A Word In Your Shell-Like. Nigel Rees

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ