A Word In Your Shell-Like. Nigel Rees

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ