A Word In Your Shell-Like. Nigel Rees
Boy marries girl.’ Known as a concept by 1945 and possibly originating in discussion of Hollywood movies in the 1930s. In a letter from P. G. Wodehouse (24 August 1932): ‘Don’t you find that the chief difficulty in writing novels is getting the love interest set? Boy meets girl. Right. But what happens then?’
(the) boy next door Admirably defined by Photoplay (October 1958) as: ‘The boy who’s within reach of every girl fan’ – hence, a straightforward, unsophisticated young man figuring in a conventional romance, particularly on the cinema screen. The female equivalent, girl next door, seems to have emerged a fraction later. From the Times Educational Supplement (23 February 1968): ‘Diana Quick’s Ophelia was very much the girl-next-door.’
(a) boy’s best friend is his mother Norman Bates in the Hitchcock film Psycho (1960) gets to say ‘A boy’s best friend is his mother’ – with good reason, but we won’t go into all that – and, indeed, the line was used to promote the picture. It has been suggested that earlier the line was originally ‘a girl’s best friend is her mother’. Either way, the saying seems to have been set in concrete – if not in treacle – by an American songwriter called Henry Miller in 1883. The music was by the prolific Joseph P. Skelly, who was also a plumber. Their song with the expression as title contains the chorus: ‘Then cherish her with care, / And smooth her sil’vry hair, / When gone you will never get another. / And wherever we may turn, / This lesson we shall learn, / A boy’s best friend is his Mother.’ There are no citations for the phrase earlier than this.
boys will be boys! A comment on the inevitability of youthful male behaviour. Thackeray has it in Vanity Fair (1848).
(the) boy who put his finger in the dike A figure of speech for someone who staves off disaster through a simple (albeit temporary) gesture. Hans Brinker is the hero of the children’s book Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (1865) by the American author Mary Mapes Dodge. What he is not – as often erroneously asserted – is ‘the boy who put his finger in the dike.’ The connection is that the tale of the (nameless) legendary Dutch boy who spotted a tiny leak in his local dam, or dike, and stuck his finger in it and stopped it from getting worse, is related in Chapter 18 of Hans Brinker: ‘He looked up and saw a small hole in the dike through which a tiny stream was flowing. Quick as a flash, he saw his duty. His chubby finger was thrust in, the flowing was stopped! “Ah!” he thought, with a chuckle of boyish delight, “the angry waters must stay back now! Haarlem shall not be drowned while I am here!’” Mary Mapes Dodge (who had never been to Holland) included the story of this ‘Hero of Haarlem’ in her novel and, as a result, various Dutch towns claimed the boy as their own. A statue was erected to him – but he was never more than a legend. Hence, however, from The Times (9 October 1986): ‘To try to stand in front of the markets like the Little Dutch Boy with his finger in the dike would have been an act of folly if the Government were not convinced that the dike was fundamentally sound’; (27 July 1989): ‘“It was finger-in-the-dike stuff for us throughout the match,” the Oxbridge coach, Tony Rodgers, said. “Ultimately the flood walls cracked”.’
boy wonder See HOLY—.
bra See BURN YOUR.
bracket See ARE YOU LOOKING.
brain(s) trust The Brains Trust was the title of a BBC radio discussion programme (1941 onwards), originating from the American term for a group of people who give advice or who comment on current issues. In his first campaign in 1932, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up a circle of advisers which became known as his ‘brain trust’. In Britain, the term was borrowed and turned into ‘brains trust’. Curiously, the Roosevelt coinage, attributed to James Michael Kieran Jnr, was at first ‘the brains trust’ also.
brand new (or bran…) This expression for ‘very new’ comes from the old word meaning ‘to burn’ (just as a ‘brand’ is a form of torch). A metal that was brand (or bran) new had been taken out of the flames, having just been forged. Shakespeare has the variation ‘fire-new’ – e.g. in Love’s Labour’s Lost, I.i.177 (1592–3) – which points more directly to the phrase’s origin.
brandy–y–y–y! Catchphrase from the BBC radio Goon Show (1951–60). Accompanied by the sound of rushing footsteps, this was the show’s beloved way of getting anybody out of a situation that was proving too much for him. Most often, however, it was shouted by Neddie Seagoon (Harry Secombe) as a signal to clear off before the musical interludes of Max Geldray (harmonica). The Goons – Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan – first appeared in a BBC radio show called Crazy People in May 1951. At that time, Michael Bentine was also of their number. The Goon Show proper ran from 1952 to 1960, with one extra programme in 1972 and numerous re-runs. The humour was zany, often taking basic music-hall jokes and giving them further infusions of surrealism. The cast of three did all the funny voices, though Harry Secombe concentrated on the main character, Neddie Seagoon.
brass See BOLD AS; COLD ENOUGH TO.
(to get down to) brass tacks Probably of US origin, this phrase means ‘to get down to essentials’ and has been known since 1897, at least. There are various theories as to why we say it, including: (1) In old stores, brass tacks were positioned a yard apart for measuring. When a customer ‘got down to brass tacks’, it meant he or she was serious about making a purchase. (2) Brass tacks were a fundamental element in 19th-century upholstery, hence this expression meant to deal with a fault in the furniture by getting down to basics. (3) ‘Brass tacks’ is rhyming slang for ‘facts’, though the version ‘to get down to brass nails’ would contradict this.
(the) brat pack Name for a group of young Hollywood actors in the mid-1980s who tended to behave in a spoiled, unruly fashion. Coined by David Blum in New York Magazine (10 June 1985) and fashioned after rat pack, the name given in the 1950s to the then young Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jnr, etc. Has also been applied to other young cliques of writers, performers. The original bratpackers, including Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze and Tom Cruise, had all appeared together in Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Outsiders (1983).
(a) brave new world A future state, particularly one where ‘progress’ has produced nightmarish conditions. Nowadays a slightly ironic term for some new and exciting aspect of modern life. Brave New World was the title of a futuristic novel (1932) by Aldous Huxley. It is taken from Miranda’s exclamation in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, V.i.183 (1612): ‘O brave new world, / That has such people in’t!’ ‘Perhaps as much a cliché as it is a vogue-term’ – Eric Partridge, Usage and Abusage (1947). ‘Its title is now a pervasive media catch phrase, automatically invoked in connection with any development viewed as ultra-modern, ineffably zany or involving a potential threat to human liberty’ – David Bradshaw, Introduction to a 1994 edition of Huxley’s novel. ‘Consequently, when the pair signed to Virgin a couple of years back, the record company was keen to talk them up as a multi-media outfit, the kind of band best suited to the brave new world of interactive CDs’ – The Observer (1 May 1994); ‘Will there still be a [BBC radio] drama department in 10 years or, in the multi-skilled brave new world, will producers be billeted on different departments and everyone else be casualised?’ – The Guardian (13 March 1995).
breach See CUSTOM MORE.
bread See CAST ONE’S.
bread and butter! Phrase uttered when two people – who are a couple – walk along and come to an obstacle and separate to go round it. Mostly American usage, though a Russian origin has been suggested. Marian Bock remembered (2002) saying it in the 1960s: ‘Approaching we would say, “Bread and butter” and rejoining hands on the other side of the obstacle we would say, “All good wishes come true”. I was grown before I realized that my sisters were in the habit of making a wish in the interim.’ There is obviously a superstition