corporate character, the state-organized society. In a legal document of 1532, in the reign of King Henry VIII, there is the usage: ‘This Realm of England is an Empire…governed by one supreme Head and King…unto whom a Body politick, compact of all Sorts and Degrees of people…’ Compare the soul politic, a phrase used by Margaret Thatcher in speeches in the 1980s. But Thomas Carlyle had anticipated her in Signs of the Times (1829).
boets and bainters The ODQ has long had the remark ‘I hate all Boets and Bainters’ ascribed to King George I (1660–1727), finding it in Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices (1849). However, as it is said that George I never learned to speak English (even German-accented), a more believable account is that George II (1683–1760), who did speak English, was the one who actually said it. And as it is given that, whichever George it was, he was discussing Hogarth’s print ‘The March to Finchley’ at the time – a picture not published until 1750/1 – this would square better with the dates. John Ireland’s Hogarth Illustrated (2nd edn, 1793) specifically records that the picture was brought to George II: ‘Before publication it was inscribed to his late Majesty, and the picture taken to St James’s, in the hope of royal approbation. George the Second was an honest man, and a soldier, but not a judge of either a work of humour, or a work of art…[Hence] his disappointment on viewing the delineation. His first question was addressed to a nobleman in waiting – “Pray, who is this Hogarth?” “A painter, my liege.” “I hate bainting and boetry too! neither the one nor the other ever did any good! Does the fellow mean to laugh at my guards?”’ The print was returned to Hogarth, who dedicated it instead to the King of Prussia. Obviously this was a story that could have been aimed at both father and son (in Lord Campbell’s Lives of the Justices, George I has ‘I hate all Boets and Bainters’ attached to him in the context of a poem being read), but Ireland’s anecdote is rooted in a particular circumstance and is written closer to the events described, so it is to be favoured.
bog standard Average. From the 1980s on. Tony Thorne defines ‘bog-standard’ in his Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (1990) as, ‘Totally unexceptional, normal and unremarkable. Bog is here used as an otherwise meaningless intensifier.’ It has been suggested that before the Second World War, ‘bog’ was an acronym for ‘British Or German’, as a mark of distinction in a product, but there is no confirmation of this unpromising theory.
(the) bohemian life Life as lived by artists and writers, often poverty-stricken and amoral. Puccini’s opera La Bohème (1896) was based on Henry Murger’s novel Scènes de la Vie de Bohème (1847), set in the Latin Quarter of Paris. At first, the term ‘Bohemian’ was applied to gypsies because they were thought to come from Bohemia (in what is now the Czech Republic) or, at least, because the first to come to France had passed through Bohemia. The connection between the irregular life of gypsies and that of artists is just about understandable – they are on the margins of society.
boil your head See GO AND.
bold See OH HELLO.
(as) bold as brass Very bold indeed, possibly also reflecting that brass was sometimes looked upon as a cheap substitute for gold. Obviously the alliteration is attractive, but the word brass may have been chosen because of its connection with ‘brazen’, meaning ‘flagrant, shameless’ (the Old English word braesen actually means brass). The OED2’s earliest citation is from 1789, which is interesting because there is a colourful explanation that the phrase derives from a Lord Mayor of London called ‘Brass Crosby’ who died in 1793. He was sent to the Tower for refusing to sentence a printer for the unlawful act of publishing Parliamentary debates and, some believe, ‘bold as brass’ became a popular turn of phrase for the way he supported reforms. There may, however, be no connection.
boldness be my friend Used as the title of a book (1953) by Richard Pape about his exploits in the Second World War, this phrase is taken from what Iachimo says when he sets off to pursue Imogen in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, I.vii.18 (1609–10): ‘Boldness be my friend! / Arm me, Audacity, from head to foot’. In 1977, Richard Boston wrote a book called Baldness Be My Friend, partly about his own lack of hair.
bomb See BAN THE; GO DOWN A.
bombshell See BLONDE.
BOMFOG An acronym for a pompous, meaningless generality. When Governor Nelson Rockefeller was competing against Barry Goldwater for the US Republican presidential nomination in 1964, reporters latched on to a favourite saying of the candidate – ‘the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God’ – and rendered it with the acronym BOMFOG. In fact, according to Safire, they had been beaten to it by Hy Sheffer, a stenotypist on the Governor’s staff who had found the abbreviation convenient for the previous five or six years. The words come from a much quoted saying of John D. Rockefeller: ‘These are the principles upon which alone a new world recognizing the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God can be established…’ Later, BOMFOG was used by feminists to denote the use of language that they thought demeaned women by reflecting patrician attitudes. The individual phrases ‘brotherhood of man’ and ‘fatherhood of God’ do not appear before the 19th century. In As We Are, Chap. 13 (1932), E. F. Benson has: ‘The Fatherhood of God fared no better than the brotherhood of man…His protective paternity had proved that these privileges must be heavily paid for in advance.’
--- bonanza PHRASES A journalistic cliché, used to describe any wildly lucrative deal. Of American origin and known since the 1840s, the derivation is from the Spanish word for ‘fair weather, prosperity’. Initially used by miners with reference to good luck in finding a body of rich ore. Used figuratively, a good deal later. Specifically ‘pay bonanza’ is listed as a cliché to be avoided by Keith Waterhouse in Daily Mirror Style (1981). ‘The show is still, as topical entertainment, a real bonanza’ – The Listener (10 January 1963); ‘Jobs bonanza for ex-ministers…Former Cabinet ministers who served under Margaret Thatcher and John Major hold a total of 125 directorships and 30 consultancies’ – The Independent (2 May 1995).
bonce See BODGER ON THE.
(the) Boneless Wonder A spineless character named after a fairground freak, notably evoked by Winston Churchill in an attack on Ramsay MacDonald in the House of Commons (28 January 1931). During a debate on the Trades Disputes Act, Churchill referred to recent efforts by the Prime Minister to conciliate Roman Catholic opinion regarding education reform (including the lowering of the school-leaving age to fifteen): ‘I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described as the Boneless Wonder. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing for my youthful eyes, and I have waited fifty years to see the Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury bench.’ There have been several circus or fairground attractions with this bill matter. The specific one may be that of ‘Valentine’, who died in 1907.
Boney will get you! A curiously enduring threat. Although Napoleon died in 1821 (and all possibility of invasion had evaporated long before that), it was still being made to children in the early 20th century. In 1985, the actor Sir Anthony Quayle recalled it from his youth and, in 1990, John Julius Norwich remembered the husband of his nanny (from Grantham) saying it to him in the 1930s. He added: ‘And a Mexican friend of mine told me that when she was a little girl her nanny or mother or whoever it was used to say, “Il Drake will get you” – and that was Sir Francis Drake!’
(the) bonfire of the vanities The title of Tom Wolfe’s 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities is derived from Savonarola’s ‘burning of the
