Allen's Dictionary of English Phrases

1422 Pages·1999·5.11 MB·English

by  Allen Robert.

PENGUIN REFERENCE
Allen’s Dictionary of English Phrases
Robert Allen is an experienced lexicographer and writer on a wide range of language
topics. He edited the Pocket Oxford edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, contributed to
the Oxford Companion to the English Language and the Oxford History of English Lexicography,
and is editor-in-chief of the Penguin English Dictionary. He has also written two volumes in
the Penguin Writers’ Guides series, How to Write Better English and Common Errors and
Problems in English. Robert Allen lives in Edinburgh.
Allen’s Dictionary of
ENGLISH
PHRASES
Robert Allen
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published 2006
Published in paperback with updates 2008
1
Copyright © Robert Allen, 2006, 2008
All rights reserved
The author and publishers would like to thank Anne Seaton
for her contribution to the research work for this project.
Quotations from the Oxford English Dictionary are reproduced
by kind permission of Oxford University Press.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other
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978-0-14-191768-9
For Alison
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Layout of entries
Allen’s Dictionary of English Phrases
Preface
This book is intended to fill a major gap in the record of the English language. It offers, for
the first time on this scale, a scholarly and systematic treatment of thousands of idiomatic
phrases that play a crucial role in modern spoken and written English, and seeks to provide
a comprehensive picture of their use and history. If words are the building blocks of
language, then phrases are the walls and windows, providing a shape and structure and
allowing the daylight of metaphor and imagery into the darkened rooms of everyday
language.
The treatment of phrases in the major historical dictionaries is far less rigorous than the
coverage of individual words; many are given with a sketchy or incomplete record or are
merged into the ordinary senses of words, and some are not included at all. There are many
books of idioms, cliches, and catchphrases, all invariably entertaining but falling well short
of a complete narrative and making little attempt to go beyond conventional anecdote to
trace the history and usage of phrases in systematic ways, which is a key feature of this
book. Nor, generally, do they provide evidence in the form of quotations in support of their
history and development, except opportunistically and spasmodically. There have been
more scholarly books, such as the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (third edition, 1970),
which lists proverbial language in a broader sense than is generally understood by the term
proverb and gives copious citations but virtually no editorial comment. Then, most famously
of all, there is Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (originally by Ebenezer Cobham
Brewer, first published in 1870 and in many editions since) but despite its great appeal this
is more about ‘fable’ than ‘phrase’, makes only occasional attempts to explain the evolution
and history of phrases, and rarely dates them. In this book, I have attempted to supply as
full a record as possible at all levels: historical, philological, and anecdotal.
Compiling this book has taken several years and involved considerable amounts of
original investigation. Assembling the list of phrases to be treated was the simplest part of
the task, as such lists exist in other places and can easily be collated and then edited into a
coherent form. More important, as with all historical lexicography, is the reading of
primary sources (chiefly fiction, drama, and poetry, but also biography and other works of
non-fiction) to establish what really exists in the language and at what dates. This evidence
of actual usage is the life-blood of any treatment of the language. Many phrases can be
traced back to older forms of English, even to Anglo-Saxon, and some (such as busy as a bee
and be at one’s wits’end) are found in Chaucer and other writers of the period after the
Norman Conquest known as Middle English. References to Shakespeare in this book run
into several hundred, as do those to the Authorized Version of the Bible (1611). The rise of
the novel in the late 18th and 19th centuries provided a vehicle for the rapid spread of very
many phrases that are now fully absorbed into everyday English. Notable among these are
the set similes such as good as gold, which occurs frequently in the writing of Dickens,
Wilkie Collins, Charlotte Yonge, and others. The prolific use of idioms by Dickens (take
one’s secret to the grave, like grim death, lose one’s grip, eat one’s hat, take it into one’s head)
was perhaps less of a surprise than the rich yield from Jane Austen (throw cold water on, be
dying to, dog tired, done for, with one’s eyes open, act the fool) and, at an earlier date still,
from Henry Fielding (kick one’s heels, draw in one’s horns, a fine kettle of fish, a likely story,
leave somebody in the lurch).
During the compiling of this book, I made some interesting discoveries. Most of these
concerned the origins of phrases, which (as with words of obscure origin such as OK and
posh) were quite evidently devised long after the event and have been repeated in print
with a persistence that is in inverse proportion to their likelihood. They were usually
disproved by investigation or at least weakened by a lack of historical evidence: that the
brass monkeys invoked in cold weather related to the storage of cannon balls on ships
(which shrank and became dislodged in cold weather), that the cats and dogs of heavy rain
were a corruption of a phrase in ancient Greek (kata doxan meaning ‘contrary to belief’), or
that setting the Thames on fire had something to do with a tool called a temse (which
overheated with excessive use). In many cases, such as the last, these stories were invented
in the face of straightforward explanations that made perfect sense in themselves (and
historical evidence for setting the Thames on fire establishes an explicit link with the river at
an early stage of its use). In the case of the brass monkeys, an early use of the phrase by
Herman Melville in 1847 (‘hot enough to melt the nose off a brass monkey’) clearly
involves a meaning directly opposite to the usual one and seriously undermines the
traditional theory about its origin. As far as I am aware, this evidence has not been adduced
before.
Many phrases are a great deal older then one might expect, and others again are much
more recent. Those for which I was expecting to find earlier evidence than in fact emerged
include Achilles’ heel (19th cent.), as honest as the day is long (20th cent.), a knight in shining
armour (20th cent.), and the luck of the draw (20th cent.). There were also some surprises in
the opposite direction: chop and change has a modern ring but goes back to Tyndale’s
translation of the New Testament in the early 16th century; cool as a cucumber is found in
early 17th century drama; like mad occurs in its modern sense as early as the work of Aphra
Behn later in the same century; and son of a bitch, for all its modern American resonance, is
the way Lord Byron refers to Robert Southey in a letter written in 1818. A most interesting
byway of my investigation into usage of the late 16th century was the setting of
Shakespeare in the context of his time. Some phrases closely associated with him or
regarded as his inventions are also found in the work of his contemporaries and in some
cases precede his use; a notable example is nip in the bud, which we owe to John Fletcher
and Thomas Dekker and not to Shakespeare (who uses it in the form blasted in the bud).
Other phrases (such as cock-and-bull story and the straight/strait and narrow) emerge
gradually from the mists of usage.
I was also struck by the abundance of recent coinages, of phrases with a modern
resonance that form a linguistic commentary on our own times: smoking gun, be economical
with the truth, her indoors, be unfit to run a whelk stall, joined-up government, ladies who lunch,
a level playing field, get a life, over the limit, the bottom line, get the message, mission creep, the
full monty, name and shame, pass one’s sell-by date.
In the Introduction I have explained the principles that underlie the choice of material
included. Despite these attempts to establish boundaries to keep the book within
manageable proportions, the reader will find a fair number of entries that defy the
selection principles as I have outlined them. I have usually included them because I could
not resist it. Serendipity and personal idiosyncrasy help to make a book like this – and
language in general – a lot more interesting and a lot more fun.
I should like to thank all those who helped me to write this book, and to improve earlier
versions of the text: in particular Anne Seaton, who contributed hugely to the task of
establishing chronology and tracking down early uses of phrases, and Rosalind Fergusson,
who copy-edited the book and brought greater order to a mass of detailed information. Any
remaining inconsistencies or errors are entirely my fault. I am also very grateful for the
support and encouragement of the publishers, especially Nigel Wilcockson and Sophie
Lazar. Everyone involved in the project became aware of how much the book represents
work in progress and can never be the last word. I am sure there are readers who will have
suggestions and improvements to offer, and theseespecially when backed up by evidence –
will always be welcome. Please write to the publisher at the address on the title verso.
Robert Allen
Edinburgh 2006
For the paperback reprint I have taken the opportunity to make a few routine corrections
to the text, to enter an occasional antedating, and to add a few phrases that came into
prominence a little too late for the original edition, including ahead of the curve and the
elephant in the room.
Edinburgh 2008
Introduction
The terms ‘phrase’ and ‘idiom’ (an idiom, as a unit of language, as distinct from idiom, the
natural way of using language) reinforce each other, and I have no wish to argue a
distinction between the two. For our purposes a phrase is a group of words, and an idiom is
a group of words that occur regularly together, forming what linguists call a fixed (or semi-
fixed) expression, such as round the bend and pass the buck. Another characteristic of the
phrases explained here – in addition to their constant occurrence in the same form or in
similar forms – is that they have a special meaning that is not (in varying degrees)
deducible from the words from which they are formed.
Phrases may also contain a verb and form a complete idea, such as mind one’s own
business, sit on one’s hands, and talk through one’s hat. Some indeed cannot be captured as
dictionary headings at all but have to be expressed as a statement, for example the ball is in
so-and-so’s court and the jury is still out on such-and-such. Many of the phrases dealt with
here, however, are prepositional, i.e. they consist of a preposition followed by a noun, as in
over the moon and under the weather. (These can also be expressed with a preceding verb
such as be or become or seem.) A more difficult type to distinguish as an idiom is the
compound noun or noun phrase: in general I have included these when they are phrasal in
the sense of strongly implying a state or action, i.e. are dynamic in terms of meaning and
structure (and usually constitute a total metaphor, as with .a red herring, a rule of thumb, and
the bee’s knees), and not when they are relatively static and usually comparatively
transparent in meaning or based on the figurative meaning of a single word (as with war
baby and pearls of wisdom).
Most of the idioms we are concerned with here are productive, that is to say they can be
fitted into sentences and altered as necessary in functional ways to suit the context in
which they are being used, just as individual words can. For example, you can say I told him
to mind his own business, Why don’t you mind your own business, I was just minding my own
business, and so on, which are all forms of the basic phrase mind one’s own business. The
least productive (and in many ways least interesting) phrases are those that allow little or
no variation, notably catchphrases (such as flavour of the month), on which more is said
below. Other phrases that appear to be fixed in form are subject to variation: for example
we can say a piece of the action, a slice of the action, or a share of the action. (These word-
based variants are noted in the entry headings.) The phrase based on a ball rolling can be
launched with any of the verbs get, set, or start, as well as (with a shift in meaning) keep.
Even freer variation is possible when the image suggests it. The typical form of the phrase
the jury is still out on such-and-such, meaning that it is still under consideration, might be
modified in the form the jury remains out on such-and-such or even the jury has ordered
sandwiches on such-and-such. Phrases are based on imagination, and are subject to extensive
free realization. The modern phrase a sandwich short of a picnic, for example, meaning
‘stupid or crazy’, has been modified in all sorts of ways (beyond what can be listed in the
entry) both within and outside its original image domain:two sandwiches short of a picnic,
two slices short of a toast rack, a few pickles short of a jar, one card short of a full deck, one side
short of a pentagon, and (with a nod to the surreal) one tree short of a hammock. We also see