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A Word In Your Shell-Like. Nigel Rees
Читать онлайн.Название A Word In Your Shell-Like
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isbn 9780007373499
Автор произведения Nigel Rees
Жанр Справочная литература: прочее
Издательство HarperCollins
(the) dogs of war Phrase from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, III.i.273 (1599): ‘Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war’. Used as the title of a Frederick Forsyth novel (1974; film UK 1980). Compare the title of the book Cry Havoc! (1933) by Beverley Nichols and the film Cry Havoc (US 1943).
doh (or d’oh)! Exclamation made famous by Homer Simpson in the TV series The Simpsons (1996– ) when admitting his own foolishness or expressing his frustration at the way things have turned out. Of course, he wasn’t the first person to use the word in this way or any other. And it may be the case that it was originally said by one person expressing irritation at someone else’s foolishness. It used to be spelt ‘Duh!’ and dates from the 1940s/50s. The OED in an update defined this version as, ‘Expressing inarticulacy or incomprehension. Also implying that the person has said something foolish or extremely obvious.’ Working backwards in time: in the 1960s, Peter Glaze used to say ‘Doh!’ in sketches with Leslie Crowther in the children’s TV show Crackerjack, as would the Walter Gabriel character in radio’s The Archers; in Anthony Buckeridge’s ‘Jennings at school’ stories (1950s), Jennings’s form master, Mr Wilkins, would say: ‘Doh! You stupid boy!’; in the 1940s’ radio series ITMA, Miss Hotchkiss (played by Diana Morrison) would express exasperation at her boss, Tommy Handley, with a simple ‘Doh!’ In the 1930s, the Scots actor James Finlayson, who appeared in many of the Laurel and Hardy films, would similarly sound off at the duo’s behaviour. In fact, Dan Castellaneta, who provides the voice for Homer Simpson, has apparently said that he based his ‘doh!’ on James Finlayson’s rendering – which is where we came in.
—do it—ly Joke slogan format. On 26 April 1979, the British Sun newspaper was offering a variety of T-shirts with nudging ‘do it’ slogans inscribed upon them. The craze was said to have started in the USA. Whatever the case, scores of slogans ‘promoting’ various groups with this allusion to performing the sexual act appeared over the next several years on T-shirts, lapel buttons, bumper stickers and car-window stickers. In the Graffiti books (1979–86), some seventy were recorded, among them: ‘Charles and Di do it by Royal Appointment’; ‘Donyatt Dog Club does it with discipline and kindness’; ‘Linguists do it orally’; ‘Footballers do it in the bath afterwards’; ‘Gordon does it in a flash’; ‘Chinese want to do it again after twenty minutes’; ‘City planners do it with their eyes shut’; ‘Builders do it with erections’; ‘Windsurfers do it standing up’; ‘Printers do it and don’t wrinkle the sheets’. All this from simple exploitation of the innuendo in the phrase ‘do it’, which had perhaps first been seized on by Cole Porter in the song ‘Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love’ (1928): ‘In shady shoals, English soles do it, / Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it…’, and then in a more personal parody by Noël Coward (1940s): ‘Our leading writers in swarms do it / Somerset and all the Maughams do it…’ Much later came the advertising slogan ‘You can do it in an M.G.’ (quoted in 1983).
(la) dolce vita The title of Federico Fellini’s 1960 Italian film La Dolce Vita passed into English as a phrase suggesting a high-society life of luxury, pleasure and self-indulgence. Meaning simply ‘the sweet life’, it is not clear how much of a set phrase it was in Italian before it was taken up by everybody else. Compare dolce far niente [sweet idleness].
dollar See ALMIGHTY; ANOTHER DAY.
(I’ll bet/lay you) dollars to doughnuts Flexner (1982) states: ‘The almost forgotten terms dollars-to-buttons and dollars-to-dumplings appeared in the 1880s, meaning “almost certain” and usually used in “I’ll bet you dollars-to-buttons/dumplings” or “you can bet dollars-to-buttons/dumplings.” They were replaced by 1890 with the more popular dollars-to-doughnuts (a 1904 variation, dollars-to-cobwebs, never became very common, perhaps because it didn’t alliterate).’ Now obsolete.
DOM Abbreviation of ‘Deo, Optimo, Maximo [To God, most good, most great]’ – what you find inscribed on bottles of Benedictine liqueur. Since the 16th century. Also short for Dirty Old Man. ‘Poor Shirley, she thought, Harry is going to become a prize D.O.M.’ – Will Camp, Ruling Passion, Chap. 12 (1959). This abusive phrase written out in full goes back farther: ‘Mum think’s he’s harmless…In fact she was quite umbrageous with me when I called him a dirty old man’ – Rosamond Lehmann, Invitation to the Waltz, Pt 3, Chap. 14 (1932). In the BBC TV sitcom Steptoe and Son (1962–5, 1970–74), the younger Steptoe (Harry H. Corbett) would say to his father (Wilfred Brambell), ‘You dirty old man’, at the slightest hint of any impropriety on his part.
dominion See AND DEATH.
(the) domino theory The old simile of falling over ‘like a stack of dominoes’ was first used in the context of Communist takeovers by the American political commentator Joseph Alsop. Then President Eisenhower said at a press conference in April 1954: ‘You have broader considerations that might follow what you might call the “falling domino” principle. You have a row of dominoes set up. You knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.’ In South-East Asia, the theory was proved true to an extent in the 1970s. When South Vietnam collapsed, Cambodia then fell to the Khmer Rouge and Laos was taken over by the Communist-led Pathet Lao. In 1989, when one Eastern European country after another renounced Communism, there was talk of ‘reverse domino theory’.
done See ALL; BOY DONE WELL.
donkey’s years As in, ‘I haven’t seen her for donkey’s years’ – i.e. for a very long time. Current by 1916. It is not very hard to see that what we have here is a distortion of the phrase ‘donkey’s ears‘ (which are, indeed, long). As such, what we have is a form of rhyming slang: donkey’s = donkey’s ears = years. (Brewer, however, at one time gave the less enjoyable explanation that ‘donkey’s years’ is an allusion to the ‘old tradition’ that one never sees a dead donkey.) This also helps to explain the alternative expression (known since the 1960s), ‘I haven’t seen her for yonks’, where ‘yonks’ may well be a distortion of ‘year’ and ‘donk(ey)s’.
(la) donna è mobile [woman is fickle] From the Duke of Mantua’s aria in Act 3 of Verdi’s opera Rigoletto (1851), also translated as: ‘Woman is wayward / As a feather in the breeze / Capricious is the word’. The libretto is by Francesco Maria Piave (1810–76).
donor fatigue See COMPASSION FATIGUE.
do not adjust your set In the early days of British television, particularly in the late 1940s and early 1950s, technical breakdowns were a common feature of the evening’s viewing. The BBC’s caption normal service will be resumed as soon as possible became a familiar sight. The wording is still sometimes used in other contexts. As standards improved, it was replaced by the (usually more briefly displayed) phrase, ‘There is a fault – do not adjust your set’. Do Not Adjust Your Set was the title of a children’s comedy series on ITV in 1968, devised in part by some of the future Monty Python team.