Down from Bangor’, written by the American Louis Shreve Osborne and anthologized by 1897, a bearded student and a village maiden make the most of it when the railway train in which they are travelling enters a tunnel: ‘Whiz! Slap! Bang! into the tunnel quite / Into glorious darkness, black as Egypt’s night…’
as black as Newgate knocker This comparison meaning ‘extremely black’ and known by 1881 alludes to Newgate gaol, the notorious prison for the City of London until 1880. It must have had a very formidable and notable knocker because not only do we have this expression but a ‘Newgate knocker’ was the name given to a lock of hair twisted to look like a knocker.
as black as the Devil’s nutting bag Apperson has this by 1866. Mrs Jean Wigget wrote (1995) that her mother used to say that ‘Dirty hands looked “like the colour of Old Nick’s nutting bag”.’
as busy as a one-armed paperhanger with the itch Colourful comparison, listed by Mencken (1942) as an ‘American saying’. ‘As busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wall-paper’ appears in O. Henry, Gentle Grafter: The Ethics of Pig (1908). The supply is endless, but here are a few more: ‘as scarce as rocking-horse manure’ (an example from Australia); ‘as lonely as a country dunny’ (ditto); ‘as mad as a gumtree full of galahs’ (ditto); ‘as inconspicuous as Liberace at a wharfies’ picnic’ (ditto); ‘as black as an Abo’s arsehole’ (ditto); ‘as easy as juggling with soot’; ‘as jumpy as a one-legged cat in a sandbox’; ‘as much chance as a fart in a windstorm’; ‘as much use as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking contest’ (or ‘a legless man in a pants-kicking contest’ – Gore Vidal, Life Magazine (9 June 1961); ‘as likely as a snowstorm in Karachi’. In his 1973 novel Red Shift, Alan Garner has ‘you’re as much use as a chocolate teapot’; ‘as useless as a chocolate kettle’ (of a UK football team), quoted on BBC Radio Quote…Unquote (1986).
as cold as charity Ironic description of charity that is grudgingly given or dispensed without warmth – particularly by the public charities of the Victorian era. In 1382, John Wycliffe translated Matthew 24:12 as: ‘The charite of many schal wexe coold.’ Robert Southey, The Soldier’s Wife (1721), has: ‘Cold is thy heart and as frozen as charity’. Anthony Trollope, Can You Forgive Her?, Chap. 43 (1865) has: ‘The wind is as cold as charity.’
as dark as the inside of a cow As dark as it can possibly be. A likely first appearance of this phrase is in Mark Twain, Roughing It, Chap. 4 (1891). He puts it within quotes, thus: ‘…made the place “dark as the inside of a cow,” as the conductor phrased it in his picturesque way.’ So probably an American coinage. A few years later Somerville & Ross were writing in Some Experiences of an Irish RM, Chap. 10 (1899): ‘As black as the inside of a cow’.
as different as chalk from cheese Very different indeed (despite the superficial similarity that they both look whitish). In use since the 16th century, although the pairing of the alliterative chalk and cheese has been known since 1393. Sometimes found as ‘not to know chalk from cheese’ – unable to tell the difference – or ‘to be able to tell chalk from cheese’ – to have good sense.
as dim as a Toc H lamp Very dim (unintelligent). Dates from the First World War in which there was a Christian social centre for British ‘other ranks’ opened at Talbot House in Poperinghe, Belgium, in 1915 and named after an officer who was killed – G. W. L. Talbot, son of a Bishop of Winchester. ‘Toc H’ was signalese for ‘Talbot House’. The institute continued long after the war under its founder, the Reverend P. B. (‘Tubby’) Clayton. A lamp was its symbol.
as Dorothy Parker once said…The title of a stage show (circa 1975), devoted to the wit of Dorothy Parker and performed by Libby Morris. This is testimony to the fact that Parker is undoubtedly the most quoted woman of the 20th century. It is probably an allusion to the verse of Cole Porter’s song ‘Just One of Those Things’ (1935), that begins: ‘As Dorothy Parker once said to her boy friend, “Fare thee well”…’
as easy as falling off a log Very simple. This citation from the New Orleans Picayune (29 March 1839) suggests a North American origin and the quotation marks, that it was reasonably well established by that date: ‘He gradually went away from the Lubber, and won the heat, “just as easy as falling off a log”.’
as every schoolboy knows ‘It is a well-known fact’ – a consciously archaic use. Robert Burton wrote ‘Every schoolboy hath…’in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) and Bishop Jeremy Taylor used the expression ‘every schoolboy knows it’ in 1654. In the next century, Jonathan Swift had, ‘I might have told how oft Dean Perceval / Displayed his pedantry unmerciful, / How haughtily he cocks his nose, / To tell what every schoolboy knows’, in his poem ‘The Country Life’ (1722). But the most noted user of this rather patronizing phrase was Lord Macaulay, the historian, who would say things like, ‘Every schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled Atahualpa’ (essay on ‘Lord Clive’, January 1840). But do they still?
as if I cared…Catchphrase from the 1940s BBC radio series ITMA. Sam Fairfechan (Hugh Morton) would say, ‘Good morning, how are you today?’ and immediately add, ‘As if I cared…’ The character took his name from Llanfairfechan, a seaside resort in North Wales, where Ted Kavanagh, ITMA’s scriptwriter, lived when the BBC Variety Department was evacuated to nearby Bangor during the early part of the Second World War.
as it happens A verbal tic of the British disc jockey Jimmy Savile (later Sir James Savile OBE) (b. 1926). He used it as the title of his autobiography in 1974. However, when the book came out in paperback the title had been changed to Love Is an Uphill Thing because (or so it was explained) the word ‘love’ in the title would ensure extra sales. After dance-hall exposure, Savile began his broadcasting career with Radio Luxembourg in the 1950s. His other stock phrase how’s about that then, guys and gals? started then. For example, on Radio Luxembourg, The Teen and Twenty Disc Club, he certainly said, ‘Hi, there, guys and gals, welcome to the…’
as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted…A humorous phrase used when resuming an activity after an enforced break. In September 1946, Cassandra (William O’Connor) resumed his column in the Daily Mirror after it had been suspended for the duration of the Second World War, with: ‘As I was saying when I was interrupted, it is a powerful hard thing to please all the people all the time.’ In June of that same year, announcer Leslie Mitchell is reported to have begun BBC TV’s resumed transmissions with: ‘As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted.’ The phrase sounds as if it might have originated in music-hall routines of the I DON’T WISH TO KNOW THAT, KINDLY LEAVE THE STAGE type. Compare A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926): ‘“AS – I – WAS – SAYING,” said Eeyore loudly and sternly, “as I was saying when I was interrupted by various Loud Sounds, I feel that –”.’ Fary Luis de León, the Spanish poet and religious writer, is believed to have resumed a lecture at Salamanca University in 1577 with, ‘Dicebamus hesterno die…[We were saying yesterday].’ He had been in prison for five years.
as I walked out one midsummer morning The title of Laurie Lee’s memoir As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) uses a format phrase that occurs in a number of English folk songs. Indeed, in his earlier Cider With Rosie, Lee refers to an old song with the line, ‘As I walked out one May morning’. Another folk song begins, ‘As I rode out one midsummer’s morning.’ Compare the line from the Robert Burns’ poem, ‘As I went out ae [= one] May morning’ (which is based on an old Scottish song).
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