A Word In Your Shell-Like

and this too shall pass away Chuck Berry spoke the words of a ‘song’ called ‘Pass Away’ (1979) that told of a Persian king who had had carved the words ‘Even this shall pass away’. George Harrison had earlier called his first (mostly solo) record album ‘All Things Must Pass’ (1970). These musicians were by no means the first people to be drawn to this saying. As Abraham Lincoln explained in an address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859): ‘An Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, “And this, too, shall pass away”. How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!’ But who was the oriental monarch? Benham (1948) says the phrase was an inscription on a ring – ‘according to an oriental tale’ – and the phrase was given by Solomon to a Sultan who ‘desired that the words should be appropriate at all time’. In 1860, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in The Marble Faun of the ‘greatest mortal consolation, which we derive from the transitoriness of all things – from the right of saying, in every conjuncture, “This, too, will pass away”.’

and when did you last see your father? There can be few paintings where the title is as important as (and as well known as) the actual picture. This one was even turned into a tableau at Madame Tussaud’s where it remained until 1989. It was in 1878 that William Frederick Yeames RA first exhibited his painting with this title at the Royal Academy; the original is now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. The title of the painting has become a kind of joke catchphrase, sometimes used nudgingly and often allusively – as in the title of Christopher Hampton’s 1964 play When Did You Last See My Mother? and the 1986 farce by Ray Galton and John Antrobus, When Did You Last See Your…Trousers? Tom Lubbock writing in the Independent on Sunday (8 November 1992) commented on the fact that the title tends to be remembered wrongly: ‘But the And matters. It turns the title from an abrupt demand into a slyly casual inquiry…[But] the title will probably outlast the image, just as a form of words that rings some distant bell. On green cashpoint screens you now find the query “When did you last update your insurance?” I’m sure the forgotten Yeames is ultimately responsible.’

and with that, I return you to the studio! Catchphrase from the BBC radio show Beyond Our Ken (1958–64). Hugh Paddick played Cecil Snaith, a hush-voiced BBC outside broadcasts commentator. After some disaster in which he had figured, he would give this as the punchline, in a deadpan manner. The show’s host, Kenneth Horne, apparently suggested the line. In its straight form, many TV and radio news reporters use the phrase in live spots even today.

(the) Angel of Death A nickname bestowed in the Second World War upon Dr Joseph Mengele, the German concentration camp doctor who experimented on inmates – ‘for his power to pick who would live and die in Auschwitz by the wave of his hand’ (Time Magazine, 17 June 1985). ‘Angel of death’ as an expression for a bringer of ills is not a biblical phrase and does not appear to have arisen until the 18th century. Samuel Johnson used it in The Rambler in 1752.

angels dancing on the head of a pin Benham (1948) went into this thoroughly but did not provide an actual example of what it gives as a head phrase, namely, ‘A company of angels can dance on the point of a needle’. Nevertheless, it glosses the phrase thus: ‘Saying attrib. with variations to St Thomas Aquinas (circa 1227–74) [who] in Summae Theologiae devotes superabundant space to fanciful conjectures about the nature of angels…“Whether an angel can be in several places at once”…“Whether several angels can be in one place at the same time”…He expends much laboured argument on this and similar problems.’ Correspondents in The Times (20/21 November 1975) seemed to suggest that the attribution to Thomas Aquinas had been mistakenly made by Isaac Disraeli. Mention was made of the 14th-century tractate Swester Katrei – wrongly ascribed to Meister Eckhart – which contains this passage: ‘Doctors declare that in heaven a thousand angels can stand on the point of a needle.’ Mencken (1942) has ‘How many angels can dance upon the point of a needle?’ – ‘ascribed to various medieval theologians, c. 1400.’

angels one five In Royal Air Force jargon, ‘angels’ means height measured in units of a thousand feet; ‘one five’ stands for fifteen; so ‘20 MEs at Angels One Five’ means ‘Twenty Messerschmitts at 15,000 feet’. Angels One Five was the title of a film (UK 1952) about RAF fighter pilots during the Second World War.

Anglo-Saxon attitudes Typically English behaviour. The title of Angus Wilson’s novel (1956) about a historian investigating a possible archaeological forgery comes from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Chap. 7 (1872). Alice observes the Messenger ‘skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel, as he came along’. When she expresses surprise, the King explains: ‘He’s an Anglo-Saxon Messenger – and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes.’ Harry Morgan Ayres in Carroll’s Alice (1936) suggests that the author may have been spoofing the Anglo-Saxon scholarship of his day. He also reproduces drawings of Anglo-Saxons in various costumes and attitudes from the Caedmon manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

(the) Angry Decade A decade label for the 1950s though it is not certain that this had 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.’

(that’s) another meal the Germans won’t have Dismissive catchphrase on finishing a meal. ‘When my (French) wife arrived in this country some thirty years ago, she surprised me by remarking, after a particularly good meal, “Voilà, un autre repas que les Allemands n’auront pas.” This saying apparently derived from her mother, or indeed her grandmother, who suffered in the Occupation. To my astonishment, on a trip to Avignon ten years ago, after an exceptional banquet, a young French lad aged about 25, turned to my wife and made the same remark. It would seem that this has now become a French proverb’ – Raymond Harris (1995). Confirmation comes from The Sunday Times (23 March 1997): ‘Older Frenchmen admitted they sometimes still use the toast, when raising their glasses, of “This is one the Boches won’t get”.’ And from even further back: ‘On his first visit to Germany nearly forty years later, [Matisse] told one of his students that…he never forgot his mother repeating like a grace at meals: “Here’s another one the Germans won’t lay their hands on”. The phrase would become a familiar refrain throughout the region during the incursions of the next seventy-five years and more’ – Hilary Spurling, The Unknown Matisse, Vol. 1 (1998), referring to the Prussians who passed through north-eastern France in the 1871 Franco-Prussian war.

another opening, another show! Show business exclamation – perhaps uttered ironically, like ON WITH THE MOTLEY! ‘Another Op’nin, Another Show’ is the title of a song sung by the members of a theatrical troupe in Cole Porter’s musical Kiss Me Kate (1948).

another page turned in the book of life Conversational reflection on someone’s death. One of the numerous clichés of bereavement, designed to keep the awfulness of death at bay by means of comfortingly trite remarks. A cliché by about 1960. However, the notion of life as a book whose pages turn can be invoked on other occasions as well. On 1 September 1872, the Reverend Francis Kilvert wrote in his diary: ‘Left Clyro for ever. A chapter of life closed and a leaf in the Book of Life turned over.’ In its original biblical sense, the said book is a record of those who will inherit eternal life (as in Philippians 4:3 and Revelation 20:12).

another part of the wood Title of the first volume of (Lord) Kenneth Clark’s autobiography (1974) and taken from the stage direction to Act 3, Sc. 2 of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Scene locations such as this were mostly not of Shakespeare’s own devising but were added by later editors. Clark said he wished also to allude to the opening of Dante’s Inferno: ‘I found myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.’ Lillian Hellman had earlier entitled one of her plays Another Part of the Forest (1946) and Beryl Bainbridge, a novel, Another Part of the Wood (1968).

another Sunday and sweet FA This phrase was used as the title of a Granada TV play by Jack Rosenthal (UK 1972) about the struggles of a referee during an (amateur) Sunday-morning football game. But was it a phrase before the play? Compare the (subsequent) diary of a member of the British forces in the Falklands conflict, found on the internet. On Sunday 16 May 1982, he wrote: ‘All I can say about today is another bloody Sunday and sweet FA. We were due to be linked up with the rest of the task force during the night but due to the extreme bad weather all ships have had to slow down.’

answer See IS THE RIGHT.

(the) answer is in the plural and they bounce That is to say, ‘balls!’ – reputedly the response given by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens to a Royal Commission. However, according to Robert Jackson, The Chief (1959), when Gordon (later Lord) Hewart was in the House of Commons, he was answering questions on behalf of David Lloyd George. For some time, one afternoon, he had given answers in the customary brief parliamentary manner – ‘The answer is in the affirmative’ or ‘The answer is in the negative’. After one such non-committal reply, several members arose to bait Hewart with a series of rapid supplementary questions. He waited until they had all finished and then replied: ‘The answer is in the plural!’

(the) answer’s a lemon! Fobbing-off phrase. ‘My Cumbrian grandmother when asked a question would reply, “The answer’s a lemon”. “Why?” we asked – “Suck it and see,” was her response’ – Janet C. Egan (2000). This exchange brings together two well-known expressions. ‘The answer is a lemon’, being a non-answer to a question or a refusal to do something requested of one, is probably of American origin and seems to have been in use by 1910. A lemon is acidic and sour, and there are several other American phrases in which a lemon suggests that something is unsatisfactory or not working properly. The lemon is also the least valuable object on a fruit machine. ‘Suck it and see’, meaning ‘try out’, presumably derives from what you would say about a sweet – ‘suck it and see whether you like the taste of it’. It was used as a catchphrase by Charlie Naughton of the Crazy Gang, though it is probably of earlier music-hall origin – at least according to W. Buchanan-Taylor, One More Shake (1944). Partridge/Slang dates it from the 1890s. A correspondent, H. E. Johnson, suggested (1999) that it started with a Punch cartoon at the turn of the 19th/20th century, with the caption: First urchin: ‘I don’t know if this here’s a plum or a beetle.’ Second urchin: ‘Suck it and see.’

(to) answer the call of nature A lavatorial euphemism known since 1761 when Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy had that someone ‘hearkened to the call of nature.’ ‘The calls of nature are permitted and Clerical Staff may use the garden below the second gate’ – Tailor & Cutter (1852). ‘Call of nature “sent [Robert] Maxwell overboard”…He would frequently get up in the middle of the night and found it more convenient, as a lot of men do on a boat, to relieve themselves over the side as it was moving’ – headline and text, The Independent (21 October 1995). There is also the variant, ‘(to) answer a certain requirement of nature.’ The call of the great outdoors may also be used in the same way. Originally the phrase ‘great outdoors’ was used simply to describe ‘great open space’ (by 1932).

(the) answer to a maiden’s prayer An eligible bachelor – especially one who is young, good-looking and wealthy. Perhaps a Victorian coinage, now used only ironically or somewhat mockingly and also used in a wider sense to refer to anything one might have been searching for. There is an ancient tradition that maidens prayed to St Agnes (patron saint of virgins) on 20 January, in the hope of being granted a vision of their future husbands. Hence, the poem by John Keats, ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ (1820). ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ was the translated title given to the piano solo popular in Victorian drawing-rooms, ‘Molitwa dziewicy’ by the Polish composer Thekla Badarzewska (1834–61). ‘Here, you Freshmen, Seniors, et al, is the answer to a maiden’s prayer’ – Mademoiselle Magazine (15 August 1935).

Anthea, give us a twirl See DIDN’T HE DO WELL.

anxiety See AGE OF.

any colour so long as it’s black An expression used to convey that there is, in fact, no choice. This originated with Henry Ford, who is supposed to have said it about the Model T Ford that came out in 1909 and is quoted in his My Life and Work (written with Henry Crowther, 1922). Hill and Nevins in Ford: Expansion and Challenge (1957) have him saying: ‘People can have it any colour – so long as it’s black.’ However, in 1925, the company had to bow to the inevitable and offer a choice of colours. Dr Harry Corbett commented (1996): ‘Initially, the T model was available in several colours but…the early finishing technique was a carryover from the carriage industry and resulted in curing times of up to four weeks. This meant that huge numbers of cars had to be stored during the finishing process. From what I can gather, Ford changed to a faster drying product – which was only available in black – to rid himself of the warehousing difficulties.’

any gum, chum? Remark addressed to American GIs based in Britain during the Second World War. ‘Crowds of small boys gathered outside American clubs to pester them for gifts, or called out as American lorries passed: “Any gum, chum?” which rapidly became a national catchphrase’ – Norman Longmate, How We Lived Then (1971).

any more fer sailing? See BY GUM.

any more for the Skylark? The age-old cry of swarthy fishing-folk inviting seaside visitors to take a trip around the bay but now domesticated into a ‘generalised invitation’, as Partridge/Catch Phrases puts it. But how did it get into the language in the first place? A pamphlet (undated) entitled ‘Any More for the Skylark? The Story of Bournemouth’s Pleasure Boats’ by L. Chalk tells of a whole series of ‘Skylark’ vessels run by a certain Jake Bolson at that seaside resort from 1914 to 1947. There is, however, a much earlier source. A researcher at the Brighton Fishing Museum disclosed that a boat owner/skipper of those parts called Captain Fred Collins had owned many ‘Skylarks’ in his career. As he died in 1912, Collins was clearly ahead of the Bournemouth boats. Indeed, the Brighton Gazette had mentioned a ‘new pleasure yacht, “The Skylark”’ arriving from the builders in May 1852. The Gazette’s earliest citation of the actual phrase ‘Any more for the Skylark’ occurs in the edition of 17 November 1928 (in an article concerning Joseph Pierce, who took over from Collins). This does not explain how the phrase caught on beyond Brighton (perhaps through a song or stage-show sketch?) The edition of 8 May 1948 placed it among other pleasure boat cries: ‘Brighton’s fishermen…will take their boats down to the sea and the summer season chorus of “Any more for the Skylark,” “Half-way to China,” “Motor boat going” and “Lovely ride out” will start again.’ A variation, all aboard the Skylark!, was apparently popularized by Noah and Nelly, an animated British TV children’s programme of the mid-1970s.