A Word In Your Shell-Like. Nigel Rees

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СКАЧАТЬ and it has been used in every edition since – at first on the editorial page, on 25 October 1896, and from the following February on the front page near the masthead. It became the paper’s war cry in its 1890s’ battle against formidable competition in New York City from the World, the Herald and the Journal. At worst, it sounds like a slogan for the suppression of news. However, no newspaper prints everything. It has been parodied by Howard Dietz as ‘All the news that fits we print’.

      all the President’s men Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward gave the title All the President’s Men to their first Watergate book (1974; film US 1976). It might seem to allude to the lines from the nursery rhyme ‘Humpty Dumpty’ (first recorded in 1803): ‘All the king’s horses / And all the king’s men, / Couldn’t put Humpty together again.’ There is also a Robert Penn Warren novel (1946; filmed US 1949), All the King’s Men, based on the life of the southern demagogue Huey ‘Kingfish’ Long. More directly, the Watergate book took its title from a saying of Henry Kissinger’s at the time of the 1970 Cambodia invasion: ‘We are all the President’s men and we must behave accordingly’ – quoted in Kalb and Kalb, Kissinger (1974).

      all the world and his wife Meaning, ‘everybody’ – though the phrase is in decline now after the feminism of the 1970s. Christopher Anstey in The New Bath Guide (1766) has: ‘How he welcomes at once all the world and his wife, / And how civil to folk he ne’er saw in his life.’ Jonathan Swift included it in Polite Conversation (1738): ‘Who were the Company? – Why; there was all the World and his Wife.’ There is an equivalent French expression: ‘All the world and his father’. A letter from Lord Byron to Thomas Moore (29 February 1816) has: ‘I am at war with “all the world and his wife” or rather, “all the world and my wife” are at war with me.’ From F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Chap. 4 (1926): ‘On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages alongshore, the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn.’

      all the world loves a lover This modernish proverbial saying was used by James Agate in a speech on 17 December 1941 (reported in Ego 5, 1942). It would appear to be an adaptation of the established expression, ‘Everybody/all the world loves a lord’ (current by 1869) – not forgetting what the 1st Duke of Wellington apparently once said: ‘Soldiers dearly love a lord’. Almost a format saying: Stephen Leacock in Essays and Literary Studies (1916) has: ‘All the world loves a grafter – at least a genial and ingenious grafter – a Robin Hood who plunders an abbot to feed a beggar’; ‘All the world loves a dancer’ – the Fred Astaire character in the film Swing Time (US 1936).

      all things bright and beautiful The popular hymn (1848) by Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander, of which this is the first line, is still notorious for its other famous lines about (THE) RICH MAN IN HIS CASTLE (THE POOR MAN AT HIS GATE. It also provided the author James Herriot with new titles for his collected volumes about life as a vet – books originally called It Shouldn’t Happen To a Vet, Let Sleeping Vets Lie, Vets Might Fly, etc. When these titles were coupled together in three omnibus editions especially for the US market (from 1972), Mrs Alexander’s hymn was plundered and they became All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Creatures Great and Small, and All Things Wise and Wonderful. The Lord God Made Them All was given to a further original volume.

      all this and Heaven too As acknowledged in Rachel Fields’s novel with the title All This and Heaven Too (1939; film US 1940), Matthew Henry, the English Bible commentator (d. 1714), ascribed the saying to his minister father in his own Life of Mr Philip Henry (1698). Compare the film title All This and World War II (US 1976) and the classic Daily Express newspaper headline on Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation day (2 June 1953): ‘ALL THIS – AND EVEREST TOO’, announcing the conquest of the world’s highest mountain by a British-led expedition.

      (an) all-time low Meaning, ‘to the lowest point on record’. Probably American in origin, by the early 20th century. Could the phrase have first referred to weather temperatures? Conversely, there is also (an) all-time high, but perhaps less frequently. ‘Brings cost of power to new all-time low’ – Saturday Evening Post (10 June 1933); ‘British prestige sunk to yet another all-time low’ is included in the parody of sportswriters’ clichés by David Frost and Peter Cook included in the book That Was The Week That Was (1963); ‘A new all-time low in political scurviness, hoodlumism’ – Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (1970); ‘Tory MP Phil Gallie was even prompted to predict the party could gain a seat, despite pundits’ claims of likely Tory losses and the party’s crushing all-time low of 13% in the polls’ – The Sunday Times (1 May 1994); ‘What is also significant about BP’s share rise to 386p last week is that it has brought the prospect of a serious assault on the all-time high of 418p much nearer the day’ – The Observer (1 May 1994).

      all we want is the facts, ma’am (or just the facts, ma’am). From the American TV series Dragnet (1951–8, revived 1967–9). Sgt Joe Friday (played by Jack Webb) had a staccato style of questioning. These were probably the first big phrases to catch on in Britain after the start of commercial TV in 1955. The phrase ‘all we want is the facts’ was, however, already a cliché when importunate journalists were represented in theatrical sketches. In ‘Long-Distance Divorce’, a revue sketch from Nine Sharp (1938), Herbert Farjeon put the phrase in the mouth of a British reporter interviewing a Hollywood star.

      all women look the same in the dark Contemptuous male view of women as sexual objects – sometimes, ‘they all the look the same in the dark’. An established view by the mid-20th century at least. The least politically correct phrase in this book. Compare the similar expression you don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire (an old joke revived by John Osborne in The Entertainer, 1957); Ovid’s more felicitous and diplomatic version in his Ars Amatoria (circa 2 BC); ‘The dark makes every woman beautiful’; and the English proverb (known by 1546), ‘All cats are grey in the dark’. Robert Herrick appeared to say much the same in ‘No Difference i’ th’ Dark’ (1648): ‘Night makes no difference ‘twixt the Priest and the Clerk; / Joan as my Lady is as good i’ th’ dark.’

      (the) almighty dollar An early indication of the currency’s all-powerful role in American life. ‘The almighty dollar is the only object of worship’ – Philadelphia Public Ledger (2 December 1836). In fact, this possible first use of the term ‘almighty dollar’ had just been preceded by Washington Irving’s statement in Knickerbocker Magazine (12 November 1836): ‘The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land.’ Mark Twain took up the theme in his Notebooks (1935): ‘We Americans worship the almighty dollar! Well, it is a worthier god than Hereditary Privilege.’ Earlier, Ben Jonson in his poem ‘Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland’ from The Forest (1616) wrote of ‘almighty gold’.

      almost a gentleman Bill matter (i.e. the descriptive line that appeared on posters) of the British music-hall comedian Billy Bennett (1887–1942). John Osborne took it as the title of his second volume of memoirs (1991). Compare Daisy Ashford, The Young Visiters, Chap. 1 (1919): ‘I am not quite a gentleman but you would hardly notice it but can’t be helped anyhow.’

      along came a spider The title of a cop film (US 2001) starring Morgan Freeman is taken from the nursery rhyme ‘Little Miss Muffet’, known since 1805 and containing the lines (properly), ‘There came a big spider / Who sat down beside her / And frightened Miss Muffet away.’ ‘Along came a spider’ is the more usual American version, however. People like to think that Miss Muffet was Patience, the daughter of Dr Thomas Muffet, an entomologist who died in 1604. If he had been an arachnologist, that would have been even neater.

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