A Word In Your Shell-Like. Nigel Rees

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СКАЧАТЬ act is done’ – which is what Tyrrel says about the murder of the Princes in the Tower. As with ‘the bloody dog is dead’ from the end of the same play (V.v.2), we are almost there, but the exact phrase remains untraced – except in the works of lesser poets of the 17th to 19th centuries: ‘Here through my bosom run / Your sword, and when the bloody deed is done, / When your steel smoaks with my hearts reeking Gore, / Bid me be well as e’re I was before’ – from Anon., Sophonisba, or Hannibal’s Overthrow: a Tragedy, Act 2, Sc 1 (1676); ‘Pallid grew every face; and man on man, / Speechless with horror, looked; for well they knew / The bloody deed was done’ – Edwin Atherstone, The Fall of Nineveh, Bk 24 (1868). These quotations, taken together, encourage one to think that the original coinage will not be found: it is simply a proverbial expression.

      Bloody Sunday As with BLACK FRIDAY, there have been a number of these. On 13 November 1887, two men died during a baton charge on a prohibited socialist demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London. On 22 January 1905, hundreds of unarmed peasants were mown down when they marched to petition the Tsar in St Petersburg. In Irish history, there was a Bloody Sunday on 21 November 1920 when, among other incidents, fourteen undercover British intelligence agents in Dublin were shot by Sinn Fein. More recently, the name was applied to Sunday 30 January 1972 when British troops killed thirteen Catholics after a protest rally in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Perhaps the epithet sprang to mind readily on this last occasion because of the film Sunday Bloody Sunday (UK 1971). This story had a screenplay by Penelope Gilliatt. It was about a ménage à trois and, although not explained explicitly, the title probably referred to the pivotal day on which the relationships ran further into the sand. Since the 19th century there has been the exclamation ‘Sunday, bloody Sunday!’ to express the gloom and despondency of the day. In 1973, the UK/US group Black Sabbath released an album with the title Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

      blooming See AIN’T IT.

      (to) blot one’s copybook To make a serious blunder, misdemeanour or gaffe that affects one’s hitherto good record – as though one had spilled ink on a copybook, which was an aid to learning handwriting much in use until the mid-20th century. The student would imitate writing sentences in the correct style, in spaces below what was printed on the page. A ‘copy book’ is mentioned in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (1588) and Dorothy L. Sayers has the expression in Gaudy Night, Chap. 5 (1935): ‘Now, it was the College that had blotted its copybook and had called her in as one calls in a specialist.’

      (a) blot on one’s escutcheon A stain on one’s character or reputation. An escutcheon is a shield with armorial bearings on it. The earliest appearance would seem to be in John Dryden, Virgil, II, ‘Dedication’ (1697): ‘The banishment of Ovid was a blot in his escutcheon.’ A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon is the title of a play (1843) by Robert Browning. In W. S. Gilbert, The Sorcerer, Act 1 (1877), Sir Marmaduke Pointdextre says: ‘Aline is rich, and she comes of a sufficiently old family, for she is the seven thousand and thirty-seventh in direct descent from Helen of Troy. True, there was a blot on the escutcheon of that lady – that affair with Paris – but where is the family, other than my own, in which there is no flaw?’

      (a) blot on the landscape Anything that spoils or disfigures a view in an unsightly way (not least a person), or, figuratively, that is simply objectionable. Since the 16th century, ‘blot’ on its own was used in this sense. The first citation to have the whole phrase is in a letter from T. E. Lawrence (dated 20 February 1938): ‘His two Kufti people…will be rather a blot on the landscape.’ A Baumer cartoon in Punch uses it (25 April 1934). From P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, Chap. 1 (1960): ‘“And a rousing toodle-oo to you, you young blot on the landscape,” she replied cordially.’ Tom Sharpe’s novel Blot on the Landscape (1975) features a character called ‘Blott’. ‘Their makeshift shanties have always been a blot on the landscape (they creep right up to the hard shoulder of the motorway that brings visitors in from the airport) and they are now not only a blot on the conscience but a blot, too, on the immediate scrutiny of the immaculate dream to which some whites still subscribe’ – The Times (9 December 1995). ‘It is a blot on the landscape – and it’s lost its flavour. Now Wrigley, the chewing-gum manufacturer, is trying to teach Britain’s estimated 22 million chewers where not to stick the gluey residue’ – The Sunday Telegraph (11 February 1996).

      blouse See BIG GIRL’S.

      blow See DON’T BLOW.

      (to) blow a raspberry To make a farting noise by blowing through the lips. This is rhyming slang, raspberry tart = fart. From Barrère & Leland, Dictionary of Slang (1890): ‘The tongue is inserted in the left cheek and forced through the lips, producing a peculiarly squashy noise that is extremely irritating. It is termed, I believe, a raspberry, and when not employed for the purpose of testing horseflesh, is regarded rather as an expression of contempt than of admiration.’

      (to) blow hot and cold Meaning ‘to vacillate between enthusiasm and apathy’, this expression has been known in English since 1577 and is to be found in one of Aesop’s Fables. On a cold day, a satyr comes across a man blowing his fingers to make them warm. He takes the man home and gives him a bowl of hot soup. The man blows on the soup, to cool it. At this, the satyr throws him out, exclaiming that he wants nothing to do with a man who can ‘blow hot and cold from the same mouth’.

      (to) blow one’s own trumpet Meaning, ‘to boast of one’s own achievements’. This is sometimes said to have originated with the statue of ‘Fame’ on the parapet of Wilton House, near Salisbury. The figure – positioned after a fire in 1647 – originally held a trumpet in each hand. But why does one need a precise origin? Besides, the OED2 cites Abraham Fleming, A Panoplie of Epistles (1576) – ‘I will…sound the trumpet of mine owne merites’, which is virtually the modern phrase. Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews, Chap 5. (1742), has, ‘Fame blew her brazen trumpet’. Apperson has an example of ‘blowing the trumpet of my own praise’ from 1799. Brewer (1894), more reasonably, states that in ‘to sound one’s own trumpet’, the ‘allusion is to heralds, who used to announce with a flourish of trumpets the knights who entered a list’ (as, for example, in jousting). It is also possible that Diogenianus (2nd century AD) originated the expression (unverified). Lord Beaverbrook used to say that if you did not blow your own trumpet, no one else would do it for you – quoted in The Observer (12 March 1989).

      blow some my way A slogan used from 1926 when a woman made her first appearance in US cigarette advertising (some thought suggestively). The brand was Chesterfield whose other slogan, ‘I’ll tell the world – they satisfy’, was current the same year.

      (to) blow the gaff Meaning, ‘to blab about something; to let the secret out; give the game away.’ An earlier (18th-century) form was ‘to blow the gab’ and, conceivably, ‘gaff’ could have developed from that. ‘Gaff’ may here mean ‘mouth’ (like gab/gob) and, coupled with ‘blow’, gives the idea of expelling air through it and letting things out. Known by 1812. ‘As she invariably uses her travels with a friend as the basis for her pieces, I really do not see why there needed to be any hiatus. Or has she found someone else to travel with and does not want to blow the gaff?’ – The Sunday Times (29 October 1995).

      (to) blow the whistle on Meaning, ‘to call a halt to something by exposing it’ (alluding to the police use of whistles). ‘Now that the whistle has been blown on his speech…’ – P. G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, Chap. 17 (1934). More recently, The Listener (3 January 1980) reported: ‘English as she is murdered on radio became an issue once more. Alvar Liddell stamped his foot and blew the whistle in The Listener.’ Sir Robert Armstrong was quoted in The СКАЧАТЬ