of to look with a frown, to frown at, to look angrily at, for that is the look we give to guilt, for which alone this punishment was contrived. KISS MY ARSE. An expression, from an unfortunate, but accidental, encounter of the literal travesty of the last word, now, not very often used among the well-educated; but, when used, a somewhat repulsive answer to forward, intermeddling, intrusive impudence. Gj smaé eers; q. e. thou reproach to honour! thou stain to respectability! or, if the 's is taken as the usual ellipsis of is, then as, you are a disgrace to honour (to respectability), and, consequently, have no right to address one to whom such character belongs; but, if you do, it is right you should know from myself what I deem you. The answer is simply a declaration of an opinion, extorted by the address of some despicable person, who breaks in upon the reserve of a respectable man; and necessarily carries with it a due responsibility for its appropriate application. It is the vulgar travesty that has degraded the phrase; for in its original form nothing can be more unexceptionable, nor more necessary to the protection of a gentleman from one who is the reverse. No popular phrase, that I have discovered as yet, ever contained, in its original form, a coarse or indecent term; and it is due to truth and to our forefathers to clear them from the reproach of being the authors of phrases such as the above travesty, even at the risk of the anger of those who deal in them. A BLUNDERHEAD. In the sense of one with a distorting intellect; one who misconstrues all you say to him: one who mistakes even a well intended expression for a purposed insult; and thus a vexatious person, but not so dangerous as the wrong-headed man, for the one may be set right, the other never can. Er boel ander heet; q. e. the tormentor blurts something quite at variance with the subject spoken of to him; answers by something which has no relation to the point in question; and thus one who misconceives or takes a distorted view of all that is said, and by so doing renders himself a torment to society. Beul, boel, bole, executioner, was not merely he that hung or beheaded those who were consigned to him, but was also he that put them previously to the question or rack, and tortured them by every painful mean his employer could devise for him. That it was once so even with us, is still testified by the name of the Press Yard in Newgate, which was formerly Jack Ketch's scene of action and play ground. Boel is thus, Torture personified. The French say, Ah le Bourreau! in the sense of a vexatious ill-conducted disturber of social quiet (order). Ander, another thing, something foreign to the subject in question. Hecten, to name, to call by name, to say, to give utterance to. Blunderheaded as the adjective, is probably as boel ander heet 'et; q. e. the torment calls it by a wrong name, mistakes what it is (or is said); implying, that his answer [observation] shews he had misconceived the point in question, miscomprehended what had been done or said. And what more startling and vexatious to ordinary patience? 'Et, het, it, the thing in question. I suspect our term a bull, as a blunder, a mistake in point of sense, is as the first member of the above original form of the phrase. Perhaps our national sobriquet of John Bull is no other than— Jouw! hoon! beul! q. e. hoot! defy! you_tormentor!. Shout! insult! you torment to others! It is a nickname at all events, and seems clearly not of our own giving or choosing; but has likely arisen from the somewhat uncouth and supercilious carriage, generally imputed by foreigners to our countrymen, when they come in contact with them. And has possibly been adopted at a period when the balance of exterior politeness was universally admitted to incline in favour of our neighbours, by whom the English were looked upon as comparatively unpolished. To this day we are accused of being nationally infected by what the French term la morgue Anglaise ; q. e. the gloomy reserve of the English, the silent superciliousness, the formal stiffness of the English, and which appears to them still rife with us. The phrase sounds as John Bull is uttered. If it is not this, what else is it? If blunder, in the travestied phrase, is left in its literal sense, blunderhead construes into sheer nonsense, and blunder could never have belonged to it in its rise. BLOCKHEAD As one who, when you happen to hear him speak, makes you feel surprised he can even do that, though you may not express your astonishment to him. In fact, one who proves consummately deficient in mental endowments when called into action; and it is in this sense we say "he acted like a blockhead." Oh! the blockhead! is not said by way of either reproach or admiration, but in compassion for his natural defect. Bol oock heet; q. e. Well! if that round nob dont speak! Who could have thought that this turnip of a head could have talked! Implying, that from the appearance and manner of the person to whom it belonged, it was more than was to be expected [quite startling]. A conceited blockhead; is one who acts as if he conceived he was not one. Bol, any round substance, a ball, a bowl for nine pins, a bulb, a balloon, and metaphorically, the head. Oock, well even, even also, what then? as etiam in the sentence etiàm scelus? malè loquere? Heeten, is here as barely to utter, to articulate intelligibly and no more. So, when in anxious doubt, we say to a person who has the appearance of being neither dead nor alive; Do but speak! just say one word! and feel agreeably surprised when we find he can. A BELL-WETHER. As a noisy incessant speechifier upon a same subject, an endless troublesome harper upon the same string. Er beul weder; q. e. there's the torment again! there's our certain plague again! there's he who never spares us, when we are within his power. Beul, boel, bole, bodel, either as Jack Ketch or Beadle, implies the inflicter of all other punishments as well as those which end by death. The word turning into bidello in Italian and bedeau in French, and into beadle with us, shews the tendency of oe, eu, to vary into ea and even e and i; so that beul resounding into bell is as a natural deflection of the voice. The modern English head was spelt hevet, heut, hede, by our old authors; heafd, haved, in Anglo-Saxon, and is now spelt haupt in German and hoofd in Dutch. Our term bull, as the animal, is an example of the e resounding into o and u, the word being no other than the ellipsis of bell-stier (bell-ox) as the leader of the herd, and round the neck of which a bell was slung when he was sent to pasture in the wilds of former days, as is now done with the BELL-WETHER of the flock. Stier (bull, steer) has in course of time, and use, dropped from the phrase, as in innumerable similar instances. The ancient form of bull, as bell, still survives in bellow, and is a term distinguishing the roar of the bull from the lowing of the cow, and has probably arisen from belles [ocks, aucks] bell-ox. Os signified originally the male of his species, but is now used in a confined [restricted] sense. Belle, bell, is as the Latin bulla (bubble) which was the real form of the ancient bells. Weder, again, de novo. "When that Phœbus his chair of golde so hie And on the BOLE * was entrid certainely,"-CHAUCer. BELDAM. An old woman, a hag, an old witch. I suspect, a corruption of the French vielle dame, in the sense of "old-mother." Dame Abesse is as our, Mother-Abess; for Lady Abess is a modern extension of the original phrase. But this is mere guess. B and v are interchanging sounds. Vigghe, Bigghe, and Pig, are the same word. Put b for v, and vielle sounds very like bel, and has the same sense in beldam. JOHNSON derives it from belle dame; but I don't see how an old woman is to be brought out of those words in any way I am aware of. The French dame and our dame, mother, are the same word; the French say Dame Nature; we say Dame Nature in the import of nature the mother and producer of all things. Both are groundedly dam, as female in general, but restricted with us by use to the mare, which last is the same word with the French mere, but also limited in meaning by use. The Italians have dama, damma, for the female of the deer, and we dam for that of the horse. The thema of dam is, da-en, do-en, to enclose, to contain, whence also dam, as bank [enclosure]; the word is the contraction of the participle present, which is daing (enclosing), and formed in a direction analogous with wam, wamme, wamba, wambon (in English womb) and the same word with woman, as the container of her kind, indefinitely. We say the "womb of time" as the mother [parent] of forthcoming events. Wam is as waing, the participle present of wa-en, to enclose, to hold within. The French femme, the Latin fœmina, are merely different striplings of * Bull; in Dutch bolle, bulle, bollen; and here used as the constellation, called Taurus by the astronomers. |