A Word In Your Shell-Like - Nigel Rees

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‘an exclamation of surprise’. Partridge/Slang has it as a phrase meaning ’to commence work’ and says it comes from sheet metal workers’ language. Partridge also has ‘light’ as a slang word for ‘credit’ and ‘to strike a light’ as ‘to open an account’ of the small sort (as on a slate at a pub). Of the exclamation, Partridge just has it ‘probably from the imperative of the literal Standard English phrase’. The OED2 finds it as a ‘mild imprecation’ (mostly from Australia and New Zealand), with its earliest citation from 1936. A suggested origin is that it derives from the fact that if you strike a match in a lavatory (or outdoor privy) it kills any unpleasant odour (by burning off the methane).

      così fan tutte Literally, ‘thus do all’ in Italian but understood to refer to women, specifically referring to their infidelity. Hence, the phrase is taken to mean ‘That’s what all women do’ or ‘Women are like that.’ Mozart’s opera with the title was first performed in 1790. The phrase had appeared earlier in Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto for Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (1778). In that opera, Don Basilio sings, ‘Così fan tutte le belle, non c’è alcuna novità [that’s what all beautiful women do, there’s nothing new in that].’

      cost See ARM AND A LEG.

      cotton See BLESS HIS LITTLE.

      (a) couch potato Pejorative term for an addictive, uncritical (and possibly fat) TV viewer. Said to have been coined in the late 1970s by Tom Iacino in southern California. Sunday Today was only getting round to explaining the word to British readers on 27 July 1986. But why potato? Is it because of the shape of a fat person slouched on a couch? Or does it allude to the consumption of potato crisps, or to behaviour like that of a ‘vegetable’? It seems the phrase may be a complicated pun on the phrase ‘boob-tube’ (US slang for TV, not an article of clothing) and ‘tuber’, meaning a root vegetable.

      coughin’ well tonight The British comedian George Formby Snr (1877–1921) used to make this tragically true remark about himself. He had a convulsive cough, the result of a tubercular condition, and it eventually killed him. He was ironically known as ‘The Wigan Nightingale’.

      coughs and sneezes spread diseases A British Ministry of Health warning from about 1942, coupled with the line, ‘Trap the germs in your handkerchief’.

      could it get any better than this? ‘A popular phrase with [TV] presenters this year; particularly those facing the unpredictable mobs who turn up for reality show live broadcasts’ – The Independent (1 January 2003). ‘The first night swung, the audience stood at the end, and we were home and I should be saying to myself “It doesn’t get any better than this,” but maybe it gets different’ – Richard Eyre, National Service (2003), diary entry for 20 December 1996. Compare as good as it gets (probably a contraction of the question ‘Is this as good as it gets?’). As Good As It Gets was the title of a film (US 1997); ‘David Aaronovitch regards the Government’s Sustainable Communities Plan as “about as good as it’s going to get”’ – The Observer (16 February 2003).

      could make any ordinary girl feel like a princess (or could make you feel like Cinderella before the clock struck) Testaments to male prowess of one sort or another, though these are phrases likely to occur more to journalists than mere mortals. In February 1983, the Press Council reported on the curious case of Miss Carol Ann Jones and the News of the World. Miss Jones had been quoted as having said that Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, ‘could make any ordinary girl from a mill town feel like a princess. Even now I have a place in my heart for him’. The Press Council felt that ‘some words attributed to her as direct quotations were ones she was unlikely to have used’.

      (you) couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding Said to a weak person or to a big-headed person. Partridge/Catch Phrases dates it from the First World War.

      (you) couldn’t run a whelk-stall A way of describing incompetence, this appears to have originated with John Burns, the Labour MP: ‘From whom am I to take my marching orders? From men who fancy they are Admirable Crichtons…but who have not got sufficient brains and ability to run a whelk-stall?’ – South-Western Star (13 January 1894). Partridge/Slang has ‘no way to run a whelk-stall’ as the UK equivalent of the US ‘[that’s] a hell of a way to run a railroad’ and dates it from later, in the 20th century. The phrases couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery and couldn’t fight his/her way out of a paper bag are more likely to be employed nowadays.

      (a) counter-factual proposition Meaning, ‘a lie’ – a joke coinage from The New York Times (22 March 1991) – though probably more to do with the art of bureaucratic euphemism than with mainstream political correctness.

      (two) countries separated by a common language Referring to England and America, was this said by Shaw or Wilde? Wilde wrote: ‘We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language’ – The Canterville Ghost (1887). However, the 1951 Treasury of Humorous Quotations (eds Esar & Bentley), quotes Shaw as saying: ‘England and America are two countries separated by the same language,’ without giving a source. A radio talk prepared by Dylan Thomas shortly before his death (and published after it in The Listener, April 1954), contained an observation about European writers and scholars in America ‘up against the barrier of a common language’.

      country See ANOTHER; FROM A FAR; IN THE.

      country folk See EVERY DAY.

      (a) country mile A long distance, from the fact that covering a mile in the country seems to take longer than it would in a built-up area. It is often to be observed that mileages given on signposts in the country seem to be underestimates of the distance it feels as though you are travelling. Probably since the late 1940s and of American origin. ‘South Africa normally the league leader by a country mile in the coins business…’ – The Herald (Glasgow) (4 June 1986); ‘Irish coach Dick Best had nothing but admiration for Northampton. “That was the best [Rugby Union] team we have played against this season by a country mile’ – Daily Mirror (27 January 2000).

      courage, mon brave! Encouragement associated with French swashbuckling romances, though perhaps more to be found in film versions and parodies than in the originals. Nevertheless, Alexandre Dumas, Vingt ans après, Chap. 26 (1845), has: ‘D’Artagnan se tourna vers Porthos, et crut remarquer qu’il était agité d’un léger tremblement. Il sourit, et s’approchant de son oreille, il lui dit: – Bon courage, mon brave ami! ne soyez pas intimidé.’ Charles Nodier, Contes, Chapter 13 (1830–3), has it precisely: ‘Courage, mon brave, dit-il en me frappant sur l’épaule avec un air tout riant.’

      course you can, Malcolm One of those advertising phrases that, for no accountable reason, caught on for a while. From British TV ads for Vick’s Sinex (nasal spray). In February 1994, after the ads had been relaunched, starring the original 1970s’ cast, the manufacturers released a dance single recording the adventures of Malcolm, the youth in the TV commercials.

      courting See ARE YER.

      (the) courts of the morning The somewhat obscure title of John Buchan’s adventure novel The Courts of the Morning (1929) is a translation of Los Patios de la Mañana, a geographical hill feature in the fictitious South-American republic of Olifa, where the book is set: ‘In the Courts of the Morning there was still peace. The brooding heats, the dust-storms, the steaming deluges of the lowlands were unknown.’

      cow See ALL BEHIND; AS DARK; EVERYBODY TO THEIR.

      cowabunga! This cry was re-popularized by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon of the early 1990s but had been around since the 1950s when, in the American cartoon series The Howdy Doody Show, it was used

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