Roderick Random, Chap. 22 (1748): ‘Coming to the relief of a damsel in distress.’ The P. G. Wodehouse novel A Damsel in Distress (1919) eventually became a film musical (US 1937).
(the) dance of the seven veils Salome so beguiled Herod by her seductive dancing that he gave her the head of St John the Baptist, as she requested. In neither Matthew 14:6 nor Mark 6:22 is she referred to by name – only ‘as the daughter of Herodias’. The name Salome was supplied by Josephus, a 2nd-century Jewish historian. Nor is the nature of her dancing described. One must assume that the particular nature of the dance originated with Oscar Wilde in whose play Salomé (pub. 1893) appears the stage direction: ‘Salomé dances the dance of the seven veils.’ Originally, Wilde’s play was written in French). Richard Strauss took the idea for his opera Salome (1905) from it. However, a little earlier, in Gustave Flaubert’s ‘Hérodias’ in Trois contes (1877) only one veil is mentioned.
dance at the other end of the ballroom See IS SHE A FRIEND.
dancing See ALL-DANCING; ANGELS; BRING ON THE.
(to get one’s) dander up Meaning ‘to get ruffled or angry’, the expression occurs in William Thackeray’s Pendennis, Chapter 44 (1848–50): ‘Don’t talk to me about daring to do this thing or t’other, or when my dander is up it’s the very thing to urge me on.’ Apparently of US origin (known by 1831), where ‘dander’ was either a ‘calcined cinder’ or ‘dandruff’. It is hard to see how the expression develops from either of these meanings. The Dutch word donder, meaning ‘thunder’, or ‘dunder’, a Scottish dialect word for ‘ferment’, may be more relevant.
(the) dangerous age The title of an early (and very mild) Dudley Moore film comedy of 1967 was Thirty Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia. This would seem to allude, however distantly and unknowingly, to Den farlige alder [The dangerous age], a book in Danish by Karin Michaelis (1910). In that instance, the dangerous age was forty. In the Moore film, it was very important for him to write a musical, or perhaps get married, before he was thirty. In fact, the ‘dangerous age’ is whatever the speaker thinks it is. It might be said of teenagers first encountering the opposite sex, ‘Well, that’s the dangerous age, of course’ as much as it might be said of married folk experiencing the SEVEN YEAR ITCH.
(from) Dan to Beersheba See FROM LAND’S END.
Darby Kelly (or Derby Kelly) Rhyming slang for ‘belly’, known in the USA but probably more so in the UK, chiefly through the song ‘Boiled Beef and Carrots’, popularised by Harry Champion (1866–1942): ‘Boiled beef and carrots – that’s the stuff for yer darby kel, / Makes yer fat an’ keeps yer well…’ But who was he? A likely person features in a marching/recruiting song that probably dates from the Napoleonic Wars – as it refers back to the singer’s grandfather’s involvement with the Duke of Marlborough as well as to the Duke of Wellington between the Peninsular Campaign and Waterloo: ‘My grandsire beat the drum complete / His name was Darby Kelly-o, / None smart as he at rat-tat-too, / At roll-call or reveille-o.’ Thomas Dibdin has been credited with the words of a song entitled ‘Darby Kelly’ and dated 1820. Whether this is the same, is not known.
(the) daring young man on the flying trapeze The original person featured in the song ‘The Man on the Flying Trapeze’ by George Leybourne and Alfred Lee (1868) was Jules Léotard (d. 1880), the French trapeze artist. He also gave his name to the tight, one-piece garment worn by ballet dancers, acrobats and other performers. The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze was the title of a volume of short stories (1934) by William Saroyan.
dark See ALL WOMEN; AS DARK; I WOULDN’T LIKE.
(the) dark continent (and darkest Africa) In 1878, H. M. Stanley, the journalist who discovered Dr Livingstone, published Through the Dark Continent and followed it, in 1890, with Through Darkest Africa. It was from these two titles that we appear to get the expressions ‘dark continent’ and ‘darkest—’ to describe not only Africa but almost anywhere remote and uncivilized. Additionally, Flexner (1982) suggests that ‘In darkest Africa’ was a screen caption in a silent film of the period 1910–14.
(the) darkest hour comes just before the dawn A proverb of the ‘things will get worse before they get better’ variety. Terence Rattigan used it in his play The Winslow Boy (1946). Mencken finds it in Thomas Fuller’s A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine (1650): ‘It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.’ Whether there is any little literal truth in it is another matter.
(a) dark horse Figuratively, the phrase refers to a runner about whom everyone is ‘in the dark’ until he comes from nowhere and wins the race – of whatever kind. It is possible the term originated in Benjamin Disraeli’s novel The Young Duke: A Moral Tale Though Gay (1831) in which ‘a dark horse, which had never been thought of…rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph.’ It is used especially in political contexts. ‘Rank dark horse in bid to run lottery…Brian Newman, lottery follower at Henderson Crosthwaite, says: “Because of its low profile, Rank was unfancied at the outset. But it has emerged as the dark horse”’ – The Sunday Times (15 May 1994); ‘The biggest challenges to Britain appear likely to come from Australia and the United States, with South Africa, back in both events for the first time since 1976, emerging as a possible dark horse’ – The Times (30 December 1994).
(the) dark lady of the sonnets Nickname of the beauty to whom Shakespeare addressed some of his sonnets (from no. 128 onwards). Her eyes were ‘raven black’ and so was her hair. Her identity has been a subject for literary detectives for many years, and the candidates are numerous. She was referred to as the ‘Dark Lady’ in literary criticism by 1901 but the full phrase seems to have been coined by Bernard Shaw as the title of a short play in which the Dark Lady and Shakespeare are both characters. The Dark Lady of the Sonnets was first performed in 1914.
darkness and gnashing of teeth A humorous phrase for where there is unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Taken from Matthew 8:12: ‘But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ ‘[Rogers] had candles placed all round the dining room, in order to show off the pictures. “I asked [the Reverend Sydney] Smith how he liked the plan.” “Not at all,” he replied, “above there is a blaze of light, and below, nothing but darkness and gnashing of teeth”’ – quoted in Rogers’s Table Talk, ed. A. Dyce (1856).
darkness at noon Darkness at Noon, or the Great Solar Eclipse of the 16th June 1806 was the title of an anonymous booklet published in Boston (1806). Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon (1940) (originally written in German but apparently with the title in English) is about the imprisonment, trial and execution of a Communist who has betrayed the Party. It echoes Milton’s Samson Agonistes (1671): ‘O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon.’
(a) dark night of the soul Mental and spiritual suffering prior to some big step. The phrase ‘La Noche oscura del alma’ was used as the title of a work in Spanish by St John of the Cross. This was a treatise based on his poem ‘Songs of the Soul Which Rejoices at Having Reached Union with God by the Road of Spiritual Negation’ (circa 1578). In The Crack-up (1936), F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: ‘In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.’ Douglas Adams wrote The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul (1988), a novel.
darling See DON’T GO NEAR.
(the) darling buds of May
