Familiarly known as "raincoats."

And I once knew a guy who, upon hearing his buddy had gotten a girl pregnant, shouted, "Didn't you have any condiments?"

Puts a whole new spin on the baseball phrase "bringing the mustard."

Like Debbie, I know them as french letters, not billets-doux.

My husband had a patient once who insisted that she couldn't be pregnant because her husband always used condominiums.

Euphemisms for Condoms for $1,000, Alex! (I'm here to learn.)

I have heard of condoms being called french letters, but not billets-doux. You would think that they would be likened more to the envelope....not the contents!!!

Well, we were talking about the phrase billet-doux meaning love letter in victorian novels (in the Victorians group) and someone posted this reference to french letters meaning condoms. Now, I am reminded that I have heard that euphemism before but I don't know when or where.

It did?!!!

This just came up in another group, but does anyone know how, why or when billet-doux (french letter) came to mean condom? I'm so curious.

Aha. Yes ....I think that on points of grammar, punctuation etc, I would be happy to help, but with interpreting passages of literature (as set by a teacher for an assignement) then I believe the student should be presenting their own thoughts, not those of others.

No Debbie, but I've seen any number of kids come to Constant Reader expecting us to do their work for them.

Sounds as if you have had dealings with Charles before Ruth?

Again, I'm not doing your homework for you, Charles. It's not me who's going to receive the grade.

Charlie, you poor, unfortunate boy. I would not be trying to educate myself in this day and age if you paid me.

I just tried to answer your last question on Stylistic design, or at least clarify the question itself. Your teacher sounds like a sadist of the first degree.

David, Debbie, over to you.

hi guys, someone could help me here?..

its a question from my favorite teacher, however, she make fun of me always by asking me out of this world questions, heres a sample;

Can you analyse the stylistic peculiarities (syntactical and phoetic) in this sentence
"She was feeling the pressure of the world outside, and she wanted to see him and feel his pressence around her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all"..

pls help me answer this...

Way.

No.

No.

Newengland wrote: "Re: Mormons. Isn't the key to that church's success the fact that each member must fork over 10% (is it?) of their personal income?

Ka-chinggggggg!"

Isn't that true with all Christian faiths. To give a 10% tithe to the church.

Now THAT'S McFunny.

Irish Alzheimer's: you forget everything except your grudges.

We don't use "settle your hash" in New England. The only thing we settle is our differences. Well, for the most part (fences make good neighbors, remember?).

Hmm to take revenge on would make sense in the context I've heard it used. Or to put someone in thier place. Never heard of hash as a bar tab. So we ought to ask for our hash at the end of the night? Interesting...

Anna, I think that 'hash' is a Scottish term for one's bar tab, thus to 'settle' would mean to pay it off.
But I think it's drifted into the current stream as an expression to take revenge on someone.
But I'm shootin' from the hip here...

I've always thought that Hamlet's nunnery was a whorehouse.

Anyone know the phrase 'settle your hash'? Origins? Meaning? Recipes for hash that require settling?

Nunneries and convents made for great refuge during the Black Death, I hear. Think The Decameron.

Debbie...My current read http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Hearts-Nove...

a visit to Renaissance Italy where women were routinely sent to convents. They could not work or have a craft and had no say...no spinsters allowed..marry a man or marry Christ...no other options.
This is a fantastic book BTW!

Nunnery? What's wrong with nunneries? Stay in one every year for the ballet AGM!! Comfy beds, great brekky, fantastic security, quiet and peaceful....only $30 a night in the centre of Wellington!

Newengland wrote: "I just read that the .... Who needs marriage to a belching, farting, cussing machine like a man, then?

Oh My! I have a different model!
That one says "get thee to a nunnery girl!"

I just read that the word "spinster," which has a negative connotation nowadays, once had a decided positive connotation.

It comes from the Middle English spinnen (meaning to spin), plus the feminine suffix (stere). Way back when, a woman who could spin (and whose family could afford a spinning wheel) had no need of a man because she was financially independent. Who needs marriage to a belching, farting, cussing machine like a man, then?

Today, however, there seems to be a negative connotation to any older woman who never married. Like, what's wrong with her? Or might we get further if we ask, what's RIGHT with her? Discuss.

Odd that "tempest in a teapot" is most often heard in the States, considering both terms are so British -- Tempest thanks to Shakespeare, and teapot thanks to the Brits' little afternoon habit (here in the USA, coffee is king).

How about this! (For those who always wondered).

Tempest in a teapot
Meaning

A small or unimportant event that is over-reacted to, as if it were of considerably more consequence.

Origin

Readers from England might well be tut-tutting about the mangling of their perfectly good phrase 'a storm in a teacup' and castigating the American 'tempest in a teapot' as a newcomer, having little more reason to exist than its neat alliteration.

In fact, the teacup wasn't the first location of the said storm, nor was the teapot. The phrase probably derives from the writing of Cicero, in De Legibus, circa 520BC. The translation of his "Excitabat fluctus in simpulo" is often given as "He was stirring up billows in a ladle" (correctly translated or not, I don't know; I don't speak Latin).

Whether the first user of the expression in English had Cicero in mind, he made no mention of tea-making, although he wasn't so far away. The Duke of Ormond's letters to the Earl of Arlington, 1678, include this:

"Our skirmish seems to be come to a period, and compared with the great things now on foot, is but a storm in a cream bowl."

Also, before the 'teacup/teapot' versions were well-established, another nobleman came up with a version that didn't involve the tea-table at all. The Gentleman's Magazine, 1830, records:

"Each campaign, compared with those of Europe, has been only, in Lord Thurlow's phrase, a storm in a wash-hand basin."

'Tempest in a teapot' is the version that is used most often in the USA, and hardly at all in other places, but which nevertheless appears to have a Scottish rather than an American origin. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1825, included a debate over the relative merits of the Scottish poets James Hogg and Tom Campbell. Campbell's imagery of raging tempests in his poetic work wasn't well received there:

What is the 'tempest raging o'er the realms of ice'? A tempest in a teapot!

Finally, we come to the version of the phrase that we English might imagine is the 'proper' original version. This appears to be neither original or English as it is later than the versions above, and the first mention that I can find of it also hails from north of the border. Catherine Sinclair, the Scottish novelist and children's writer, wrote a novel of fashionable society life, Modern Accomplishments, or the march of intellect, in 1838:

"As for your father's good-humoured jests being ever taken up as a serious affair, it really is like raising a storm in a teacup."

dog one's footsteps
puttin' on the dog
imperialist running dog
dog returning to his vomit
dog of a Jew
"faithful as a wolfhound, kind as Santa Claus"
every dog has his day

Most assuredly. Hie thee to the Shakespeare thread if you find more dogs named Bard.

P.S. My dog has his day every day. All he does is eat, sleep, and pass gas (he's an easy grader).

You know, I've tried so many ways home from work, but somehow through Fenway is the quickest. And, oddly,I went to Simmons for grad school and learned quickly about traffic and parking during a game myself.

Are any of these dog phrases derived from Hamlet? "The cat will mew and dog will have his day"?

Driving by Fenway at or after game time can be a pain. I took a course at Simmons grad school and found out in a hurry! Getting to Storrow Drive and then the Pike was sometimes like running (or crawling) the gauntlet...

Newengland wrote: "This Yank (in geography, NOT baseball allegiances!) has never heard of it."


A poor choice of nickname on my part. I will hang my head in shame this evening as I drive past Fenway on my way home from work...

This Yank (in geography, NOT baseball allegiances!) has never heard of it. I have heard ot...

a dog's life
dog day afternoon
three dog night
a dog in the manger
dog days of summer
doggone

Curiouser and curiouser!

This Yank knows dog's breakfast, but not dog's dinner.

Debbie wrote: ""Dressed up like a dog's dinner".....I don't know where or how that happened but down here it means too dressed up for your usual station in life."

Looking around I found this explanation:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/dogs-...

It also lists dog's breakfast which I am not aware of as an idiom at all. Perhaps we yanks don't use it?

This etymological tale has a bit of twisted wisdom in it (funny as that sounds in an Old Yeller kind of way). Consider vaccinations. Aren't we inoculated with a bit of "the hair of the dog" if we consider the disease to be a metaphorical "dog"?

Ruff!

THE HAIR OF THE DOG (aha...I've often wondered what a dog's hair had to do with a hangover???)

Meaning
A small measure of drink, intended to cure a hangover.
Origin
The fuller version of this phrase, i.e. 'the hair of the dog that bit me', gives a clue to the source of the name of this supposed hangover cure. That derivation is from the mediaeval belief that, when someone was bitten by a rabid dog, a cure could be made by applying the same dog's hair to the infected wound. How many people managed to get bitten again when trying to approach the aforesaid dog to acquire the hair to achieve this completely useless remedy isn't known. The knowledge of the derivation should at least put paid to the frequent 'hare of the dog' misspelling.

Whilst the hair of the dog that bit us is now dismissed as an effective rabies treatment, the taking of additional alcohol to cure a hangover has some scientific basis. The symptoms of hangover are partly induced by a withdrawal from alcohol poisoning. A small measure of alcohol may be some temporary relief, even if in the longer term it makes the hangover worse.

YELLOW-BELLY

Meaning....A coward.
Origin
The term 'yellow-belly' is an archetypal American term, but began life in England in the late 18th century as a mildly derogatory nick-name. Grose's A provincial glossary; with a collection of local proverbs etc, 1787, lists it:

"Yellow bellies. This is an appellation given to persons born in the Fens, who, it is jocularly said, have yellow bellies, like their eels."
The usage wasn't limited to the Lincolnshire Fens. In the same year, Knight's Quarterly Magazine (London) published an account of life in the the Staffordshire Collieries. It began by describing the region as "a miserable tract of country commencing a few miles beyond Birmingham" and went on to recount a lady's attempts at guessing the nick-name of a local resident - Lie-a-bed, Cock-eye, Pig-tail and finally Yellow-belly.
Another English directory, A General Dictionary of Provincialisms, by William Holloway, 1839, which contains the obliging sub-heading - written with a view to rescue from oblivion the fast fading relics of by-gone days, also lists the term:
"Yellow-belly, A person born in the Fens of Lincolnshire (From the yellow, sickly complexion of persons residing in marshy situations.)"
Holloway clearly lifted the definition from Grose. How much credence we should give to either Grose's or Holloway's explanation of the origin of the term is debatable. Neither seems especially convincing. It is just as likely that 'yellow-belly' didn't refer to a person's complexion and had no literal meaning, but was simply a piece of nonsense name-calling - somewhat akin to 'lily-livered'.

None of the early English uses of the name suggest cowardice. For that sense we have to travel to the USA.
The screenplay of a B-feature western wasn't complete without a selection from the list of stock cowboy lingo. You were as likely to find a coward that wasn't called a yellow-belly as you were to see the Lone Ranger without his mask.
The first use of the term that I can find from the USA, and one that suggests the derogatory, cowardly meaning, comes from an account of a military skirmish in Texas, reported in The Wisconsin Enquirer, April 1842:
We learn from Capt. Wright, of the N. York, that it is the intention of the Texans to "keep dark" until the Mexicans cross the Colorado, and then give them a San Jacinto fight, with an army from 5000 to 7000 men. God send that they may bayonet every "yellow belly" in the Mexican army.

The US usage initially applied specifically to Mexicans, who were then at war with the USA. Whether the 'yellow' reference was a racist allusion to skin colour, ill-health, or to a likening to snakes, lizards etc. isn't clear. Whatever the origin, the US 'coward' version seems to be independent of the earlier English nick-name.

Aah! Thanks David.

"bourgeois Bohemian"-- Bobos In Paradise The New Upper Class and How They Got There

BoBo...Limousine Liberal?

Debbie wrote: "BoBo?"

Bobo??

Anthony wrote: "On "drag", according to Partidge Dictionary of Historical Slang the word was used by male actors when playing women: "Derived from the drag of the dress,as distinct from the non-dragginess of the t..."

I like that: "non-dragginess"...but what if you had huge comedy trousers on?

BoBo?

On "drag", according to Partidge Dictionary of Historical Slang the word was used by male actors when playing women: "Derived from the drag of the dress,as distinct from the non-dragginess of the trousers". I'm not very convinced, however.