very much to make (they were often in black-and-white). These B movies tended to be shown before the main feature; otherwise, people would leave after the A picture and then feel they hadn't gotten their admission money's worth.
As double features disappeared and the cost of filmmaking grew, the curtain went down on the B movie genre.
* * *
get your bait back: just about recoup your expenditure.
An old New England fisherman's expression for barely making expenses. Some who caught just enough fish to sell to compensate for the day's expenses was said to have gotten his bait back.
* * *
ball and chain: marriage. A jocularly rueful term for marriage or one's wife.
There was a time when men were supposed to regard marriage in general and their own married state in particular with a certain amount of resignation. The nights of going out drinking with the guys were over, to be replaced by the days of cleaning the attic, painting the garage, and fixing the toilet drip. Marriage was prison (albeit with privileges), wives were wardens, and husbands wore a metaphorical ball and chain, the sort that prisoners wore to prevent escaping.
A young man asked whether he and his girlfriend had wedding plans might reply, "Naw, I'm too young to wear a ball and chain." That reply would rarely be uttered with impunity in the presence of women.
* * *
balling the jack: to move rapidly.
A "jack" was a railroad term for locomotive. "Ball" referred to the round electric signal that indicated the speed at which a train should travel. The fastest speed indicated by the signal was at its highest point, which indicated to an engineer that his locomotive could "highball it down the line." Other trainmen would say the engineer was "balling the jack."
The phrase came into general usage from a 1913 ragtime song of the same name. The lyrics gave instructions to do a similarly named dance ("First you put your two knees close up tight, you swing 'em to the left and then you swing 'em to the right ...").
* * *
banana oil: insincere or ridiculous talk.
Like "horse feathers," there's no such substance as banana oil. Also like "horse feathers," the phrase described something utterly preposterous. It has been attributed to Milt Gross, a cartoonist who first used the expression in his comic strips during the 1920s.
* * *
bar sinister: a coat of arms ornamentation that is supposedly a sign of illegitimacy. The phrase, which has appeared in the works of novelists Laurence Sterne and Sir Walter Scott, implies a "bar" that prevents the person from a legitimate claim or inheritance, while "sinister" (the heraldic term for a coat of arms' left side) sounds menacing.
Although the idea of a bar sinister on an illegitimate person's shield entered popular speech more than two centuries ago, that's not heraldically correct. A patterned border around a shield was the British heraldry way of indicating bastardy, and if you want to be even more technical, a thin diagonal line that does not touch the edges of the shield is a "baton," not a "bar." However, people rarely check with the College of Arms before using words and phrases.
* * *
doesn't know beans: ignorance.
The New England uncomplimentary description of a Bostonian who's so ignorant that he or she can't even cook the city's most famous dish of baked beans spread to the rest of the country.
* * *
beat around the bush: to speak evasively or misleadingly, or to stall or waste time.
To flush pheasants and other birds so they could be shot, British gamekeepers hired beaters who would swing sticks at likely places where the birds might be lurking. Not to go directly to such foliage but to work around it instead gave the impression of wasting time or not trying very hard to raise the birds; hence, beating around the bush.
* * *
Beau Brummel: a male fashion plate.
George Bryan Brummel, nicknamed "Beau" was one of the best-known figures of Regency England of the late 18th to early 19th century. As unofficial fashion advisor to the Prince Regent, later King George IV, Brummel was the arbiter of taste, style, and etiquette; he popularized trousers (instead of knee breeches) with matching coats, as well as cravats that were the forerunners of neckties.
The epithet Beau Brummel was applied to any man who was fastidious about his clothing, even if he wasn't a trendsetter.
* * *
bee's knees: something that's excellent.
This nonsensical phrase that was popular in the 1920s was, like "the cat's whiskers," the equivalent of today's "really cool" or "it's amazing!" It went the way of such faddish expressions, which is to say, out.
* * *
beg the question: to assume the question in your answer.
For example, if the question is "Should marijuana use be criminalized?" to reply "Yes, because if it isn't, then lots of criminals will be roaming the streets" is to beg the question. That is, the answer assumes that pot users are criminals when that's the precise question under debate.
Although the phrase is now widely heard as a synonym for raising or asking a question, its original meaning is still used by the dwindling band of educated speakers.
* * *
behind the eight ball: in a precarious situation.
In certain games of pool or billiards, a player whose cue ball (the ball that strikes the other balls) is behind the 8 ball is unlikely to make any shot. Therefore, to be behind the eight ball is to be in a losing situation.
* * *
bell the cat: to put yourself in a dangerous position.
The phrase comes from one of Aesop's fables: The Mice held a general council to consider what measures they could take to outwit their common enemy, the Cat. After a general discussion, a young Mouse rose to present a proposal. "You will all agree," he said, "that our chief danger consists in the sly and treacherous manner in which the enemy approaches us. Now, if we could receive some signal of her approach, we could easily escape. I venture, therefore, to propose that a small bell be procured, and attached by a ribbon round the Cat's neck. By this means we should always know when she was about, and could easily retire while she was in the neighborhood."
This proposal met with general applause, until an old Mouse rose to ask, "That is all very well, but who is to bell the Cat?" The Mice looked at one another, but none spoke, whereupon the old Mouse smiled and commented, "It is easy to propose impossible remedies."
* * *
belle of the ball: the most appealing woman at a dance or another social occasion.
"Ball" refers to a formal dance, at which there was usually one female who was the cynosure of all male eyes. At other occasions too — case in point: Scarlett O'Hara at the barbecue at Tara where men fell all over themselves to fetch her a plate of food. Fiddle-dee-dee indeed.
* * *
below the salt: less socially acceptable, socially inferior.
Due to the difficulty of production in cold climates, salt was an expensive and exclusive commodity in medieval England. At that time, the nobility sat at the dining hall's "high table" whereas their servants and other commoners ate at lower trestle tables. Dishes or containers of salt were placed on the high table where only people of sufficient social rank had access to them.
To be "below [or beneath] the salt" came to mean being less well regarded than other people.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Endangered Phrases"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Steven D. Price.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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