Nigel Rees - A Word In Your Shell-Like

‘arf a mo’, Kaiser!A 1915–16 recruiting poster during the First World War showed a British ‘Tommy’ lighting a pipe prior to going into action, with this caption underneath. The phrase caught on from there. A photograph of a handwritten sign from the start of the Second World War shows it declaring, ‘’Arf a mo, ‘itler!’ In 1939, there was also a short documentary produced by British Paramount News with the title ‘Arf a Mo’ Hitler.

ArgentinaSee DON’T CRY.

armSee CHANCE ONE’S.

(to cost an) arm and a legA measurement of (high) cost, as in ‘That’ll cost you an arm and a leg’. Probably of American origin, mid-20th century. Compare this with B. H. Malkin’s 1809 translation of Le Sage’s Gil Blas : ‘He was short in his reckoning by an arm and a leg.’

armed to the teethHeavily armed, alluding to the fact that pirates are sometimes portrayed as carrying a knife or sabre held between the teeth. ‘Is there any reason why we should be armed to the teeth?’ – Richard Cobden, Speeches (1849); ‘Mujahedin…played a major role in bringing down the Shah and armed to the teeth’ – The Daily Telegraph (21 August 1979); ‘Once upon a time it would have been pirates fighting over buried treasure. Nowadays it’s redneck firemen (Bill Paxton and William Sadler) under siege from a posse of drug dealers (headed by rappers Ice T and Ice Cube) who are armed to the teeth with guns and mobile phones’ – The Sunday Telegraph (9 May 1993).

armpitSee MAKES YOUR.

arms and the manThe title of George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man (1894) comes from the first line of Virgil’s Aeneid : ‘ Arma virumque cano [Of arms and the man, I sing]’ or rather from Dryden’s translation of the same: ‘Arms, and the man I sing.’ Earlier than Shaw, Thomas Carlyle, suggesting in Past and Present (1843) that a true modern epic was technological rather than military, had written: ‘For we are to bethink us that the Epic verily is not Arms and the Man , but Tools and the Man. ’

(the) army game The Army Game was an immensely popular British TV comedy series (1957–62). Its title homed in on a phrase that seemed to sum up the attitude of those condemned to spend their lives in the ranks. Apparently of American origin, possibly by 1900, ‘it’s the old army game’ refers to the military system as it works to the disadvantage of those in the lower ranks. From Theodore Fredenburgh’s Soldiers March (1930): ‘I get the idea. It’s the old army game: first, pass the buck, second…’ The phrase also occurs in the film You Can’t Take It With You (US 1938). Compare war game(known by 1900), a theoretical way of fighting battles (and a type of chess). The War Game (1965) was the title of a TV film by Peter Watkins that was for a long time not shown because of its vivid depiction of the effect of nuclear war on the civilian population.

(the) arrogance of power The Arrogance of Power (1967) was the title of a book by the American Democratic politician J. William Fulbright. It questioned the basis of US foreign policy, particularly in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic. In the previous year, Fulbright, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had given lectures establishing his theme: ‘A psychological need that nations seem to have…to prove that they are bigger, better or stronger than other nations.’

arseSee ALL BALLS; DOESN’T KNOW HIS.

arseholeSee FROM ARSEHOLE.

arsenic and old laceTitle of a play (1941) by Joseph Kesselring (filmed US 1941) about two old ladies who poison elderly gentlemen. It plays upon the earlier lavender and old lace, itself used as the title of sentimental novel (1902) by Myrtle Reed. That phrase came to be used as a way of indicating old-fashioned gentility.

ars gratia artisMotto of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film company. Howard Dietz, director of publicity and advertising with the original Goldwyn Pictures company, had left Columbia University not long before creating it circa 1916. When asked to design a trademark, he based it on the university’s lion and added the Latin words meaning ‘art for art’s sake’ underneath. The trademark and motto were carried over when Samuel Goldwyn retired to make way for the merger of Metropolitan with the interests of Louis B. Mayer in what has become known since as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Goldwyn may never have subscribed to the sentiment it expressed. Most of his working life was spent as an independent producer, famously more interested in money than art.

artSee AS THE ART.

ArthurSee BIG-HEARTED.

Arthur’s bosomA malapropism for ABRAHAM’S BOSOM from Shakespeare’s Henry V , II.iii.9 (1599). The Hostess (formerly Mistress Quickly) says of the dead Falstaff: ‘Nay, sure, he’s not in hell: he’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom.’

artificialSee AMUSING.

(the) art of the possibleWhat politics is said to be. A phrase used as the title of memoirs (1971) by R. A. (Lord) Butler, the British Conservative politician. In the preface to the paperback edition of The Art of the Possible , Butler noted that this definition of politics appears first to have been used in modern times by Bismarck in 1866–7 (in conversation with Meyer von Waldeck: ‘ Die Politik ist keine exakte Wissenschaft, wie viele der Herren Professoren sich einbilden, sondern eine Kunst [politics are not a science, as many professors declare, but an art]’). If he said precisely the phrase as used by Butler, it would have been: ‘ Die Politik ist die Lehr vom Möglichen ’. Others who have touched on the idea included Cavour, Salvador de Madriaga, Pindar and Camus. To these might be added J.K. Galbraith’s rebuttal: ‘Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable’ – letter to President Kennedy (March 1962), quoted in Ambassador’s Journal (1969).

art thou weary?From a hymn ‘translated from the Greek’ by the Reverend J. M. Neale (1818–66). It continues: ‘…art thou languid, / art thou sore distressed?’ Compare: ‘Art thou troubled? / Music will calm thee. Art thou weary…’ – an aria from Handel’s opera Rodelinda (1725), with libretto by Salvi.

as any fule kno [as any fool know]A stock phrase of the schoolboy character Nigel Molesworth in the books written by Geoffrey Willans and illustrated by Ronald Searle in the 1950s. The books retained the schoolboy spelling of the ‘Curse of St Custard’s’. From Down With Skool! (1953): ‘A chiz is a swiz or swindle as any fule kno.’ The phrase had a revival from the 1980s onwards when the books were republished.

as awkward as a pig with side pockets(Of a person) very awkward. Apperson finds ‘as much need of it as a toad of a side pocket, said of a person who desires anything for which he has no real occasion’, by 1785, and ‘as much use as a cow has for side pockets’, in Cheshire Proverbs (1917). Compare as awkward as a cow with a musket.

as black as Egypt’s nightVery black indeed. The allusion is biblical. Exodus 10:21 mentions the plague of ‘darkness which may be felt’ (a sandstorm, perhaps), that Moses imposed on the Pharaoh in response to the Lord’s instruction. Samuel Wesley (d. 1837) had: ‘Gloomy and dark as Hell’s or Egypt’s night’; and John and Charles Wesley’s version of Psalm 55 contains (although the Bible doesn’t): ‘And horror deep as Egypt’s night, or hell’s tremendous gloom.’ A more benign view of Egypt’s night occurs in Kipling’s ‘The White Man’s Burden’ (1899) where the people of India complain of British colonization: ‘Why brought ye us from bondage, / Our loved Egyptian night?’ – where the reference is to civilized Egypt. In the poem ‘Riding Down from Bangor’, written by the American Louis Shreve Osborne and anthologized by 1897, a bearded student and a village maiden make the most of it when the railway train in which they are travelling enters a tunnel: ‘Whiz! Slap! Bang! into the tunnel quite / Into glorious darkness, black as Egypt’s night…’