to the) child in all of us A cringe-making assertion made about certain types of entertainment or about occasions like Christmas. Noticed with some frequency in the 1980s. ‘In Back to the Future, [Robert Zemeckis] scores by adhering to the first rule of [Steven] Spielbergism: appeal to the child in all of us’ – The Sunday Times (18 August 1985); ‘The Wind in the Willows appeals to the child in all of us, so we adults have accorded it the status of “a children’s classic”’ – The Sunday Times (22 June 1986); ‘Growing up tends to hurt. And the child in all of us wants a Daddy/Mummy figure to rub our legs and give us aspirin when growing pains become acute’ – The Guardian (28 July 1986).
children should be seen and not heard This proverbial expression was, according to CODP, originally applied to young women. ‘A mayde schuld be seen, but not herd’ was described as an ‘old’ saying in circa 1400. It was not until the 19th century that a general application to children of both sexes became common, though Thackeray in Roundabout Papers (1860–3) still has: ‘Little boys should not loll on chairs…Little girls should be seen and not heard.’
(the) children’s hour When the long-running and fondly remembered BBC radio programme Children’s Hour began in 1922, it was known as ‘The Children’s Hour’, which suggests that it ultimately derived from the title of a poem by Longfellow (1863): ‘Between the dark and the daylight, / When the night is beginning to lower, / Comes a pause in the day’s occupations, / That is known as the Children’s Hour.’ This became the name for the period between afternoon tea and dressing for dinner, particularly in Edwardian England. Lillian Hellman also wrote a play called The Children’s Hour (1934), variously filmed, about a schoolgirl’s allegations of her teachers’ lesbianism.
children’s shoes have far to go Slogan for Start-Rite children’s shoes in the UK, current by 1946. The idea of the boy and girl ‘twins’ walking up the middle of a road between rows of beech trees came to the company’s advertising agent as he drove back to London from a meeting at Start-Rite’s Norwich offices. He was reminded of the illustration in Kipling’s Just So Stories of ‘the cat who walked by himself’ and developed the idea from there – despite many subsequent suggestions from the public that walking down the middle of the road would not enable children, or their shoes, to get very far.
chill out! Calm down, act cool. Originally US black person’s slang of the 1970s. Latterly used by both black persons and whites. Whoopi Goldberg says it in the film Ghost (US 1990).
(to apply for the) Chiltern Hundreds Originally, a hundred was a division of a shire and long ago a steward was appointed to deal with robbers in three hundreds of the Chiltern Hills in southern England. Then, in the days when to hold an office of profit under the crown involved having to resign from the House of Commons, the process of applying for the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds was used as a way of resigning from parliament because this had become necessary for some other reason – a scandal, for example. William Douglas-Home’s play entitled The Chiltern Hundreds (1947) was set on the day the Conservative Party lost the 1945 British General Election to Labour.
Chinese See DAMNED CLEVER.
Chinese whispers ‘Inaccurate gossip’ – a phrase deriving from the name of a children’s party game. Seated in a circle, the children whisper a message to each other until it arrives back at the person who started, usually with the meaning changed out of all recognition. An alternative name for the game is ‘Russian Scandal’, which OED2 finds in 1873, (or ‘Russian Gossip’ or ‘Russian Rumour(s)’). Presumably, Chinese and Russian are mentioned because of their exotic 19th-century connotations, the difficulty of both languages, and because the process of whispering might sound reminiscent of both the languages when spoken. ‘The words “Air Red, Air Red,” had become confused as they were passed down the line, and by the time they reached the end had been changed to “Galtieri dead, Galtieri dead”…It was later pointed out that a message had been similarly misjudged in an earlier war. “Send reinforcements, the regiment is going to advance,” had been received as “Send three and four pence, the regiment is going to a dance”’ – McGowan & Hands, Don’t Cry for Me, Sergeant-Major (1983) (about the Falklands war).
(a) chip of(f) the old block (or same block) Referring to a child having the same qualities as its parent, this expression’s use was established by the 1620s. Edmund Burke said of the first speech in the House of Commons by William Pitt the Younger (in 1781): ‘Not merely a chip of the old “block”, but the old block itself’ (that is, William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham).
(to have a) chip on one’s shoulder Meaning ‘to bear a grudge in a defensive manner’, the expression originated in the USA where it was known by the early 19th century. The Long Island Telegraph explained in 1830: ‘When two churlish boys were determined to fight, a chip [of wood] would be placed on the shoulder of one, and the other [was] demanded to knock it off at his peril.’
chips See CASH IN ONE’S.
(when the) chips are down Meaning ‘at a crucial stage in a situation’, this phrase alludes to the chips used in betting games. The bets are placed when they are down, but the outcome is still unknown. ‘If when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation…acts like a pitiful helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world’ – Richard M. Nixon, TV speech (30 April 1970); ‘There is a substantial body of opinion in Britain – and in Chobham – that holds that Lloyd’s Names deserve all the suffering they have got. In a sense, it is this factor that has turned their calamity into a tragedy. Now that the chips are down, communities aren’t rallying round’ – Independent on Sunday (19 March 1995).
chips with everything Phrase descriptive of British working-class life and used as the title of a play (1962) by Arnold Wesker about class attitudes in the RAF during National Service. Alluding to the belief that the working classes tend to have chips (potatoes) as the accompaniment to almost every dish at mealtimes. Indeed, the play contains the line: ‘You breed babies and you eat chips with everything.’ Earlier, in an essay published as part of Declaration (1957), the film director Lindsay Anderson had written: ‘Coming back to Britain is always something of an ordeal. It ought not to be, but it is. And you don’t have to be a snob to feel it. It isn’t just the food, the sauce bottles on the cafe tables, and the chips with everything. It isn’t just saying goodbye to wine, goodbye to sunshine…’
chivalry See AGE OF.
(a) chocolate soldier Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man (1894) was turned into a musical in Germany, Der Tapfere Soldat [Brave Soldier] (1908). The title of the English version of this musical (New York, 1909) was The Chocolate Soldier. The story concerns Captain Bluntschli, a Swiss officer, who gets the better of a professional cavalry soldier. Shaw’s phrase for Bluntschli was, rather, ‘the chocolate cream soldier’. Later, during the First World War, ‘chocolate soldier’ seems to have become a term of abuse about a certain type of recruit who complained of the conditions. This was not how Shaw viewed Bluntschli. The character was not a coward but an admirable, realistic soldier who saw the sense of keeping alive. That was why he carried chocolate creams, not bullets. Subsequently, the Australian Army of the Second World War, the Militia (who volunteered to serve only within Australia) were known as the Chocolate Soldiers because of their chocolate-coloured shoulder patches. Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was nicknamed the ‘chocolate sailor’ during the Second World War because, though a Commander of the RNVR, he never actually went to sea. In 2002, during a court case, the model Naomi Campbell mistakenly sensed that
