Thesaurus of Traditional English Metaphors

Thesaurus of TRADITIONAL ENGLISH METAPHORS

Thesaurus of TRADITIONAL ENGLISH METAPHORS Second edition

P.R.WILKINSON

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Second edition 2002 Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “ To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” © 2002 P.R.Wilkinson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Wilkinson, P.R.(Peter Richard), 1926– Thesaurus of traditional English metaphors/P.R.Wilkinson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. 1. English language-Idioms-Dictionaries. 2. English language-Synonyms and antonyms. 3. Figures of speech-Dictionaries. 4. Metaphor-Dictionaries. PE1689.W56 2002 423′.1–dc21 2001048566 ISBN 0-203-21985-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-27497-0 (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 0-415-27685-3 (Print Edition)

To my wife, Joyce

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt; and it is also a sign of genius. [Aristotle, Poetics]

CONTENTS Introduction

ix

Acknowledgements

xiv

List of abbreviations

xvi

A TINKER B TAILOR

C SOLDIER

D SAILOR

E RICHMAN

F POORMAN

G BEGGARMAN

H THIEF

1 26

70

130

180

324

383

505

I AT HOME

J AT SCHOOL

K AT PLAY

534

786

887

Bibliography

990

Index of themes

995

Index of keywords

1033

INTRODUCTION Metaphor is a means of expressing one thing in terms of something else. It provides us with a means of understanding the way language works, from the most common phrases to the most complex linguistic theory. Indeed much current linguistic theory ascribes to metaphor the organising principle behind all communication. In everyday life, metaphors take many different forms, including similes (a nose as red as a cherry), proverbs (don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched), transfer phrases (make heavy weather of…), wellerisms (everyone to his taste, as they said when the old woman kissed the cow), metonymy (the knife for surgery, the crown for royalty), synecdoches (sixty head of cattle, a cut-throat) and swearing (bloody bugger!) where the curser’s feelings are expressed in terms of what might justifiably have aroused those feelings. G.K.Chesterton noted that ‘Keats never put into a sonnet so many remote metaphors as a coster puts into a curse’. Clearly, metaphorical structures are present in a multitude of daily exchanges, both verbal and written. As the main purpose of this collection is to trace the origins of folk metaphor in English, nearly all examples of metonymy, synecdoche and swearing have been omitted as being too marginal or personal. Instances of metonymy especially, because of its ephemeral, personal nature and multiplicity of applications—the ham-and-eggs is asking for mustard—are uncollectable. Metaphor is often used to warn or conceal from a third party—your barn door’s open. In this category are all euphemisms, but they contain the seeds of their own decay. Many good metaphors have therefore been excluded because of this inevitable ephemerality. There are also two large groups which are not admissible as true metaphors because they derive arbitrarily from sound-similarities without the necessary sense-relationship. These are based on puns like camp as a row of tents, and on rhymes—plates of meat, Bristols etc. Occasionally rhyme and reason happily coincide, as in skin-and-blister=sister, but for true metaphors there must be some sense-connection, otherwise the substitute word or phrase is merely used randomly or like a secret code. Another group of metaphors excluded are the names of natural species such as footman and emperor moths, lady’s slipper, shepherd’s purse, porpoise etc. These are all virtual similes and are indeed ancient evidence of the nature of metaphor. Just as the megalithic builders created useful relationships out of a bewilderingly varied environment, keeping faith with the unity immanent within nature, so these name-givers, through metaphor, bore witness to the same vision of a single reality shared by human and natural communities. For this is the nature and force of metaphor: it arises only because there is a relationship to be established between two different things, and its sole function is to make the connection. In this way it reassures by bringing the unknown or the fearsome into a familiar context. Whatever particular metaphors may say, the overwhelming message of their totality is that we are all in one world and the interconnections are everywhere. What Brown wrote about imagery is also relevant to

metaphor: ‘Imagery is a witness to the harmony between mind and matter, to the unity of all creation and thus to the oneness of its author’ [S.J.M. Brown, The World of Imagery]. Purely literary metaphors have been excluded, except for those which have become traditional by general acceptance, as have many Shakespearean sayings as well as titles and phrases from modern authors. Chaucerian quotations have been appended to several entries, not so much in order to ascribe their origin to him (for I understand that some, and suspect that many more, were already in everyday use when he wrote) but to show how long these images have endured in our language and how near-to-the-life he assimilated them into his poetry. Writers who have drawn on local metaphors are Sir Walter Scott, William Barnes, Thomas Hardy, Flora Thompson, Mary Webb and Hugh MacDiarmid. Other sources have been dictionaries and glossaries of dialect and folklore, collections of proverbs, similes and slang, early letters, such as the Paston, Cely and Stonor collections, and principally the common currency of everyday speech, including survivals from earlier metaphors which have now become ‘moribund’ or hidden. Any metaphor can illuminate anything else, however unlikely, and as Dr Johnson noted, metaphor gives you two ideas for one, so that every metaphor points in two directions, back to its original idea and forwards to its meaning or message. I.A.Richards called these elements the vehicle and tenor respectively. In Not a person you could creel eggs with, the vehicle is the idea of two people co-operating to fill a basket with eggs, and the tenor is the identification of someone as an unsuitable partner in such a delicate task, a rough and ready character generally, and unlikely to act with consideration for others. The metaphors in this book have been arranged by their vehicles or originating images into groups. From this another use emerges, almost as a by-product or ‘spin-off’. For just as, by extrapolating the Homeric similes from the Iliad and Odyssey, we can obtain a composite picture of daily life in Asia Minor in the ninth century BC, we can likewise conjure up the historical characters of our own ancestors by looking back to the origins of our folk metaphors. References to the devil are predominantly jocular in tone, suggesting that many people thought of him as bogeyman rather than as a fiend actually at large. Personifications in church and graveyard were familiar from the sixteenth century on; he was the personification of evil. To preserve the memory of their ancestors, the Klinget people of Alaska erected totem poles containing their bones and an account of their deeds, but the nearest thing to a TOTEM our ancestors get is this acronym, a record not of deeds but of words that at least do preserve for us glimpses into their thoughts and their lives. The intention has been to assemble those social or traditional metaphors that have become current in the English language, including those restricted to a dialect or district or to even smaller groups. Within close-knit groups such as schoolchildren, prisoners, the armed services and teams of workers, the most appreciated metaphors are those which are more recondite and exclusive. In such groups metaphor has a social and cohesive function in reinforcing intimacy, but to be effective the metaphor needs to be understood and appreciated and the users must be familiar with the attitudes and viewpoints of their hearers. Surprisingly, the more remote and abstruse a metaphor, the more effective it is, and this collection will shed light on the origins of some of those more obscure phrases.

The evolution of metaphor

It has been mooted that the emergence of metaphor occurred pari passu with the evolution of language, and just as there is an optimum age for children to learn their mother tongue, and any other languages they may have access to, so there is a maturation age when children begin to understand and appreciate metaphor. Indeed, some children begin to use metaphor soon after they start to speak, renaming objects, like ‘walking stick’ for the letter J or ‘large needle’ for pencil. (It has been shown that the age for recognising irony comes later, possibly because while metaphor is essentially conveyed as sentence-meaning, irony is speaker-meaning and usually critical, so that the listener needs to recognise the incongruity between what is said and what the speaker believes to be true—and these are often the opposite.) Thus, when they are old enough to interpret the comment ‘Little pigs have big ears’, children are also of an age when they will gleefully repeat the details of their mothers’ conversational indiscretions. Such a view of metaphor developing out of language is speculative and would presuppose a germ of metaphor intrinsic in language, ready to blossom forth as soon as the language-learner is ready for it. Attraction to either the metaphoric or metonymic pole (whether innate or acquired) has been shown by Jacobson and Halle to be present in young children and so profoundly that a brain-damaged person who becomes aphasic responds to one to the exclusion of the other. What had been an inclination towards poetry rather than prose, towards surrealist rather than cubist art, towards similarities rather than contiguities is so polarised by aphasia that the patient no longer has a grasp of anything belonging to the damaged region. [See R.Jacobson and M.Halle, Fundamentals of Language]. But in its beginnings metaphor is not likely to have been linguistic, but to have originated directly from life, generated out of our natural experiences. It is hard to conceive how linguistic forces in vacuo could have produced it. If we could communicate our metaphors wordlessly they would be just as potent, though not as accessible. Verbally the instant comprehension and the delight in felicitous expression greatly enhance their appeal, but even denied words we could still share our metaphors by means of signs or charades, though at the risk of much puzzlement and misunderstanding. It was probably by a kind of charade that the earliest metaphors began—in children’s games. ‘Watch me and guess what I am.’ And the grown-ups, laughing, ‘a regular monkey, that boy’. The tribal Americans named their children after animals, birds and, indeed, anything from the natural world around them, and in so doing they were giving metaphor its noblest work, to unify the diverse and establish kinship between humans and the seemingly infinite elements of creation. With life rather than language as the initial catalyst, there arose a natural impulse to comprehend diversity through making connections and to approach the unity of the universe by celebrating the similar in the dissimilar. ‘Good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of a similarity of dissimilars’ [Aristotle, Poetics 1457b] or ‘Metaphor is an unusual juxtaposition of the familiar and unfamiliar’ [E.R. MacCormac, A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor]. Thus it is, that by making metaphorical connections between what seems separate and disconnected, we create a unity out of diversity which refers back to the initial creation out of chaos, and also looks forward to its final dissolution into a unity of infinity in eternity. Metaphor drops us many a hint, but none better than this, that, for all that all is all, it will become one one day.

After the children, the farmers. At this distance words like ‘cogent’ and ‘delirious’ could almost be credited as having leapt into the language fully formed, but for many generations there must have been the relishing of a new way of understanding concepts of social coercion and mental states, concepts which, until then, must have entailed tedious descriptions and definings. To assign even remotely approximate dates to these ancient, prehistoric processes is rash. The examples above took place for speakers of Latin, a language which had fully evolved by about 2000 BC, but it seems there could have been ‘a non Indo-European substrate language in northern and central Europe on the basis of the non Indo-European appearance of an entire series of words associated with pigs and pig-breeding that are found primarily in the Celtic and probably the Germanic languages’ [Eric Hamp]. By 6000 BC farming communities were progressively expanding through northern Greece into the Balkans, while a generation of new metaphors was continually demanded by whatever different environment our ancestors were coping with. Their old lives gave them metaphors to live their new lives by. At this stage of language evolution, metaphor tended ‘to represent the relatively more cultural features of our life in terms of its more natural aspects’ [G.C.Fiumara, The Metaphoric Process]. Then came manufacturing, the media and computers, and since ‘it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh’ [Aristotle, Rhetoric II.1354–1420], the impact of these new conditions seemed to generate a flow of popular metaphors. ‘Put it into the context of the familiar and the skills I already have, and I can deal with the problem. Otherwise I am as helpless as if it had come in from outer space.’ Many of these metaphors are too local or too soon outdated by changing technology to make it into the dictionaries, but the immediate benefit of them should not be underestimated. An instance occurred in the Todmorden area of west Yorkshire in the 1880s when the pressure-level in steam engines was roughly indicated by a wooden peg floating in a vertical iron tube and the phrases peg-down, peg-up and peg-out illustrated the mental states of depression, elation and violent passion—originally in the stokers responsible for maintaining steam pressure. Such phrases are liable to persist in isolation, in family traditions, long after their origins have been forgotten. There is a metaphysical and philosophical aspect of metaphor that works on political and religious levels. Metaphor is a concept resistant to a single comprehensive definition, but one step beyond the irreducible one that metaphor refers to one thing in terms of something else, is to recognise that there are elemental truths which we can apply in constructing our society on the principles of scientific laws and theories, codes of law, religions, art and literature. ‘Metaphor directs attention to similarity in structure across realms or events; it represents the logic of evolving organisms, and of structures by which different levels soar to further degrees of complexity, each level in a sense metaphoric for the other, thus creating “the pattern which connects” ’ [G.Bateson, as quoted by G.C.Fiumara in The Metaphoric Process, ch.2]. On this level metaphor is not an object or a concept, but rather a complex and living process. It necessarily has some stability but no permanence, for it is so much a part of life that it is not exempt from death and decay. ‘Once a newly discovered phenomenon is well understood and extricated from its originating context, the metaphor will vanish into the literal lexicon, its heuristic work completed’ [G.C.Fiumara, The Metaphoric Process]. Then, although we may not at first recognise it as a metaphor, we can remind ourselves of its origins and it will carry that element from the past like a germ which could revitalise it in the future. Other processes,

because they are non-linguistic and organisational, are not readily recognisable as metaphor. To hounds trailing a fox, the scent of the fox is not the fox, it is a metaphor for the fox; to help search for a word in a dictionary we have a useful metaphor— alphabetical order; if you forget a name or a word, to scratch your head and frantically to rack your brains is a waste of time and nervous energy Think of the word as a disobedient dog that has run away, then, as often as the frustration of forgetting recurs, exclaim to yourself indignantly ‘has that dog not come back yet?’ and avert promptly to something else. The word eventually comes home, seemingly of its own volition. Such are daily life metaphors. Finding ideas by philosophical theories, natural laws by scientific methods and these ad hoc solutions to everyday problems are all nonlinguistic metaphors. In this collection the metaphors are all on a lower, verbal level, but I wholeheartedly commend them; they have enriched our lives, they are still with us, and will long continue.

How to use the book

The metaphors in this book are arranged thematically according to the old cherrystone rhyme, ‘tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, richman, poorman, beggarman, thief’, with three additional categories, ‘at home’, ‘at school’ and ‘at play’. Within these themes, they are arranged into sub-sections of originating images and listed at the beginning of each of the eleven sections. Further information about the derivation of the metaphor is contained in round brackets; square brackets are used to show the definition of a dialect word which occurs in the metaphor, its geographical origin, relevant dates and the occasional written source that records its use. Many of the early dates given are the publication dates of collections of proverbs like those of Heywood [1546] and Ray [1670 and 1678], and it is well to remember that many of these sayings were in circulation for hundreds of years before this first recorded date. If chapter and verse references are required, these can be obtained for the majority of entries from either the Oxford English Dictionary, the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs or Apperson’s English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases. Expressions from literary and biblical sources are, as far as possible, given in the form current when they first entered the language as metaphors. Biblical expressions are usually from Coverdale’s version of 1535 for the Old Testament and Tyndale’s version of 1534 for the New Testament. The text of Chaucerian quotations is from the 1895 edition by the Reverend W.W.Skeat. (The metaphors can be accessed via two indexes, containing themes and keywords respectively. The index of themes presents a way into groups of related metaphors and phrases. The more extensive index of keywords guides the reader to particular metaphors by way of references to subsections. For example, Don’t cross the bridge till you come to it will be referenced under both cross and bridge and will be followed by a reference letter and number.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indeed grateful to my family and to many friends who have helped me with this book, both wittingly and unwittingly; of the former I wish to thank especially: Dr I.L.Gordon Mr and Mrs J.W.Harvey Dr I.M.Harvey Mr N.Howlings Dr J.Marshall of the Oxford Word and Language Service Prof. W.Mieder of the University of Vermont Mr G.Newsom Since the first edition of TOTEM was prepared, several of those who assisted me have died. Dr S.A.N.Ashraf, Mr B.Batten, Mr C.Brook, Dr C.G.Chapman and Mrs J.C.Cooper are all sadly missed.

ABBREVIATIONS A&C

Antony and Cleopatra

Abd

Aberdeen

adj

adjective

Afr

Africa

Ags

Angus

Ala

Alabama

Amer

America

Ant

Antrim

Arab

Arabic

Arg

Argyll

Ariz

Arizona

Ark

Arkansas

Arm

Armagh

AS

Anglo-Saxon

Aus

Australia

AWTEW

All’s Well That Ends Well

AYLI

As You Like It

Ayr

Ayrshire

Balt

Baltimore

BC

British Columbia

Bch

Buchan

Bck

Buckinghamshire

Bdf

Bedfordshire

Bnff

Banff

Brks

Berkshire

Bwk

Berwick

C16

16th century (etc.)

Cai

Caithness

Calif

California

Can

Canada

Cav

Cavan

CB

Confined to Barracks

Cdg

Cardiganshire

cf.

compare

Chs

Cheshire

Chron

Chronicles

Cla

Clare

Cld

Clydesdale

Cmb

Cambridgeshire

colloqu.

colloquial

Colo

Colorado

Com Err

Comedy of Errors

Con

Connemara

Conn

Connecticut

Cor

Cornwall, Cornish, Corinthians

Coriol

Coriolanus

Crk

Cork

Crl

Carlow

Crn

Carnavon

Cth

Carmarthen

Cum

Cumberland

Cym

Cymbeline

Del

Delaware

Der

Derbyshire

Deut

Deuteronomy

Dev

Devon

dim.

diminutive

Dmb

Dumbarton

Dmf

Dumfries

Don

Donegal

DOPAF

Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (Brewer’s)

Dor

Dorset

Du

Dutch

Dub

Dublin

Dur

Durham

Dwn

Down

e

east

EAn

East Anglia

eccles

ecclesiastical

Eccles

Ecclesiastes

ECy

East Country

Edb

Edinburgh

EFris

East Friesian

Elg

Elgin

Eng

England

esp.

especially

Ess

Essex

et al.

and elsewhere/and others

Fif

Fife

Flor

Florida

FQ

Faerie Queene

Fr

French

freq.

frequent

Frf

Forfar

Gael

Gaelic

Gall

Galloway

GBH

Grievous Bodily Harm

Gen

Genesis

Geo

Georgia

Ger

German, Germany

Gk

Greek

Glo

Gloucestershire

Gmg

Glamorgan

Heb

Hebrew, Letter to the Hebrews

Hind

Hindustani

HJAS

Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies

Hmp

Hampshire

Hnt

Huntingdonshire

Hrf

Herefordshire

Hrt

Hertfordshire

Hy IV, V, VI

Henry the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth

Ill

Illinois

I.Ma

Isle of Man

Ind

Indiana

intr.

intransitive

Inv

Inverness

Ire

Ireland

Ir-Gael

Irish Gaelic

Isa

Isaiah

It

Italian

IW

Isle of Wight

JC

Julius Caesar

Jer

Jeremiah

joc.

jocular

JrnlHo

Journal of the House of Commons

Kan

Kansas

Kcb

Kirkcudbrightshire

Kcd

Kincardine

Ken

Kent

Kenty

Kentucky

Ker

Kerry

Lakel

Lakeland

Lan

Lancashire

Lat

Latin

Lei

Leicestershire

Lev

Leviticus

Lin

Lincolnshire

LLL

Love’s Labour’s Lost

ln.

line(s)

Lnk

Lanarkshire

Lon

London

Lou

Louisiana

Lth

Lothian

Mal

Malachi

Mass

Massachusetts

Matt

Matthew

MDu

Middle Dutch

Mea

Meath

MedEng

Medieval English

MedFr

Medieval French

MedGk

Medieval Greek

MedLat

Medieval Latin

Merchant

Merchant of Venice

Mex

Mexico

M for M

Measure for Measure

Mich

Michigan

Mid

Middlesex

Minn

Minnesota

Miss

Mississippi

MND

Midsummer Night’s Dream

Mon

M Monmouthshire

Mont

Montana

MP

Member of Parliament

Mrld

Maryland

Mry

Moray

MS

manuscript

Msri

Missouri

Mtg

Montgomeryshire

Much Ado

Much Ado about Nothing

MWW

Merry Wives of Windsor

Myo

Mayo

n

noun, north

naut

nautical, naval

NB

New Brunswick

NC

North Carolina

NCy

North Country

NDak

North Dakota

Neb

Nebraska

Nev

Nevada

NewEng

New England

Nfld

Newfoundland

NH

New Hampshire

Nhb

Northumberland

Nhp

Northamptonshire

NJ

New Jersey

NMex

New Mexico

Not

Nottinghamshire

Nrf

Norfolk

NS

Nova Scotia

NSW

New South Wales

Num

Numbers

NY

New York

NYC

New York City

NZ

New Zealand

obs

obsolete

OCor

Old Cornish

ODEP

Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs

OE

Old English

OED

Oxford English Dictionary

OF

Old French

OHG

Old High German

Okl

Oklahoma

ON

Old Norse

ONF

Old North French

Ont

Ontario

Oreg

Oregon

OrI

Orkney Isles

orig.

originally

OT

Old Testament

Oth

Othello

Oxf

Oxfordshire

passim

widely distributed

Peb

Peebles

PEI

Prince Edward Island

Pem

Pembrokeshire

Penn

Pennsylvania

Per

Perthshire

Peric

Pericles

pro tem

for the time being

prob.

probably

Prov

Provençal (medieval)

q.d.

as if to say (supplying a word understood)

q.v.

which see

RAF

Royal Air Force

R&J

Romeo and Juliet

RAusN

Royal Australian Navy

Rdn

Radnor

Rev

Revelations

RI

Rhode Island

Rich II, III

Richard the Second, Third

RN

Royal Navy

Rnf

Renfrewshire

Rom

Romans

Rus

Russian

Rut

Rutlandshire

Rxb

Roxburghshire

s

south

SAfr

South Africa

sAmer

the Southern States of America

sc.

(=scilicet) namely, understood

Sc

Scotland

SC

South Carolina

Sc-Gael

Scottish Gaelic

ScI

Scilly Isles

SCy

South Country

SD

South Dakota

Shaks

Shakespeare

ShI

Shetland Isles

Shr

Shropshire

sl.

slang

slg

Stirlingshire

Slk

Selkirk

Slo

Sligo

Som

Somersetshire

Sp

Spanish

Stf

Staffordshire

Suf

Suffolk

Sur

Surrey

Sus

Sussex

Sw

Swedish

TA

Titus Andronicus

Tam Shr

The Taming of the Shrew

T&C

Troilus and Cressida, Troilus and Criseyde

Tenn

Tennessee

Tex

Texas

Timon

Timon of Athens

Tip

Tipperary

TNT

trinitrotoluene

tr.

transitive

transl.

translation

TV

television

2 Gents V

Two Gentlemen of Verona

Tyr

Tyrone

UK

United Kingdom (=Great Britain)

Uls

Ulster

us

United States (of America)

v

verb

Vir

Virginia

VD

venereal disease

Vmt

Vermont

vulgLat

vulgar Latin

w

west

Wal

Wales

War

Warwickshire

Wash

Washington

WC

water closet

WCy

West Country

WDD

Wright’s Dialect Dictionary

WFlem

West Flemish

Wgt

Wigtownshire

Wil

Wiltshire

WInd

West Indies

Wis

Wisconsin

Wm

Westmorland

Wor

Worcestershire

WVir

West Virginia

WW1

First World War (1914–18)

WW2

Second World War (1939–45)

Wxf

Wexford

Wyo

Wyoming

Yks

Yorkshire

Zech

Zechariah




developing into

→

changing into

A TINKER A.1a Wood wooden Expressionless, dull, stupid. wooden-headed Dull-witted. slow mentally. hard as oak strong as a yak [oak—Cum] heart-of-oak A stable, reliable character; sterling quality. ‘Hearts of oak’ [1591]. close as the grain of an oak tough as hickory But when applied to a religious sect, as ‘hickory Catholic’, ‘hickory Methodist’, it takes its meaning from the wood’s flexibility, implying that they are lax, undogmatic and liable to lapse from the stricter principles of their church. bird’s-eye maple [Amer] Light-skinned attractive black woman (from the colour and texture of the wood). hard as brazil/brazzin [a hard wood, yielding red dye, found originally in the East Indies and subsequently in South America, so giving the country of Brazil its name after its discovery by Capt. Peter A. Capralis of Portugal on 3 May 1500: wYks sChs Wil] Him nedeth nat his colour for to dyen With brasil, ne with greyn of Portingale [G.Chaucer, Nonne Preestes Tale ln. 4649–1386] brown as mahogany black as ebony seasoned [1643] Well-tried, experienced—soldier etc. (from the seasoning of timber that makes it fit for service). sap (v) [1755] Drain or gradually dry out vital element—as ‘sapped his energies’ etc. dry straight Turn out all right in the end; survive a testing time. hazled [dried out—midEng EAn] Crabby, surly, sour. warp [1700] Corrupt, cause to grow twisted, perverted, of someone’s mind etc. (from the bending of badly seasoned timber). warped up like a plancheon [=planch= plank, floorboard—Suf Som Dor Gmg Dev Cor]

Thesaurus of traditional english metaphors

2

splinter group A minority that secedes from the main body because of disagreements or a shift in policy (as a wooden splinter splits away from the main timber). splinter (v) Form such a group. spelk (n) [splinter, such as runs under the skin; spill for lighting fires or candles—Ayr Nhb eDur] Meagre, frail man; slip of a girl or boy.

A.1b Carpentry go against the grain [1650] Be contrary to nature. (It is very hard to plane against the grain.) cross-grained Intractable, self-willed, bad-tempered [Wm, 1693 nwLin]. rough-hewn [1565] Plain, blunt, unpolished, ill-mannered [sLan]. unhewn [1659] Rough, unpolished. don’t take the axe out of the carpenter’s hand [Minn] Don’t deprive folk of the wherewithal. rough side downwards [nLin] Coarse-mannered, angry. knock/rub the corners off Remove awkward individualities, make more sociable. dry/rough [Tenn Calif sAmer] as sandpaper sandpaper (v) [1890] Refine, generally. by one and one spindles are made Don’t expect to do everything at once. flat/stiff [c. 1515] as a board swear his ears through a two-inch board [1728] Swear vehemently and against the evidence. as broad as narrow, like Paddy’s plank, too long at one end and too short at the other [eYks Chs] thick as two short planks/a short deal [sc. board] hard as a deal board look as if you had been pulled through a knothole (backwards) [Neb Calif] Dishev-elled. such carpenters such chips As is the workman such is his work. the carpenter is known by his chips [1546] His work is evidence of a workman’s character. the best carpenters make the fewest chips! [1609] Commenting that whores seldom have children. not care/give/worth a chip carry…(around) on a chip [Mrld Ind Msri Ark] Pamper, treat kindly. merry as three chips (in the wind) [1546] span-new, spick and span [