A Word In Your Shell-Like. Nigel Rees
in print until the late 18th century. The word ‘blarney’ seems, however, to have entered the language a little while before. The origin traditionally given is that in 1602, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, one Cormac Macarthy (or Dermot McCarthy) was required to surrender the castle as proof of his loyalty. He prevaricated and came up with so many excuses that (it is said) the Queen herself exclaimed: ‘Odds bodikins, more Blarney talk’.
(a) blazing inferno An inevitable pairing, especially in journalistic use. Date of origin unknown. Singled out as a media cliché by Malcolm Bradbury in Tatler (March 1980) in the form: ‘As I stand here in the blazing inferno that was once called Saigon/ Beirut/ Belfast…’ ‘Hex’s favourite Stephen Jones hats remain the series of fabulous kitchen follies which included a frying-pan (complete with bacon and eggs) and a colander brimming with vegetables. Does Jones have a particular favourite? From a blazing inferno in his showroom he might try to save a gigantic layered tulle confection’ – The Scotsman (11 May 1994); ‘In June a 13-year-old schoolgirl died as she saved her two young sisters and brother after a massive gas explosion ripped through their home. The blast turned their home in Ramsgate, Kent, into a blazing inferno’ – Daily Mirror (29 December 1994).
bleats See EVERY TIME.
bless (his) little cotton socks A pleasant remark to make about a child, meaning, ‘Isn’t (he) sweet, such a dear little thing’. As ‘bless your little cotton socks’, it just means ‘thank you’. Partridge/Slang dates the expression from circa 1900 and labels it heavily ‘middle-class’.
(a) blessing in disguise Meaning ‘a misfortune that turns out to be beneficial’, this phrase has been in existence since the early 18th century. A perfect example is provided by the noted exchange between Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine. Attempting to console him after his defeat in the 1945 General Election, she said: ‘It may well be a blessing in disguise.’ To which he replied: ‘At the moment, it seems quite effectively disguised.’ Despite this comment, Churchill seems to have come round to something like his wife’s point of view. On 5 September 1945, he wrote to her from an Italian holiday: ‘This is the first time for very many years that I have been completely out of the world…Others having to face the hideous problems of the aftermath…It may all indeed be “a blessing in disguise”.’
blind See LIKE TAKING MONEY.
(the) blind leading the blind Ineffectual leadership. ‘They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch’ (Matthew 15:4).
(a) blind man on a galloping horse could see that It is very obvious indeed. Swift has ‘a blind man would be glad to see that’ in Polite Conversation (1738), and Apperson finds ‘A blind man on a galloping horse would be glad to see it’ by 1894. Former Beatle Paul McCartney on the similarity between the sound of the Fab Four and the much later group Oasis: ‘You would have to be a blind man on a galloping horse not to see it’ – quoted by the Press Association (5 September 1996). Compare the Australianism even blind Freddie could see that, for what is blindingly obvious, a phrase since the 1930s.
(a) blinking idiot Term of abuse where ‘blinking’ is a euphemism for ‘bloody’. However, Shakespeare coined the phrase in The Merchant of Venice, II.ix.54 (1596), where the Prince of Arragon opens the silver casket and exclaims: ‘What’s here? the portrait of a blinking idiot / Presenting me a schedule.’ This is probably a more literal suggestion of an idiot whose eyes blink as a token of his madness.
bliss beyond compare See OH JOY.
block See CHIP OFF THE OLD.
(a) blonde bombshell A journalistic cliché now used to describe any (however vaguely) blonde woman but especially if she has a dynamic personality and is a film star, show business figure or model. In June 1975, Margo Macdonald complained of being described by the Daily Mirror as ‘the blonde bombshell MP’ who ‘hits the House of Commons today’. The original was Jean Harlow, who appeared in the 1933 US film Bombshell. In the UK – presumably so as not to suggest that it was a war film – the title was changed to Blonde Bombshell.
blondes See IS IT TRUE.
blood all over the walls See SHIT HITS.
(through) blood and fire Motto of the Salvation Army, founded by General William Booth in 1878. The conjunction of blood and fire has appropriate biblical origins. In Joel 2:30, God says: ‘And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.’
blood and iron When Bismarck addressed the Budget Commission of the Prussian House of Delegates on 30 September 1862, what he said was: ‘It is desirable and it is necessary that the condition of affairs in Germany and of her constitutional relations should be improved; but this cannot be accomplished by speeches and resolutions of a majority, but only by iron and blood [Eisen und Blut].’ On 28 January 1886, speaking to the Prussian House of Deputies, he did, however, use the words in the more familiar order: ‘This policy cannot succeed through speeches, and shooting-matches and songs; it can only be carried out through blood and iron [Blut und Eisen].’ The words may have achieved their more familiar order, at least to English ears, through their use by A. C. Swinburne in his poem ‘A Word for the Country’ (1884): ‘Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, shall a nation be moulded at last.’ (Eric Partridge, while identifying this source correctly in A Dictionary of Clichés, 1966 edn, ascribes the authorship to Tennyson.) On the other hand, the Roman orator Quintillian (1st century AD) used the exact phrase sanguinem et ferrum.
blood and sand Blood and Sand was the title of a silent film (US 1922) starring Rudolph Valentino as a matador. It was adapted from a play with the title by Tom Cushing, in turn adapted from a novel about bullfighting, Sangre y Arena (which means the same thing) by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. It was later re-made with Tyrone Power (US 1941).
blood and thunder Bloodshed and violence – especially as found in ‘blood-and-thunder’ books, films and tales (especially in the USA, where the coinage originated by 1852). However, the conjunction occurred before this in England as an oath. Byron’s Don Juan, Canto 8, St. 1 (1822), has the line: ‘Oh, blood and thunder! and oh, blood and wounds! / These are but vulgar oaths.’ The melodramatic, violent, bloody and sensational tales are sometimes called ‘thud and blunder’, if they are ineptly done.
(a) blood libel Name given to accusations by medieval anti-Semites that Jews had crucified Christian children and drunk their blood at Passover. In September 1982, following allegations that Israeli forces in Lebanon had allowed massacres to take place in refugee camps, the Israeli government invoked the phrase in a statement headed: ‘BLOOD LIBEL. On the New Year (Rosh Hashana), a blood libel was levelled against the Jewish state, its government and the Israel Defense Forces…’
(to pay the) blood price To be willing to sustain casualties by going to war. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said that he was prepared to send troops and ‘pay the blood price’ of Britain’s special relationship with America by attacking President Hussein of Iraq (in a BBC 2 TV interview, 8 September 2002). In fact, the phrase had been fed to him by the interviewer, quoting Robert McNamara, Lyndon Johnson’s Defense secretary in the Vietnam War. The phrase occurs much earlier, in Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I.v.26 (1590): ‘The man that made Sansfoy to fall, / Shall with his owne blood price that he hath spilt.’
bloodstained tyrannies Cited as the phrase of a ‘tired hack’ by George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’ in Horizon (April 1946). ‘The Prime Minister [Mrs Thatcher] welcomed Romania to “the family of free nations” and promised help for its people. She praised the Romanian “heroes” who had not been prepared to “knuckle under in a bloodstained tyranny”’ – The Guardian (23 December 1989).
blood,