The line is cited in the song ‘I Love a Film Cliché’ by Dick Vosburgh and Trevor Lyttleton from the show A Day in Hollywood, A Night in the Ukraine (1980) in the form, ‘Why, Miss Murray, without your glasses, you’re…BEAUTIFUL!’ In his introduction to The Faber Book of Movie Verse (1993), Philip French has the cliché as ‘You look beautiful without your glasses’ – ‘a line that in endless variations reaches down to the 1992 Australian film Strictly Ballroom.’
but not in the South…A phrase with which to deflate or obstruct someone you are talking to. Lifemanship (1950) was the second volume of Stephen Potter’s humorous exploration of the art of ‘One-Upmanship’, which he defined as ‘how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly’. In discussing ways of putting down experts while in conversation with them, Potter introduces this ‘blocking phrase’ with which to disconcert, if not totally silence, them: ‘“Yes, but not in the South”, with slight adjustments will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person.’ In a footnote, Potter remarks: ‘I am required to state that World Copyright of this phrase is owned by its brilliant inventor, Mr Pound’ – though which ‘Pound’ he does not reveal. Indeed, the blocking move was known before this. Richard Usborne wrote of it in a piece called ‘Not in the South’ included in The Pick of ‘Punch’ (1941). He introduced a character called Eustace who had found a formula ‘for appearing to be a European, and world, pundit. It was a formula that let me off the boredom of finding out facts and retaining knowledge.’ It was to remark, ‘Not in the South.’
butter See BIG BUTTER; FINE WORDS.
butter fingers! What you cry when a person has dropped something. Date of origin unknown but first found in connection with a cricketer who lets the ball slip through his fingers. ‘At every bad attempt to catch, and every failure to stop the ball, he launched his personal displeasure at the head of the devoted individual in such denunciations as…butter-fingers, muff, humbug, and so forth’ – Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Chap. 7 (1837); ‘Swinging the hammer with a will, [he] discharged a smashing blow on his own knuckles…He crushed down an oath and substituted the harmless comment, “butter fingers!”’ – R. L. Stevenson & Lloyd Osbourne, The Wrong Box, Chap. 5 (1889).
(the) butterfly effect ‘Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?’ was the title of a paper on predictability in weather forecasting delivered to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington DC, on 29 December 1979 by Edward Lorenz (b. 1917), an American meteorologist. Apparently, Lorenz had originally used the image of a seagull’s wing flapping. What is now called ‘The Butterfly Effect’ – how small acts lead to large – appeals to chaos theorists, who view the physical universe as largely irregular and unpredictable. J. Gleick gives another example in Chaos: Making a New Theory (1988), also from weather forecasting: ‘The notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.’
(to look as if) butter wouldn’t melt in one’s mouth A phrase used critically of people who appear more innocent, harmless or demure than they can possibly be. A surprisingly ancient expression: ‘He maketh as thoughe butter wolde nat melte in his mouthe’ – Jehan Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement de la langue françoyse (1530). Presumably the suggestion is that the person so described looks so impossibly ‘cool’ that if butter was put in the (warm) mouth it still would not melt. Perhaps mostly used about women – as in Swift’s Polite Conversation (1738)? Elsa Lanchester is supposed to have said of her fellow actress Maureen O’Hara: ‘She looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Or anywhere else’ – quoted in News Summaries (30 January 1950).
but that’s another story Phrase with which (amusingly) to break off a narrative on the grounds of assumed irrelevance. The popularity of this catchphrase around 1900 derived from Rudyard Kipling. He used it in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), but it had appeared earlier elsewhere. For example, in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1760), it is intended to preclude one of the many digressions of which that novel is full.
buy cheap, sell dear See ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT.
buy some for Lulu See WOT A LOT.
by and large Meaning, ‘generally speaking’. Originally this was a nautical term: to sail by and large meant to keep a ship on course so that it was sailing at a good speed even though the direction of the wind was changing. Brewer (1999) defines it thus: ‘To sail close to the wind and slightly off it, so making it easier for the helmsman to steer and less likely for the vessel to be taken aback.’ The nautical sense was current by 1669, the general sense by 1706.
--- by Christmas PHRASES At first, it was thought that the First World War would not last very long. Having started in August 1914, it would be ‘over by Christmas’, hence the unofficial, anti-German slogan Berlin by Christmas. The phrase all over by Christmas was used by some optimists as it had been in several previous wars – none of which was over by the Christmas in question. The fact that this promise was not fulfilled did not prevent Henry Ford from saying, as he tried to stop the war a year later: ‘We’re going to try to get the boys out of the trenches before Christmas. I’ve chartered a ship, and some of us are going to Europe.’ He was not referring to American boys because the United States had not joined the war at this stage. The New York Tribune announced: ‘GREAT WAR ENDS CHRISTMAS DAY. FORD TO STOP IT.’ In her Autobiography (1977), Agatha Christie remembered that the South African War would ‘all be over in a few weeks’. She went on: ‘In 1914 we heard the same phrase. “All over by Christmas”. In 1940, “Not much point in storing the carpets with mothballs” – this when the Admiralty took over my house – “It won’t last over the winter”.’ In Tribune (28 April 1944), George Orwell recalled a young man ‘on the night in 1940 when the big ack-ack barrage was fired over London for the first time’, insisting, ‘I tell you, it’ll all be over by Christmas.’ In his diary for 28 November 1950, Harold Nicolson wrote, ‘Only a few days ago [General] MacArthur was saying, “Home by Christmas,” and now he is saying, “This is a new war [Korea]”.’ Flexner (1976) comments: ‘The war will be over by Christmas was a popular 1861 expression [in the American Civil War]. Since then several generals and politicians have used the phrase or variations of it, in World War I, World War II, and the Korean war – and none of the wars was over by Christmas.’ (Clever-clogs are apt to point out, however, that all wars are eventually over by a Christmas…)
bye bye, everyone See IZZY-WIZZY.
(a) bygone era Meaning, simply, ‘a period in the past.’ Date of origin unknown. A cliché, especially in tourist promotions, by the 1980s.
by Grand Central Station I sat down and wept See under --- BABYLON.
by gum, she’s a hot ‘un! Characteristic phrase of the (very) North of England comedian Frank Randle (1902–57) one of whose turns was as a randy old hitchhiker chiefly interested in girls’ legs and ale. Randle was an earthy Lancastrian who did not travel well as a performer but has acquired something of a cult following now that he is safely dead. His other phrases included: any more fer sailing? and by gum, ah’ve supped sum ale toneet (compare WE’VE SOOPED SOME STOOFF…under RIGHT MONKEY!) Also: would y’care for a Woodbine? a cigarette-offering joke, believed to have been perpetrated by Randle in the film Somewhere in England (UK 1940). A correspondent suggests that what he actually said was ‘Would you care for a Woodbine? Go on, take a big one’ – and then offered a tin full of fag-ends. For ‘by gum’, see EE, BAH GUM.
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