A Word In Your Shell-Like - Nigel Rees

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From The Washington Post (16 October 1991): ‘Shields introduced Hatch, the starched shirt of the Senate hearings, as “the man who has done for bipartisanship what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen”.’ From The Sunday Times (9 February 1992): ‘Denis Healey, who claimed to have tried to do for economic forecasters what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen…’

      (the) bottomless pit A description of Hell from Revelation 20:1: ‘And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit’; also in Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk 6, line 864 (1671): ‘Headlong themselves they threw / Down from the verge of Heaven, eternal wrath / Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.’ William Pitt the Younger, British Prime Minister in the years 1783–1801 and 1804–6, was nicknamed ‘the Bottomless Pitt’, on account of his thinness. A caricature with this title, attributed to Gillray, shows Pitt as Chancellor of the Exchequer introducing his 1792 budget. His bottom is non-existent.

      (the) bottom line The ultimate, most important outcome. Originally an American expression referring to the last line of a financial statement that shows whether there has been profit or loss – and still very much in use (‘They’re only interested in the bottom line, those investors’) – but also used in the figurative sense of the final analysis or determining factor; the point, the crux of the argument. ‘George Murphy and Ronald Reagan certainly qualified because they have gotten elected. I think that’s the bottom line’ – San Francisco Examiner (8 September 1967); in the 1970s, Henry Kissinger spoke of the ‘bottom line’ as the eventual outcome of political negotiations, disregarding the intermediate arguments; ‘Our “bottom-line” has always been to protect jobs and services in our boroughs. In London, with a good deal of help from the GLC, we should survive’ – The Guardian (21 June 1985); ‘The bottom line / Protecting Miami’s heritage…The billboard’s protan message in the era of thinning ozone layers is no longer consistent with Coppertone’s new emphasis on sunscreens…Baring little girls’ bottoms is not so politically correct either’ – headline and text, The Economist (14 September 1991); Arthur Jacobs took an Independent editorial to task for a ‘splendidly meaningless example [on 14 April 1995]: “The bottom line is that there are too many boats chasing too few fish”. Surely this, as the statement of the problem, would be a top line and a true bottom line would be the solution.’ ‘According to a leaked memo seen by The Independent…“The bottom line is that the waste cannot be dumped at sea. The only option is to take ashore and treat’ – The Independent (20 June 1995); ‘The IRA’s bottom line is a united Ireland, so what happens when they realise they’re not going to get that?’ – The Independent (1 September 1995).

      bounce See ANSWER IS.

      bounden duty A consciously archaic phrase, meaning ‘conduct that is expected of one or to which one is bound by honour or position’. Best known from its use in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (1662): ‘It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord’ – though the phrase pre-dates this. ‘Had Evan Hunter been dealing with the Lizzie Borden case under his other hat as Ed McBain it would have been one’s bounden duty to keep the solution dark’ – The Guardian (23 August 1984); ‘These were the people who promoted and supported public libraries, municipal swimming baths and playing fields, museums and art galleries, free access to which was part of the spiritual provision the Victorians saw as their bounden duty towards their fellow citizens’ – The Sunday Telegraph (6 May 1990); ‘John Nott also wished to resign. But I told him straight that when the fleet had put to sea he had a bounden duty to stay and see the whole thing through’ – Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993).

      bourgeois See DISCREET CHARM.

      Bovril prevents that sinking feeling Slogan for Bovril (meat extract) in the UK. This line first appeared in 1920. On H. H. Harris’s cheery poster of a pyjama-clad man astride a jar of Bovril in the sea, However, the slogan was born in a golfing booklet issued by Bovril in 1890 that included the commendation: ‘Unquestionably, Bovril…supplies…the nourishment which is so much needed by all players at the critical intermediate hour between breakfast and luncheon, when the sinking feeling engendered by an empty stomach is so distressing, and so fruitful of deteriorated play.’ It is said that Bovril had intended to use the phrase earlier but withheld it because of the Titanic disaster of 1912. With updated illustrations, it lasted until 1958. Heading from The Independent (12 April 1989): ‘Crucible challenge for a champion [Steve Davis, snooker player] who thinks rivals under the table before relishing that sinking feeling.’

      (the) box A slightly passé term for a TV set (having earlier been applied to wirelesses and gramophones) and one of several derogatory epithets that were applied during the medium’s rise to mass popularity in the 1940s and 50s. Groucho Marx used the expression in a letter (1950). Maurice Richardson, sometime TV critic of The Observer, apparently coined the epithet idiot’s lantern prior to 1957.

      Box and Cox Meaning, ‘by turns, turn and turn about, or alternately.’ From a story (originally French) about a deceitful lodging-house keeper who lets the same room to two men, Box and Cox. Unbeknown to each other, one occupies it during the day and the other during the night. J. M. Morton’s farce Box and Cox was staged in 1847. A short musical version called Cox and Box with music by Sullivan and lyrics – not by W. S. Gilbert but by F. C. Burnand – followed in 1867.

      (it’s a) box of birds (or box of fluffy ducks) A New Zealandism/Australianism for ‘fine, excellent, OK’. Known by 1943.

      box-office poison Meaning (of a film star, in particular) that he or she is capable of repulsing potential film-goers through his or her reputation. A term perhaps applied in the first instance to Katharine Hepburn in 1938 by members of the Independent Motion Picture Theatre Proprietors organization in the USA. Alexander Walker in Stardom (1970) refers, however, to ‘the notorious red-bordered advertisement placed by a group of exhibitors in a trade paper which listed the stars [sic] who were deemed to be “box-office poison”.’ So perhaps she was not alone. ‘British films are box-office poison’ – Michael Caine, quoted in Screen International (29 July 1978).

      boy See BIG BOY.

      (the) boy done well Although now used in any context (for example as the headline to an article about Rod Stewart, the singer, in The Independent on 4 April 1991), this phrase of approbation is unquestionably of sporting origin. The question is, which sport? It sounds like the kind of thing a boxer’s manager might say – ‘All right, he got KO’d in the first round – but my boy done well…’ – although the citations obtained so far are from every sport but boxing. Working backwards: ‘Back on dry land he took victory well and, like all good managers had words of praise for his team, in this case Derek Clark. “It’s a good result, they done well the lads,” he said. “Class will always tell and it did today but everything happened that quick I didn’t have time to enjoy it.” The boy Ron done well’ – ‘Cowes Diary’ (yachting), The Times (7 August 1991); ‘Particularly noteworthy were two goals by Mark Robins, one with his right, then a left-foot chip. It prompted manager Alex Ferguson to utter the immortal words: “The boy has done well”’ – ‘Football Focus’, The Sunday Times (9 September 1990); ‘The boy Domingo done good. The boy Carreras done well. The boy Pavarotti done great’ – TV operatic concert review, The Guardian (9 July 1990); ‘It wasn’t all death and destruction…England reached the quarter finals of the World Cup [football]. The boy Lineker – the competition’s top scorer – done well…The boy Andrew done well, too. Sarah Ferguson, proved a popular bride’ – ‘Review of the Year’, The Guardian (31 December 1986). Quite the best suggestion for an origin was Fagin in Oliver Twist, but, no, he did not say it. Compare this letter to The Guardian on the ungrammatical World Cup TV commentaries of Emlyn Hughes and Mike Channon (1986): ‘Conjugate the verb “done great”: I done great. He done great. We done

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