A Word In Your Shell-Like. Nigel Rees
any wide circulation beyond being the title of Kenneth Allsopp’s book – a cultural survey (1958). Obviously it derived from:
(an) angry young man Label for any writer in the mid-1950s who showed a social awareness and expressed dissatisfaction with conventional values and with the Establishment – John Osborne, Kingsley Amis and Colin Wilson among them. Leslie Paul, a social philosopher, had called his autobiography Angry Young Man in 1951, but the popular use of the phrase stems from Look Back in Anger, the 1956 play by John Osborne that featured an anti-hero called Jimmy Porter. The phrase did not occur in the play but was applied to the playwright by George Fearon in publicity material sent out by the Royal Court Theatre, London. Fearon later told The Daily Telegraph (2 October 1957): ‘I ventured to prophesy that [Osborne’s] generation would praise his play while mine would, in general, dislike it…“If this happens,” I told him, “you would become known as the Angry Young Man.” In fact, we decided then and there that henceforth he was to be known as that.’
anguish turned to joy (and vice versa) A journalistic cliché noticed as such by the 1970s: ‘A young mother’s anguish turns to joy…’ and so on. ‘Joy has turned to anguish for the parents of British student Colin Shingler aged 20, who was trapped in the Romano during the earthquake. Only hours after hearing that he had been rescued they were told that surgeons had to amputate his left hand’ – The Times (23 September 1985); ‘Meanwhile, that anguish had turned to joy among the 250 Brechin fans at Hamilton. The players took a salute and then it was Clyde’s turn to be acclaimed, with the championship trophy being paraded round the ground’ – The Herald (Glasgow) (17 May 1993).
animal, vegetable and mineral Not a quotation from anyone in particular, merely a way of describing three types of matter. And yet, why does the phrase trip off the tongue so? Edward Phillips, The New World of English Words (ed. Kersey) (1706) has: ‘Chymists…call the three Orders of Natural Bodies, viz. Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral, by the name of Kingdoms.’ But why not ‘animal, mineral, vegetable’? Or ‘vegetable, animal, mineral’? Perhaps because these variants are harder to say, although in W. S. Gilbert’s lyrics for The Pirates of Penzance (1879), Major-General Stanley does manage to sing: ‘But still in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, / I am the very model of a modern Major-General.’ For BBC television viewers, the order was clearly stated in the title of the long-running archaeological quiz Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? (established by 1956) in which eminent university dons had to identify ancient artefacts just by looking at them. The trio of words was also evoked in the long-running radio series Twenty Questions. This originated on the Mutual Radio Network in the US in 1946, having been created by Fred Van De Venter and family – who transferred with the show to NBC TV, from 1949 to 1955. Twenty Questions ran on BBC radio from 1947 to 1976. Panellists simply had to guess the identity of a ‘mystery object’ by asking up to twenty questions. A fourth category – ‘abstract’ – was added later. In 1973–4, a version of this game made for BBC World Service was actually called Animal, Vegetable or Mineral. The key to the matter is that the original American show was admittedly based on the old parlour game of ‘Animal, Vegetable [and/or] Mineral’. This seems to have been known on both sides of the Atlantic in the 19th century. In Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph by Edgar Johnson, we find (1839–41): ‘Dickens was brilliant in routing everybody at “Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral”, although he himself failed to guess a vegetable object mentioned in “mythological history” and belonging to a queen, and was chagrined to have it identified as the tarts made by the Queen of Hearts.’ In the same book, in a chapter on the period 1858–65, we also read: ‘[Dickens] was swift and intuitive in “Twenty Questions”…On one occasion, he failed to guess “The powder in the Gunpowder Plot”, although he succeeded in reaching Guy Fawkes.’ Presumably, then, the game was known by both names, though Dickens also refers to a version of it as ‘Yes and No’ in A Christmas Carol (1843). ‘Twenty Questions’ is referred to as such in a letter from Hannah Moore as early as 1786. Yet another name for this sort of game (by 1883) appears to have been ‘Clumps’ or ‘Clubs’.
animals See ALL ANIMALS.
(the) Animated Meringue Nickname of (Dame) Barbara Cartland (1902–2000), British romantic novelist and health food champion, who employed a chalky style of make-up in addition to driving around in a pink and white Rolls-Royce. She was thus dubbed by Arthur Marshall who said that far from taking offence, Miss Cartland sent him a telegram of thanks. Compare: ‘At dinner that night it was Eleanor herself who mentioned the name of a certain statesman, who may be decently covered under the disguise of X. “X.,” said Arlington Stringham, “has the soul of a meringue”’ – Saki, The Chronicles of Clovis, ‘The Jesting of Arlington Stringham’ (1911).
annus mirabilis Phrase for a remarkable or auspicious year, in modern (as opposed to classical) Latin. Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis: the year of wonders was published in 1666, but the idea was known before this, viz. Mirabilis annus secundus; or, the Second year of prodigies: Being a true and impartial collection of many strange signes and apparitions, which have this last year been seen in the heavens, and in the earth, and in the waters (1662). In the Netherlands, 1566 used to be known (but not until the mid-19th century) as wonderjaar, because of its crucial role in the start of the Dutch revolt. The opposite term – annus horribilis – was popularized by Queen Elizabeth II in a speech in the City of London (24 November 1992) to mark her fortieth year on the British throne: ‘1992 is not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an Annus Horribilis.’ She was reflecting her current mood: she had a cold, part of Windsor Castle had been burned down four days previously and the marriages of three of her children had collapsed or were collapsing. She states that she had the phrase from a correspondent. It seems more likely that it was inserted by the Queen’s private secretary and speechwriter, Sir Robert Fellowes, having been written in a Christmas card sent to Her Majesty by her former Principal Private Secretary, Sir Edward Ford.
another See HERE’S A FUNNY.
another country Julian Mitchell’s play Another Country (1981; film UK 1984) shows how the seeds of defection to Soviet Russia were sown in a group of boys at an English public school. The title comes not, as might be thought, from the celebrated line in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (circa 1592): ‘Fornication: but that was in another country; / And besides the wench is dead.’ Rather, as the playwright has confirmed, it is taken from the second verse of Sir Cecil Spring Rice’s patriotic ‘Last Poem’ (1918), which begins ‘I vow to thee, my country’ and continues ‘And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago – / Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know.’ In the original context, the ‘other country’ is Heaven, rather than the Soviet Union, of course. Another Country had earlier been used as the title of a novel (1962) by James Baldwin.
another day – another dollar! What one says to oneself at the conclusion of toil. Obviously of American origin but now as well known in the UK where there does not appear to be an equivalent expression using ‘pound’ instead of ‘dollar’. Partridge/Catch Phrases dates the phrase from the 1940s in the UK and from circa 1910 in the US.
another little drink wouldn’t do us any harm This boozer’s jocular justification for another snort is rather more than a catchphrase. Allusion is made to it in Edith Sitwell’s bizarre lyrics for ‘Scotch Rhapsody’ in Façade (1922): ‘There is a hotel at Ostend / Cold as the wind, without an end, / Haunted by ghostly poor relations…/ And “Another little drink wouldn’t do us any harm,” / Pierces through the sabbatical calm.’ The actual origin is in a song with the phrase as title, written by Clifford Grey to music by Nat D. Ayer and sung by George Robey in the show The Bing Boys Are Here (1916). It includes a reference to the well-known fact that Prime Minister Asquith was at times the worse for wear when on the Treasury Bench: ‘Mr Asquith says in a manner sweet and calm: / And another little drink wouldn’t do us any harm.’