Tom Bowling. The type of a model sailor in Smollett's Roderick Random. (To rhyme with rolling.) The Tom Bowling referred to in Dibdin's famous sea-song was Captain Thomas Dibdin, brother…
They who play bowls must expect to meet with rubbers. Those who touch pitch must expect to defile their fingers. Those who enter upon affairs of chance, adventure, or dangerous hazard must…
A rhyming chronicle, as the Brut d'Angleterre and Le Roman de Brut, by Wace (twelfth century). Brut is the Romance word bruit (a rumour, hence a tradition, or a chronicle based on…
An apothecary. Apothecaries are so called because they administer boluses. Similarly Mrs. Suds is a washer-woman; Boots is the shoeblack of an inn, etc. George Colman adopts the name for…
"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives…
A disagreeable, ill-tempered person, male or female. Patch means a fool or gossip; so called from his parti-coloured or patched dress. A cross-patch is an ill-tempered fool or gossip.…
An alternate metre; often called elegiac verse. Hexameter as described below. Pentameter verse is divided into two parts, each of which ends with an extra long syllable. The former half…
(The). To go up the Lawn-market, in Scotch parlance, means to go to be hanged. Up the Lawn-market, down the West Bow, Up the lang ladder, down the short low. Schoolboy Rhyme (Scotland). “…
by Kevin O'Hare QUICK POLL What was your favorite album of 2000? U2, All That You Can't Leave Behind PJ Harvey, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea Radiohead, Kid A Eminem,…
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