Phrases Archives

Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable

May 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

famous encyclopedia of references and sources

Who were Gargantua’s parents? What are ‘naughty figs’? And what is the origin of the pub name, ‘The Dog and Duck’? It’s no use looking in a dictionary to answer questions like these – and if you pick up an encyclopedia, where would you start? What you need is an old, old favourite reference manual for the humanities – Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

It is a compilation of people, places, sayings, customs, and mythology – first published by the Reverend Ebenezer Cobham Brewer in 1870 and massively popular with writers, readers, and crossword-puzzle fans ever since. Brewer was a clergyman-scholar who wrote books on popular education and literature. He drew the bulk of his materials from his reading of the classics.

But to this is added a now-quaint Victorian gloss of the public school polymath. Adrian Room, the editor of this latest version, has introduced French jargon, inkhorn literary terms, and many more historical and fictional characters to those legendary, mythical, and fabulous creatures in the original.

Sometimes Brewer’s entries are so blindingly obvious, you wonder why they were included [‘Fore’ – in the front rank; eminent] but most of the time his examples are very entertaining. A section on ‘Death from Strange Causes’ includes ‘Aeschylus was killed by the fall of a tortoise on his bald head from the claws of an eagle in the air’ and ‘Margutte died of laughter on seeing a monkey trying to pull on a pair of boots’. To this he adds the footnote: ‘It will be observed that four of the last died of laughter. No doubt the reader will be able to add other examples.’

He is particularly good at explaining the historical origins and the symbolic connotations of things we often take for granted, such as pub names, expressions such as ‘too bandy about’ and the hidden meanings in such expressions as ‘a game-leg’. The compilation is also stuffed with potted biographies of Biblical, mythical, and fictional characters, along with all sorts of other ‘knowledge – from the origins of the letter ‘A’, to the note on Zulfagar, which turns out to be the name of Ali’s sword – Ali of course being the cousin and son-in-law of Mahomet.

As you can probably tell, it’s an interesting mixture of really useful reference material and slightly dotty erudition. But it’s that which gives the book its charm. It’s the sort of compilation which when you look up a reference, you can hardly stop yourself reading through lots of the adjacent entries and marvelling at the breadth of learning it represents. It’s the only work of reference I can think of in which you’re guaranteed a laugh on just about every page.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, London: Chambers, 19th revised edition 2012, pp.1536, ISBN: 0550102450

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Phrases – how to understand them

September 11, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Phrases – definition

Phrases are part of a sentence which does not contain a finite verb.

[This feature distinguishes a phrase from a clause, which does have a finite verb.]

It is a group of words which acts as a noun, adjective, or an adverb.

Examples

up the street my father’s dog

to hunt the killer the house with big windows

strawberries and cream having a wonderful time

Use

Phrases are sequences of meaning and are used in both speech and writing.

A grammatically complete sentence requires a finite verb. However, in some contexts phrases can convey as much meaning as is required.

In these cases the verb may not be expressed but will be implied by the speaker and understood by the listener.

In writing, the phrase would only be punctuated as a sentence in special cases and for special effects.

NB! Remember – a phrase does not contain a finite verb, but a clause does.

The term ‘phrase’ is used generally to suggest a saying or a brief statement.

The most interesting thing regarding phrases is that when uttered in isolation they have a verb which is understood or implied.

If we say to a child ‘Up those stairs!’ it usually means something like, ‘It’s time you went up those stairs to bed’. In the more complete utterance ‘you went’ is a finite verb.

Similarly, the question ‘Where are the glasses?’ may be answered by ‘Inside the cabinet’. The semantic implication is ‘The glasses are inside the cabinet’ in which ‘are’ is the finite verb whose subject is ‘the glasses’.

Many proverbs are expressed as phrases but with the finite verb understood.

For instance ‘More haste less speed’, suggests that, ‘more haste results in less speed’. However, this addition of the finite verb ‘results’ makes the saying less succinct and epigrammatic.

A very unscientific but efficient way to test whether an utterance is a sentence or a phrase is to imagine addressing a stranger with the statement. The response to a phrase would be ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

For example, imagine making any of the following statements to someone. They would not know what you meant.

‘The green book’
‘A lovely surprise’
‘Over there’

On the other hand, even a stranger would make some sense of the following sentences:

‘That’s the green book I left in the park.’
‘The bus stops over there.’
‘I have a lovely surprise for you.’

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Treasury of Sayings and Quotations

July 29, 2009 by Roy Johnson

origins of quotes, proverbs, and expressions

This Treasury of Sayings and Quotations is a compilation of phrases, bon mots, and observations from sources all over the world. Some are well known, and others are novelties drawn out of the data-bank of human wisdom from all over the world which you are invited to enjoy or send into further circulation. Oxford University Press do a lot of these quotation dictionaries: their Humorous Quotations, Catchphrases, Idioms, Literary Quotations, and Modern Quotations are all very popular.

The distinctive feature in this compilation is that it has multiculturalism writ large in its selection of materials. They range from the folk-like African proverb When the spiders unite, they can tie up a lion, to the more obviously urban Russian maxim, We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us. The categories are arranged alphabetically – from Ability and Africa, through Marriage and Memory, to Women, Words, Writing and Youth. Then the entries under each topic are arranged chronologically – so, under Writing we go from II Maccabees in the Bible, to Derek Walcott in the Guardian of 1997.

I come from a backward place: your duty is supplied by the life around you. One guy plants bananas; another plants cocoa; I’m a writer, I plant lines. There’s the same clarity of occupation, and the same sense of devotion.
Derek Walcott 1930

Shakespeare of course crops up in more categories than you can shake a stick at [which is not listed]: The course of true love never did run smooth (Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance? (Henry IV, Part 2).

It’s been brought up to date with entries such as shock and awe, dodgy dossier, and the mother of battles which cast a chilling light on the people who used them in the last few years.

It includes well-chosen words from Biblical times to the present day, proverbs from around the world, and well-known phrases and quotations, giving their sources and revealing the contexts from which they emerged. There are even explanations of terms as unlikely as this from the world of recreational drug use:

chase the dragon
take heroin by heating it on a piece of kitchen tin foil and inhaling the fumes. The term is said to be translated from Chinese, and to arise from the fact that the fumes and the molten heroin powder move up and down the piece of tin foil with an undulating movement resembling the tail of the dragon in Chinese myths.

More than a thousand new items have been added to the latest (fourth) edition. I am never quite sure what use people make of these compilations, but once you open them, they are very difficult to close. It’s the easy browsing I suppose – plus the fact that every entry is a gem of condensed human experience.