you!’ When Sub-Lieutenant Eric Barker (1912–90) starred in the Royal Navy version of the BBC radio show Merry Go Round (circa 1945), his favourite command to others was, ‘Carry on, smokin’!’ Jimmy Jewel (1912–95) of the double-act Jewel and Warriss would refer to Ben Warriss (d. 1993) as ‘Harry Boy’ and say ‘Carry on, ‘Arry Boy! Tell ‘em, boy. Has Harry Boy been up to something naughty?’ When some dreadful tale had been unfolded, Jewel would cap it with ‘What a carry on!’ This last phrase became the title of a film the two comedians made in 1949. In his autobiography (1982), Jewel remarked that Tommy Trinder ‘stole’ the line ‘and later we almost came to blows over it’.
carry on, London! At the end of the BBC radio topical interview show In Town Tonight (1933–60), a stentorian voice would bellow this to get the traffic moving again. Various people were ‘The Voice’, but Freddie Grisewood may have been the first. See also ONCE AGAIN WE STOP THE MIGHTY ROAR…
(to) carry the can To bear responsibility; take the blame; become a scapegoat. This is possibly a military term, referring to the duties of the man chosen to get beer for a group. He would have to carry a container of beer to the group and then carry it back when it was empty. Some consider it to be precisely naval in origin; no example before 1936. Alternatively, it could refer to the man who had to remove ‘night soil’ from earth closets – literally, carrying the can – and leave an empty can in its place. Or then again, it could have to do with the ‘custom of miners carrying explosives to the coal face in a tin can (hence everyone’s reluctance to “carry the can”)’ – Street Talk (1986).
cart See IN THE.
carved See ALL JOINTS.
casbah See COME WITH ME.
case continues See DEBATE CONTINUES.
(a) case of the tail wagging the dog Phrase suggesting that the proper roles in a situation have been reversed. Known by 1907. ‘The tail wagged the dog in this case and it still often does’ – William Hollingsworth Whyte, The Organization Man (1956); ‘This film came with a seal of approval, from Peter Benchley, the man who wrote Jaws, which is a bit like Michael Crichton rubber-stamping a scientist’s findings on the stegosaurus. Given that the novelist whose thrills are drawn from the natural world is reliant on the knowledge of experts, this was a particularly implausible case of the tail wagging the dog’ – The Independent (15 April 1995).
(the) case is altered Sometimes ‘“The case is altered”, quoth Plowden’ – a proverbial expression derived from a law case in which the lawyer Edmund Plowden himself featured. A Roman Catholic, Plowden was arrested some time after 1570 for the treasonable offence of attending a surreptitious mass. He defended himself and was able to prove that the priest who had presided over the mass in question was an agent provocateur. Accordingly, he argued that a true mass could not be celebrated by an impostor – so ‘the case is altered’ – and was acquitted. Another, less likely, origin is given by Henry G. Bohn in A Hand-Book of Proverbs (1855): ‘Plowden being asked by a neighbour of his, what remedy there was in law against his neighbour for some hogs that had trespassed his ground, answered, he might have very good remedy; but the other replying, that they were his [i.e. Plowden’s] hogs, Nay then, neighbour, (quoth he), the case is altered.’ The phrase was much quoted. In Shakespeare’s King Henry VI, Part 3, IV.iii.30 (1590–1) there occurs the following exchange: King Edward: ‘Why, Warwick, when we parted, / Thou call’dst me King.’ / Warwick: ‘Ay, but the case is alter’d: / When you disgrac’d me in my embassade, / Then I degraded you from being King, / And come now to create you Duke of York.’ It occurs in Thomas Kyd, Soliman and Perseda, II.i.292 (1592), and Ben Jonson’s play with the title The Case Is Altered (1598–9). The dying Queen Elizabeth I is sometimes quoted as having said in 1603: ‘I am tied, I am tied, and the case is altered with me’ – Elizabeth Jenkins, Elizabeth the Great (1958). From all this, The Case Is Altered is also the name given to a number of public houses in Britain though it is sometimes erroneously said to be a corruption of the Spanish casa alta (high house). In addition, ‘The Case is Altered’ was the provisional title of J. M. Barrie’s play The Admirable Crichton (1902) – an allusion surviving in the line ‘Circumstances might alter cases’ (Act 1, Sc. 1). It is also the title of a book (1932) by William Plomer.
(to) cash/throw in one’s chips/checks Meaning, originally, ‘to stop gambling’ but then ‘to die’ and, as DOAS has it: ‘to terminate a business transaction, sell one’s share of, or stock in, a business, or the like, in order to realize one’s cash profits’. It also may mean ‘to make a final gesture’. Tom Mangold wrote in The Listener (8 September 1983) concerning the US arms race in space: ‘Under malign command, a technological guarantee of invulnerability could induce the holder to cash his chips and go for a pre-emptive first strike.’
cast adrift in an open boat This is listed as a film cliché by Leslie Halliwell in The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes (1978 edition), though it is not one really. It cannot have been used sufficiently for it to become a worn-out phrase even though the combination of words does have a certain inevitability. The words are used in the film Mutiny on the Bounty (US 1935) concerning the fate of Captain Bligh. The phrase recurs in the BBC radio Goon Show, ‘Drums Along the Mersey’ (11 October 1956).
(with a) cast of thousands Now only used jokingly and ironically, this type of film promotion line may have made its first appearance in connection with the 1927 version of Ben Hur where the boast was, ‘Cast of 125,000’!
(to) cast one’s bread upon the waters Meaning ‘to reap as you shall sow’, after Ecclesiastes 11:1: ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.’ Oddly expressed, the idea is that if you sow seed or corn in a generous fashion now, you will reap the benefits in due course. The New English Bible translates this passage more straightforwardly as, ‘Send your grain across the seas, and in time you will get a return’.
cat See BEE’S KNEES; BRING BACK THE; DOG’S BREAKFAST; LIKE SOMETHING THE.
(to) catch a falling star To perform something miraculous. After John Donne, ‘Go, and catch a falling star / Get with child a mandrake root, / Tell me, where all past years are. / Or who cleft the Devil’s foot’ – ‘Song’ in Songs and Sonnets (1611). Since at least 1563 a ‘falling star’ has been another name for a meteor or shooting star. Here, the catching is clearly just one of four impossible tasks. ‘Catch a falling star’ was also the title of a 1958 song popularized by Perry Como: ‘Catch a falling star / And put it in your pocket, / Never let it fade away.’
catch as catch can Another alliterative phrase, one of many that expresses the getting hold of things in any way you can. These have been around since the 14th century (compare ‘by hook or by crook’). Compare ‘catch me who can’ (in a steam engine advert, 1803) and the film titles Catch Us If You Can (UK 1965) and Catch Me If You Can (about a confidence trickster) (US 2002).
(a/the) catcher in the rye The Catcher in the Rye is the title of a novel (1951) by J. D. Salinger, about the emergent seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield. As explained in Chapter 22, it comes from a vision he has of standing in a field of rye below a cliff where he will catch any children who fall off. He wishes to protect innocent children from disillusionment with the world of grown-ups. The phrase comes from a misreading of the song ‘Comin’ Thro’ the Rye’ by Robert Burns that contains the lines: ‘Gin a body meet a body / Comin’ thro’ the rye.’
Catch-22 Phrase encapsulating the popular
