LITMIR.BIZ

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is altered Sometimes ‘“The case is altered”, quoth Plowden’ – a proverbial expression derived from a law case in which the lawyer Edmund Plowden himself featured. A Roman Catholic, Plowden was arrested some time after 1570 for the treasonable offence of attending a surreptitious mass. He defended himself and was able to prove that the priest who had presided over the mass in question was an agent provocateur. Accordingly, he argued that a true mass could not be celebrated by an impostor – so ‘the case is altered’ – and was acquitted. Another, less likely, origin is given by Henry G. Bohn in A Hand-Book of Proverbs (1855): ‘Plowden being asked by a neighbour of his, what remedy there was in law against his neighbour for some hogs that had trespassed his ground, answered, he might have very good remedy; but the other replying, that they were his [i.e. Plowden’s] hogs, Nay then, neighbour, (quoth he), the case is altered.’ The phrase was much quoted. In Shakespeare’s King Henry VI, Part 3, IV.iii.30 (1590–1) there occurs the following exchange: King Edward: ‘Why, Warwick, when we parted, / Thou call’dst me King.’ / Warwick: ‘Ay, but the case is alter’d: / When you disgrac’d me in my embassade, / Then I degraded you from being King, / And come now to create you Duke of York.’ It occurs in Thomas Kyd, Soliman and Perseda, II.i.292 (1592), and Ben Jonson’s play with the title The Case Is Altered (1598–9). The dying Queen Elizabeth I is sometimes quoted as having said in 1603: ‘I am tied, I am tied, and the case is altered with me’ – Elizabeth Jenkins, Elizabeth the Great (1958). From all this, The Case Is Altered is also the name given to a number of public houses in Britain though it is sometimes erroneously said to be a corruption of the Spanish casa alta (high house). In addition, ‘The Case is Altered’ was the provisional title of J. M. Barrie’s play The Admirable Crichton (1902) – an allusion surviving in the line ‘Circumstances might alter cases’ (Act 1, Sc. 1). It is also the title of a book (1932) by William Plomer.

      (to) cash/throw in one’s chips/checks Meaning, originally, ‘to stop gambling’ but then ‘to die’ and, as DOAS has it: ‘to terminate a business transaction, sell one’s share of, or stock in, a business, or the like, in order to realize one’s cash profits’. It also may mean ‘to make a final gesture’. Tom Mangold wrote in The Listener (8 September 1983) concerning the US arms race in space: ‘Under malign command, a technological guarantee of invulnerability could induce the holder to cash his chips and go for a pre-emptive first strike.’

      cast adrift in an open boat This is listed as a film cliché by Leslie Halliwell in The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes (1978 edition), though it is not one really. It cannot have been used sufficiently for it to become a worn-out phrase even though the combination of words does have a certain inevitability. The words are used in the film Mutiny on the Bounty (US 1935) concerning the fate of Captain Bligh. The phrase recurs in the BBC radio Goon Show, ‘Drums Along the Mersey’ (11 October 1956).

      (with a) cast of thousands Now only used jokingly and ironically, this type of film promotion line may have made its first appearance in connection with the 1927 version of Ben Hur where the boast was, ‘Cast of 125,000’!

      (to) cast one’s bread upon the waters Meaning ‘to reap as you shall sow’, after Ecclesiastes 11:1: ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.’ Oddly expressed, the idea is that if you sow seed or corn in a generous fashion now, you will reap the benefits in due course. The New English Bible translates this passage more straightforwardly as, ‘Send your grain across the seas, and in time you will get a return’.

      cat See BEE’S KNEES; BRING BACK THE; DOG’S BREAKFAST; LIKE SOMETHING THE.

      (to) catch a falling star To perform something miraculous. After John Donne, ‘Go, and catch a falling star / Get with child a mandrake root, / Tell me, where all past years are. / Or who cleft the Devil’s foot’ – ‘Song’ in Songs and Sonnets (1611). Since at least 1563 a ‘falling star’ has been another name for a meteor or shooting star. Here, the catching is clearly just one of four impossible tasks. ‘Catch a falling star’ was also the title of a 1958 song popularized by Perry Como: ‘Catch a falling star / And put it in your pocket, / Never let it fade away.’

      catch as catch can Another alliterative phrase, one of many that expresses the getting hold of things in any way you can. These have been around since the 14th century (compare ‘by hook or by crook’). Compare ‘catch me who can’ (in a steam engine advert, 1803) and the film titles Catch Us If You Can (UK 1965) and Catch Me If You Can (about a confidence trickster) (US 2002).

      (a/the) catcher in the rye The Catcher in the Rye is the title of a novel (1951) by J. D. Salinger, about the emergent seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield. As explained in Chapter 22, it comes from a vision he has of standing in a field of rye below a cliff where he will catch any children who fall off. He wishes to protect innocent children from disillusionment with the world of grown-ups. The phrase comes from a misreading of the song ‘Comin’ Thro’ the Rye’ by Robert Burns that contains the lines: ‘Gin a body meet a body / Comin’ thro’ the rye.’

      Catch-22 Phrase encapsulating the popular view that ‘there’s always a catch’ – some underlying law that defeats people by its brutal, ubiquitous logic. Catch-22 was the title of a novel (1961; film US 1970) by Joseph Heller about a group of US fliers in the Second World War. ‘It was a Catch-22 situation,’ people will say, as if resorting to a quasi-proverbial expression like ‘Heads you win, tails I lose’ or ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t’. Oddly, though, Heller had originally numbered it 18 (apparently Catch-18 was dropped to avoid confusion with Leon Uris’s novel Mila-18). In the book, the idea is explored several times. Captain Yossarian, a US Air Force bombardier, does not wish to fly any more missions. He goes to see the group’s MO, Doc Daneeka, about getting grounded on the grounds that he is crazy: Daneeka: ‘There’s a rule saying I have to ground anyone who’s crazy.’ Yossarian: ‘Then why can’t you ground me? I’m crazy.’ Daneeka: ‘Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy.’ ‘This is the catch – Catch-22.’

      (a) categorical denial An inevitable pairing, date of origin unknown. A cliché by the 1970s in public relations, political and journalistic use. ‘Mr Weisfeld said he had “reason to believe” that Philip Green, the former chairman of Amber Day, was connected with the Pepkor bid. This is despite a categorical denial of such a link from Pepkor…He had asked Pepkor if Mr Green was linked with its bid. The reply was a categorical denial. And a categorical denial from a man like Pepkor’s chairman, Christo Wiese, has to be taken seriously’ – The Independent (10 May 1994); ‘But Price Waterhouse in London issued a categorical denial. A spokesman said the firm was “extremely upset” about the reports’ – The Sunday Telegraph (12 March 1995).

      (has the) cat got your tongue? Question put to a person (usually young) who is not saying anything, presumably through guilt. Since the mid-19th century and a prime example of nanny-speak, as in Casson/ Grenfell. A challenge to the mute. The OED2’s earliest citation is H. H. Harper, Bob Chadwick (1911): ‘I was so angry at her that I…made no answer…Presently she said, “Has the cat got your tongue?”’

      (a) cat has nine lives A proverbial saying (known by 1546). But why so many? While cats have an obvious capacity for getting out of scrapes – literally ‘landing on their feet’ in most cases – in ancient Egypt, they were venerated for ridding the country of a plague of rats and were linked to the trinity of Mother, Father and Son. ‘To figure out how many extra lives the cat had, the Egyptians multiplied the sacred number three, three times, and arrived at nine’ – Robert L. Shook, The Book of Why (1983).

      catholic See IS THE POPE.

      (a) cat house A brothel. In Catwatching (1986), Desmond Morris traces this term (mostly US use) from the fact that prostitutes have been called ‘cats’ since the 15th century, ‘for the simple reason that the urban female cat

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