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A Word In Your Shell-Like. Nigel Rees
Читать онлайн.Название A Word In Your Shell-Like
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007373499
Автор произведения Nigel Rees
Жанр Справочная литература: прочее
Издательство HarperCollins
(the) best-kept secret In its original form, about any well-withheld information, this was a cliché by the mid-20th century, but as used by travel-writers to describe a holiday destination, it was included in the ‘travel scribes’ armoury’ compiled from competition entries in The Guardian (10 April 1993). ‘Seeing that in the last month Lasmo’s share price has drifted northwards from 114p to a peak of 169p (now 149.5p) this was hardly the world’s best-kept secret’ – The Observer (1 May 1994); ‘If this punchy little two-hander from Footpaul Productions of South Africa has ambitions to being the best kept secret of this year’s Mayfest, then it won’t work because wordof-mouth will acclaim it for the gem it is’ – The Herald (Glasgow) (11 May 1994); ‘Once known as “Europe’s best kept secret”, the secret leaked out and now much of [the Algarve’s] wonderful Atlantic coast has been obscured by a wall of concrete – The Herald (Glasgow) (28 May 1994).
(to make the) best of both worlds Meaning, ‘to have the benefits of two contrasting or separate ways of life or circumstances.’ The expression appears to have originated in the title of a book by the Congregationalist preacher Thomas Binney (1798–1874), Is It Possible To Make the Best of Both Worlds? A Book for Young Men (1853). Binney answers his own question affirmatively: not only is it possible for a good Christian to lead a happy life on earth, such a life is even the best preparation for life after death. Released from its religious origins, the phrase became increasingly popular from the 1960s onwards (Robert Palmer had a modest hit with the song ‘Best of Both Worlds’ in 1978), and then an explosion of popularity after 1990.
best of order See GIVE ORDER.
(the) best Prime Minister we have (or never had) R. A. (later Lord) Butler (d. 1982) has sometimes been known as ‘the best Prime Minister we never had’ (so have others, like Denis Healey, for example), and it is to Butler that we probably owe both the positive and the negative formats. In December 1955, having (not for the last time) been passed over for the Conservative leadership, he was confronted by a Press Association reporter just as he was about to board an aircraft at London airport. As criticism was growing over the performance of Anthony Eden, the Prime Minister, the reporter asked: ‘Mr Butler, would you say that this [Eden] is the best Prime Minister we have?’ Butler assented to this ‘well-meant but meaningless proposition…indeed it was fathered upon me. I don’t think it did Anthony any good. It did not do me any good either’ – The Art of the Possible (1973).
best-regulated See ACCIDENTS.
(to give something one’s) best shot To try as hard as possible, to do one’s very best. An American idiom known by 1951 when, in the film His Kind of Woman, Robert Mitchum said, during a card game, ‘Take your best shot.’ Presumably the expression derives from the sporting sense of ‘shot’ (as in golf) rather than the gun sense. ‘“We’re not able to adequately counsel the farmer with the present plan,” he said. “With this, we’ll be able to give him our best shot”’ – The Washington Post (13 February 1984); ‘The editor must keep his powder dry. He is there to sell newspapers and his best shot is to find and project material denied to his rivals’ – The Guardian (14 May 1984); the film Hoosiers (US 1986), about a basketball team, was also known as Best Shot; ‘For Clinton and the Democrats, the issue his candidacy continues to pose is electability. His primary claim to the nomination lies not in ideology and political correctness but in being the Democrat who has the best shot at winning in November’ – The Washington Post (31 January 1992); ‘[Imran Khan] had prepared for marriage like a cricket match. He had no guarantees it would work but he would give it his “best shot”’ – The Independent (21 June 1995).
(the) best swordsman in—(or finest swordsman…) Latterly a cliché of swashbuckling epics, this phrase has quite a history. John Aubrey in his Brief Lives (circa 1697) has a literal use: ‘Sir John Digby yielded to be the best swordsman of his time.’ Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 27 (1841), has a relatively unselfconscious use: ‘I have been tempted in these two short interviews, to draw upon that fellow, fifty times. Five men in six would have yielded to the impulse. By suppressing mine, I wound him deeper and more keenly than if I were the best swordsman in all Europe.’ In the film Son of Monte Cristo (US 1940), Louis Hayward as the Count of Monte Cristo says: ‘Don’t worry. My father was the best swordsman in France!’ ‘He thinks that will protect him against me – the finest swordsman in Bavaria’ is spoken in the film A Night in Casablanca (US 1946). ‘He is the fastest sword in the whole of France’ – spoken by Ernie Wise in a ‘Three Musketeers’ sketch on BBC TV The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show (1970). The Finest Swordsman in All France is the title of a book (1984) by Keith Miles on the subject of clichés in general.
(the) best things in life are free A modern proverb that really does seem to have started life with the song of the title (1927) by De Sylva, Brown and Henderson – featured in the show Good News (filmed US 1930 and 1947).
best years of one’s life See HAPPIEST DAYS OF.
better See BEAT A PATH; COULD IT GET.
better and better See EVERY DAY.
(one’s) better half One’s spouse or partner. General use and pretty inoffensive except to the politically correct who might jib at implied inequality of any kind in a married relationship (even if the better of the two people is invariably the woman). Of long standing: ‘My dear, my better half (said he) I find I must now leave thee’ – Argalus to his wife, in Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia (1580).
better out than in What you say having belched. Quoted in Mary Killen, Best Behaviour (1990). Or when farting, according to Partridge/Catch Phrases, in which Paul Beale dates it to the 1950s.
better red than dead A slogan used by some (mainly British) nuclear disarmers. Bertrand Russell wrote in 1958: ‘If no alternative remains except communist domination or the extinction of the human race, the former alternative is the lesser of two evils’. Time Magazine (15 September 1961) gave ‘I’d rather be Red than dead’ as a slogan of Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The counter-cry: ‘Better dead than red’ may also have had some currency. In the film Love With a Proper Stranger (US 1964), Steve McQueen proposed to Natalie Wood with a picket sign stating ‘Better Wed Than Dead’.
(well, it’s) better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick What you say to someone who is hesitating over accepting something – a small tip, say, or an equivocal compliment: it is ‘better than nothing.’ Certainly established usage by the time it was uttered on BBC Radio, Round the Horne (15 February 1967). Indeed, Partridge/Catch Phrases dates it and other similar phrases to ‘circa 1920’ and adds: ‘Most seem to have originated late in C19. Compare Grose (1788): “this is better than a thump on the back with a stone”.’ An English Midlands variant, dating from the mid-20th century is: ‘Better than a poke in the eye with a hedge stake’ (which is, of course, a sharp stick). Compare also:
(well, it’s) better than a slap in your belly with a wet fish What you say to someone who may be hesitating over accepting something. Partridge/Catch Phrases has ‘…than a slap across the kisser’. The art critic Brian Sewell revealed on BBC Radio Quote…Unquote (12 April 1994) that his nurse, when bathing him, would not only inquire ‘Have you done down there?’ but also command him to stand up at the conclusion of the proceedings and whack him with a sopping wet flannel, saying, ‘There’s a slap in the belly with a wet fish.’
(it is) better to die on your feet than live on your knees A Republican slogan from the Spanish Civil War, 1936. Dolores Ibarruri (‘La