by Max Cryer
When the children are whisked away by Peter Pan to Neverland, Mr. Darling feels so contrite (Nana, chained at the time, couldn’t save them) that he takes up residence inside Nana’s kennel, vowing to stay there until the children return. In disgrace, he is literally “in the doghouse.”
The situation became firmly entrenched in the vernacular to describe someone being punished (usually by the withdrawal of otherwise familiar comforts) and attempting to atone for sins committed.
(Mr. Darling didn’t do things by halves—he remained in the doghouse during the working day. It was carried out and taxied to and from his office, people asked for his autograph, newspapers interviewed him and he was even invited to dinner—and expected to arrive inside the doghouse.)
In the lap of the gods
Beyond the control of normal earthly forces. It’s no surprise that it’s an English translation from a line in the Iliad of Homer and has been in use as a common expression since around 800 BC.
“Lap” is a convenient version of a Greek word that is closer to “knees,” and has two connotations. A practice of the time is thought to be the placing of gifts on the knees or laps of statues of seated gods, in the hope that wishes would be granted. It was thought that a person’s fate was controlled by the threads of life, spun and woven on the laps of gods, and could be twisted or even severed at any moment.
Iron curtain
At first the phrase had no political implications, being merely the name for the fireproof safety curtain found in traditional theaters. Used metaphorically, the term was seen in the diary of Lord Munster in 1819, and then again in H.G. Wells’ Food of the Gods in 1904. But neither use had any connection with political isolation.
However, in 1914 Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians used the term specifically referring to a political barrier between Belgium where she lived, and Germany where her family lived. Born in Bavaria, a daughter of Duke Karl Theodor, she announced:
Between [Germany] and me there is now a bloody iron curtain which has descended forever.
Used in its political sense, the term appeared again in English in Ethel Snowden’s book Through Bolshevik Russia (1920): “We were behind the Iron Curtain at last.” Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels used the expression several times before 1945.
In 1946 Winston Churchill, addressing Westminster College in Missouri, used the term Iron Curtain referring to the barrier of secrecy created by Communist countries after World War II.
The term had been in use for over a century and there was never a suggestion that Churchill claimed it as his own invention, but after the Missouri occasion it became closely associated with him.
I shall lose no time in reading it
Benjamin Disraeli’s reply when receiving unsolicited books sent by authors anxious for his endorsement (quoted by Wilfred Meynell in Disraeli).
The faintly disturbing irony of the remark has an echo in the later (possibly apocryphal) practice attributed to Noel Coward, who when he found a performance indifferent but was obliged by protocol to visit backstage afterward, would exclaim: “Marvellous isn’t the word!”
I smell a rat
Generally assumed to be derived from the notion of a cat smelling a nearby rat, but unable to see it. The term first turns up in 1601 in an anonymous play Blurt, Master Constable, published in London a year later: “Printed for Henry Rockytt, and are to be solde at the long shop under S. Mildreds Church in the Poultry, 1602.”
The play is usually attributed to Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, and during its action an old courtier called Curvetto exclaims: “Rat? Me! I smell a rat, I strike it dead!”
A more colorful use of the phrase arose when the Irish Parliament was enlivened during the period 1777–1801 by speeches from MP Sir Boyle Roche.
Among his more convoluted policy statements:
It would surely be better, Mr. Speaker, to give up not only a part, but, if necessary, even the whole, of our Constitution to preserve the remainder!
One of his much talked about mixed metaphors contained the fragment that helped propel the rat into permanent English usage:
Mr. Speaker, I smell a rat; I see him forming in the air and darkening the sky but I’ll nip him in the bud.’
It goes with the territory
In Arthur Miller’s 1949 play Death of a Salesman the lead character Willy Loman has a neighbor named Charley. Willy is not notably successful in his work, but Charley is very successful in his. And while there is a certain level of friendship between them, there is also envy on Willy’s side and compassion on Charley’s. He feels Willy would be better off in some other job, and he tells Willy’s son Biff:
A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.
Lifted out of the play, the expression fitted many other situations and was used accordingly, though since 1949 popular usage has gradually turned “comes” into “goes.”
It’s a great life if you don’t weaken
The first known use of the expression is in Mr Standfast (1919) by John Buchan. The character of Mr. Brand explains that after a demanding walk he planned to make around the lochs, he would then go back to work in Glasgow. Brand’s companion Gresson remarks:
It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.
It’s all part of life’s rich pageant
British writer, broadcaster, panellist, journalist, reviewer, and monologist Arthur Marshall sometimes performed comedy skits based in the confined world of all-girls’ schools. His 1937 recording of a monologue called “The Games Mistress” included the line:
What, knocked a tooth out? Never mind, dear, laugh it off, laugh it off; it’s all part of life’s rich pageant!
In later years Peter Sellers, as Inspector Clouseau in the movie Shot in the Dark, stuck to Marshall’s original wording, but custom and usage have sometimes varied “pageant” with “tapestry,” “fabric,” or “pattern.”
It seemed like a good idea at the time
In 1931 a collection of short stories by John Monk Saunders was gathered into his book Single Lady about a group of World War I pilots visiting Paris and Lisbon for recreation. Soon after, the book became the basis of the movie The Last Flight, for which Saunders also wrote the screenplay.
During the story the free-spirited character of Nikki (believed to be based on Saunders’ wife Fay Wray) is asked why she painted her toenails red, and she replied that it “seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Later her line is revisited to sombre effect when one of the men is seriously gored after jumping into a Portuguese bullring. When reporters ask his friends why he did such a thing, the character of Cary thinks for a moment and then repeats Nikki’s line:
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
(British actor Archie Leach appeared in a Broadway stage version of the story, and in the character of Cary spoke the line in question. After that, he adopted the character’s name for himself, and became Cary Grant.)
It’s the thought that counts
Repeated countless times as an excuse for inadequate or inappropriate gifts, this expression first surfaced in Rosamond Lehmann’s 1936 novel The Weather in the Streets. The rather pretentious Mrs. Curtis is discussing with her two daughters a suitable wedding present for Dolly Martin, who is about to marry a missionary in China. Somewhat doubtfully they ponder whether a cake-basket or cruet set would be suitable at a mission house in China, but are assured by Mrs. Curtis that “it’s the thought that counts.”
It was a dark and stormy night
It is the opening line from the novel Paul Clifford by acclaimed nineteenth-century MP and prolific writer Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Lord Bulwer-Lytton�
��s writing might have faded into obscurity but for a whim of cartoonist Charles Schultz. Starting in 1965, Schultz’s character—the engaging dog Snoopy (in “Peanuts”)—frequently sat on the roof of his kennel hammering out yet another novel on his toy typewriter and always beginning with “It was a dark and stormy night ...”
The phrase has become associated with overwriting, and became the focus of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University, in which the worst and most extreme examples of “dark and stormy night” writing are recognized.
As reported by Associated Press, the 2008 winner David McKenzie wrote:
Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin’ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the Ellie May, a sturdy whaler captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and Davey Jones be damned, Big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.
See also (The) great unwashed; Purple prose
Ivory tower
Mentions of ivory in the Bible refer to a house, and to a woman’s neck, so neither of those is the origin of the term “ivory tower” as we use it now. Living in an ivory tower refers to people of position who are aloof from common life and may be able to observe it without being affected by it.
That frame of reference came to light in 1837 in the work of French poet Charles Augustin Saint-Beuve. In his poem “Thoughts of August,” the ivory tower image served as a critical comment on the lifestyle of poet Alfred de Vigny, whom Saint-Beuve regarded as too concerned with romanticism. The tower made of ivory formed a charmed retreat in which a poet isolated himself from society, not necessarily to the advantage of his poetry.
The term still carries that pejorative connotation, indicating a failure to connect with the everyday world and a perceived condescension on the part of the tower dweller.
I want to be alone
The line was written by a man, although the process began with Austrian author Vicki Baum, who, after she had worked as a chambermaid, wrote People in a Hotel published in 1929. The book became a successful play first in Berlin, and then New York.
In the play’s English translation the ageing ballerina Grusinskaya speaks the line, “But I wish to be alone.” For the famous 1932 movie version Grand Hotel, in which Greta Garbo played Grusinskaya, screenwriter William A. Drake modified the line to: “I want to be alone.”
Spoken in Garbo’s distinctive husky voice the line went into history, but with some confusion. Inability to recognize the difference between a character speaking lines from a script, and the actor playing the role, caused the saying to become attached to Garbo herself.
For the rest of her life she denied having said she wanted to be alone.There is a widespread belief (but little real evidence) that she explained the confusion by having once said that she, Garbo, wanted to be let alone.
Jack of all trades
In medieval times a jack was just an ordinary man, and one who traveled around able to turn his hand to anything (i.e., “of all trades”), which wasn’t necessarily a liability. In 1618 Geffray Mynshal wrote Essays and Characters of a Prison and gave the first exposure to:
Some broken citizen who hath plaid Jack-of-all-trades.
The term now sometimes carries an aura of disapproval—perhaps the Jack in question knows a little about a lot, but not a useful amount about any one thing.
Jumbo
Long before jumbo shrimps, mushrooms, and jets, London welcomed a huge elephant bought from the Paris zoo. He had been born in Africa in 1861 then taken to France.The London zoo bought him in 1865 and he became enormously popular—and enormous.
His keeper gave him the name Jumbo. The word wasn’t new; it could have been derived from the term mumbo-jumbo, which had been heard in Britain since the eighteenth century, and had acquired the meaning of mysterious (or nonsensical) verbiage.
Amidst great controversy, Jumbo was sold to American showman P.T. Barnum in 1882, and the huge elephant became an A-list celebrity in the U.S. Advertisers rushed to feature him in posters and packages helping sell everything from baking powder to laxative (one advertisement showed Jumbo feeding the Castoria laxative to a baby elephant).
His name caused much discussion. Was it simply an African word for elephant? Could it be a version of the Swahili word for chief (which seems likely)? Or hello (which doesn’t)? Barnum, unimpressed by semantics, made energetically sure that whatever its origin, the word Jumbo meant big. By the time Jumbo died in a train accident three years after he arrived in America, his name was in the English language to stay.
Keeping up with the Joneses
This expression could have had us keeping up with the Smiths but was changed by its creator at the last minute.
In 1913 American cartoonist Arthur Momand realized that in his neighborhood people seemed over-conscious of conspicuous prosperity, and a certain sense of competition prevailed. He devised a comic-strip that showed characters living up to—or beyond—their means, in order to keep pace with a community that appeared to be more wealthy than it actually was.
He planned to name the cartoon strip “Keeping Up with the Smiths,” but after consideration changed the family’s name to Jones because it flowed better. The cartoon strip ran for twenty-eight years across the U.S.
Kettle of fish
In earlier times, kettle meant a large deep vessel—and an oval-shaped kind evolved especially for cooking fish.The earliest known reference in print comes from Thomas Newte in A tour of England and Scotland in 1785 (published in 1791).
Mr. Newte described a Scottish custom whereby landed gentry held a gathering by a river bank and amid a garden-party-type atmosphere, lit a fire and cooked freshly caught salmon in an appropriate vessel.The gathering took on the name of the cooking vessel and became known as “a kettle of fish.”
In later centuries the term developed two separate meanings: it can refer to (a) an entirely new subject (a different kettle of fish), or (b) a difficult situation (a pretty kettle of fish).
King Kong
Edgar Wallace wrote 175 novels and 24 plays. Over one hundred movies have been based on his stories. But it would be fair to say that people who have never heard of Wallace, or any of the books or plays he authored, would undoubtedly recognize the name King Kong.
Wallace and Draycott Dell came up with the name for their fictional giant ape, first heard of in their short story about him in 1933.
Knee high to a grasshopper
Referring usually to those who are short, small, or very young, the term has seen many variations. They all arise from a short person being compared to a toad. The American newspaper Portsmouth Oracle carried the first known printed version of this term in 1814:
As Farmer Joe would say, knee high to a toad.
Since then, the toad has been replaced by a frog, a mosquito, a splinter, a duck, a bumble bee and, eventually, a grasshopper, which outlived all the others.
Knock off (work)
There is a belief—for which no substantial evidence exists—that the expression arose in ancient times when some seagoing vessels had teams of oarsmen whose rhythm was maintained by a leader beating a drum.The signal for a work break, or change of shift, was a special knock that the rowers recognized.
That story may not be accurate, but the expression knock off, referring to work or activity, is certainly not new. It first occurs in a novel by British/American novelist William Clark Russell, and although Russell was also a seaman, and the novel An Ocean Tragedy (1881) has a marine setting, it has nothing to do with rowing or oars. The men attempt to salvage supplies from a wrecked vessel:
Then they waded back to us and the four of us heaved together, and in this way, as I have said, we saved an abundance of useful things.
There was plenty yet to come at, but we were forced to kno
ck off through sheer fatigue.
Know the ropes
The term refers to a person having knowledge of a particular system. It did not necessarily arise among sailing ship crews, though its first known occurrence in print does concern a sea captain. In Two Years Before the Mast by Richard H. Dana (1840):
The captain, who had been on the coast before and “knew the ropes,” took the steering oar.
Dana’s use of quotation marks around the expression indicates that it was known before 1840, but his book put the term into the public arena and it has been commonly used ever since.
(To) know what’s what
Sometimes said of society matrons who understand perfect etiquette and the science of dinner-table seating. Or pundits who know political gossip and the status of the financial market. The term first appears in Hudibras by Samuel Butler (1663):
He knew what’s what, and that’s as high As metaphysic wit can fly.