Nigel Rees - A Word In Your Shell-Like

as sure as eggs is eggsAbsolutely certain. A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew by ‘B.E.’ has ‘As sure as eggs be eggs’ in 1699. There is no very obvious reason why eggs should be ‘sure’, unless the saying is a corruption of the mathematician or logician’s ‘ x is x ’. But by the 18th century, the saying was being shortened to ‘as sure as eggs’, which might dispose of that theory. Known by 1680. It occurs also in Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers , Chap.43 (1836–7). Compare the rather different like as one egg to another(i.e. very like) which dates from Plautus in Latin but can be found in English forms from 1542. Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale , I.ii.129 (1611) has: ‘Yet they say we are / Almost as like as eggs.’

as sure as I’m riding this bicycleA rather meaningless assertion of certainty or truth, not to be taken too seriously. Michael Flanders says, ‘Absolutely true, as sure as I’m riding this bicycle’, in his explanation following the song ‘Commonwealth Fair’ on the record album Tried By the Centre Court (1977). This was obviously a questionable assertion as he was sitting in his wheel-chair at the time. Similar expressions, to be believed or not, include ‘True as I’m strangling this ferret’ in BBC radio’s I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again (1960s), ‘as true as the gospel’ (earliest citation 1873), ‘as true as I live’ (1640), ‘as true as steel/velvet’ (1607).

(the) Assyrian came down like a wolf on the foldAn allusion to Byron’s line, ‘The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold’ from ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’, St. 1 (1815). Byron based his poem on 2 Chronicles 32 and 2 Kings 19, in which Sennacherib, King of Assyria, gets his comeuppance for besieging Jerusalem in this manner.

as the art mistress said to the gardener!Monica (Beryl Reid), the posh schoolgirl friend of Archie Andrews in the BBC radio show, Educating Archie (1950–60), used this as an alternative to the traditional:

as the Bishop said to the actress (or vice versa )!A device for turning a perfectly innocent preceding remark into a double entendre (e.g. ‘I’ve never seen a female “Bottom”…as the Bishop said to the actress’). The phrase was established by 1930 when Leslie Charteris used it no fewer than five times in Enter the Saint , including: ‘“I should be charmed to oblige you – as the actress said to the bishop,” replied the Saint’; ‘“There’s something I particularly want to do to-night.” “As the bishop said to the actress,” murmured the girl’; and, ‘“You’re getting on – as the actress said to the bishop,” he murmured.’

as the crow fliesThe shortest distance between two points. Known by 1800. In fact, crows seldom fly in a straight line but the point of the expression is to express how any bird might fly without having to follow the wanderings of a road (as an earthbound traveller would have to do).

as the monkey said…Introductory phrase to a form of Wellerism. For example, if a child says it can’t wait for something, the parent says: ‘Well, as the monkey said when the train ran over its tail, “It won’t be long now”.’ According to Partridge/Slang , there is any number of ‘as the monkey said’ remarks in which there is always a simple pun at stake: e.g. ‘“They’re off!” shrieked the monkey, as he slid down the razor blade.’

as the poet has it/saysA quoter’s phrase, exhibiting either a knowing vagueness or actual ignorance. ‘As the poet says’ was being used in 1608. This is in a letter from the poet Thomas Moore to Lady Donegal in 1813: ‘I was (as the poet says) as pleased as Punch.’ When Margaret Thatcher was British Prime Minister, she was interviewed on radio (7 March 1982) about how she felt when her son, Mark, was believed lost on the Trans-Sahara car rally. She realized then, she said, that all the little things people worried about really were not worth it…‘As the poet said, “One clear morn is boon enough for being born,” and so it is.’ (In this case, she might be forgiven for using the phrase, as the authorship of the poem is not known.) The phrase can also be used to dignify an undistinguished quotation (rather as PARDON MY FRENCH excuses swearing): P. G. Wodehouse, Mike (1909): ‘As the poet has it, “Pleasure is pleasure, and biz is biz”.’

as the saying isBoniface, the landlord in George Farquhar’s play The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707), has a curious verbal mannerism. After almost every phrase, he adds, ‘As the saying is…’, but this was in itself a well-established phrase even then. In 1548, Hugh Latimer in The Sermon on the Ploughers had: ‘And I fear me this land is not yet ripe to be ploughed. For as the saying is: it lacketh weathering.’ Nowadays, ‘as the saying goes’ seems to be preferred. From R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island , Chap. 4 (1883): ‘There were moments when, as the saying goes, I jumped in my skin for terror.’ Stevenson also uses ‘as the saying is’, however. Another, less common, form occurs in Mervyn Jones, John and Mary , Chap. 1 (1966): ‘She gave herself, as the phrase goes. It wouldn’t normally be said that I gave myself: I took her, as the phrase goes.’

as thick as two short planksVery thick (or stupid) indeed. Of course, the length of the planks is not material here, but never mind. OED2 ’s sole mention of the phrase dates only from 1987. Partridge/Slang dates the expression from 1950.

as though there were no tomorrowMeaning, ‘recklessly, with no regard to the future’ or ‘with desperate vigour’ (especially the spending of money), as Paul Beale glosses it in his revision of Partridge/Slang , suggesting that it was adopted from the USA in the late 1970s. However, it had been known since 1862. ‘The free travel scheme aimed at encouraging cyclists to use trains unearthed a biking underground which took to the trains like there was no tomorrow’ – Time Out (4 January 1980); ‘The evidence from the last major redrawing of council boundaries is mixed. Some authorities did go for broke, and spent their capital reserves as though there were no tomorrow’ – The Times (9 June 1994).

astonish me!A cultured variant of the more popular amaze me!or surprise me!inserted into conversation, for example, when the other speaker has just said something like, ‘I don’t know whether you will approve of what I’ve done…’ In some cases, an allusion to the remark made by Serge Diaghilev, the Russian ballet impresario, to Jean Cocteau, the French writer and designer, in Paris in 1912. Cocteau had complained to Diaghilev that he was not getting enough encouragement and the Russian exhorted him with the words, ‘ Étonne-moi! I’ll wait for you to astound me’ – recorded in Cocteau’s Journals (1956).

as we know it‘Politics as we know it will never be the same again’ – Private Eye (4 December 1981). This simple intensifier has long been with us, however. From Grove’s Dictionary of Music (1883): ‘The Song as we know it in his [Schubert’s] hands…such songs were his and his alone.’ From a David Frost/Peter Cook sketch on sport clichés (BBC TV, That Was the Week That Was , 1962–3 series): ‘The ghastly war which was to bring an end to organised athletics as we knew it.’

as we say in the tradeA slightly self-conscious (even camp) tag after the speaker has uttered a piece of jargon or something unusually grandiloquent. First noticed in the 1960s and probably of American origin. From the record album Snagglepuss Tells the Story of the Wizard of Oz (1966): ‘“Once upon a time”, as we say in the trade…’ Compare the older as we say in France, after slipping a French phrase into English speech (from the 19th century) – and compare THAT’S YOUR ACTUAL FRENCH.