The a in Als, as. ruig answers precisely to in the rough. bag has the sound of the close u with us. The sound leading to the metamorphose of the original bag into bug has tarnished [defaced] the original phrase. And such has been the fate of most of these blind-chance transmutations, these masqueradings, where sound sense has been disguised in the garb of nonsense. GINGERLY. Properly, as it ought to be done, nicely, completely. Gehing er lije; q. e. only don't obstruct me; let the way be open to me; do but leave me free passage, means of going on; dont stand in my way; let me go on as I can. Ick doe het, gehing er lij; i. e. I do it, give me leave to go my own way about it. The being interfered with, the not having been left free, is the usual excuse for a thing not being properly done. Gehingen, gehengen, to accord, grant, permit, and here, in the imperative mood. Lijde, lije, way, means of going, free action. The form of the travesty suggesting the idea of ginger has made the expression an absurd one. A JACK-O-LANTHORN. Oh! As the well-known field-meteor. Er j' hach! O! lantern; q. e. What odd chance is that? the lanthorn; what has accident produced now? Oh! a light! Something new turned up there! Oh! I see it's the lanthorn-light! As an exclamation of the person who happens to fall in with this startling phenomenon; the expression of a first surprise, and the subsequent self-recovering from it. I see what it is, we need not be alarmed, it is only a light. Je, some, aliquis. Hach, chance, new event, accident, something unforeseen. Lantern (lanthorn) has not been traced with any decisive result, although analyzed by a BILDERDIJK. TAG-RAG AND BOB-TAIL. As a good-for-nothing set of people, a worthless crew, a sad set, vile company. Tuige rag aen pop teel; q. e. the cobwebs we see prognosticate a swarm of vermin in the place; cobwebs bear witness of a brood of spiders [caterpillars] being here; where we see cobwebs we want no other evidence to know the insects they belong to must be at hand; and thus implying, upon a view of the house arrived at on the visit in question, it may be concluded, a company assorted to the appearance of the place may be foreseen; inferring that the look of the place was not what it should be. Tuige aen, may be a witness of, as the potential form of tuigen, to testify. Rag, cobweb. Pop, nest of insects, such as spiders, caterpillars, &c., &c. P and b are intermutating sounds, and pop, is as bob. Teel, brood, race; in French, engeance when used for a set of bad ones, vermin, &c. Tuige, tuyghe, sounds tag. We are told by a late etymologist, the phrase is grounded in Tag, Rag, and Bob-tail, the supposed names of three kinds of vulgar dogs, and so rabble! See Thomson's Etymons. A MARE'S NEST. He has found a mare's nest, is a well known way of saying he has found nothing which was not known before; and is applied to some one who has hit upon what is new to him, but to no one else; or to some one who wishes to impose on another for his own, that which belongs elsewhere. Er mer's nest; q. e. there BUT is nested; that place is the place where but has its nest; but's nest is the treasure he has found, turned up; what he would palm upon us as of value is worth nothing, a sheer nullity. Mer, maer, maar, as the conjunctive but in its defeasive sense, is here the type of nullity ; being that which connects the positive proposition with the nullifying condition. The word is here used in a substantive and figurative sense. Mer, however, differs from but, in as far as it has not the suppositive sense which, in some cases, belongs to the latter. Mer (maar) at all times implies defeasance. Hence its aptness to represent nullity. Of this in another page. Is nest, is genest, the past participle of nesten, to nest, to roost. Mer has the exact sound of mare with us. The phrase does not seem to strike so directly at the mere being wrong, as at the conceit and folly in thinking himself wiser than his neighbour. TO EAT HUMBLE PIE. He was obliged to eat humble pie; he was obliged to knock under, to acknowledge his incapacity to proceed with that which he had overweaningly undertaken (fancied himself equal to). T'u hiet om el bij; q. e. call some other assistance to you; and implying, I see you are unequal to it yourself; not able to do the business in question, without other help; and expressive of contempt for the conceit of him who imagined he could do it. Hiet, the imperative of hieten, to name, to call in or upon. El, other, another. Om, for. TO DRAW IN THE HORNS. He was forced to draw in the horns; he was obliged to give way in regard to that which he had before advanced; to become less confident in his being able to carry the intended point; and thus reduced to alter his assuming manner to one more decent (less unbecoming). T'u draeye [draaie] in dij hooren's; q. e. a changing of the course you took is in your case no more than your duty; to take a different course is what you ought to do; to change your unsuitable manner of going on, for one more becoming, is no more than becomes you. Draeye, draaie, as the participle present of drayen', draaien, to wheel round, to turn round, and so to change; but here used substantively. In dij, in thee. Hooren, behooren, to do what ought to be done, to behave as required, to show proper conduct [behaviour]. UNDER THE ROSE. It was said under the rose; it was said in confidence; told in secret. Onder de roose; in the same meaning as with us; and which, as Bilderdijk asserts, is due to a special use of the word roos at a former period. Roos was the technical term for the centre-piece of a ceiling, once in vogue for the principal room of the house; which kind of ceiling was termed roos-gewelf; q.e. rose-arch (rose-vault) from the convergence of the several compartments, which composed it, into a common centre-piece; and thus assuming, in point of general shape, the likeness of an inverted rose. Round a table placed immediately under this rose or centre-piece, it was the custom for the family to assemble in cabinet for consultation over its own concerns and the affairs of the household. Hence sprung the form of this expression, along with that import of confidential communication which belongs to said under the rose. The Latin sub rosa has no relation to our phrase under the rose; but merely refers to keeping silence with regard to a Roman scene of debauch; it is an implied injunction for none of the party to such scene to tell others what passed. Archbishop Potter, in whose book of Antiquities some Latin verses are recorded which mention the rose as the emblem of this convivial imposition to reserve, and which are known to every schoolboy, never even alludes to its having the least relation to our own expression. He knew it referred merely to the Garland of Roses usually worn by the partakers in such orgies; and who were to understand by this token what passed in them was not to be revealed by one who had shared in them. Could it enter into the head of a scholar and a gentleman, that the chaste simple and heartfelt expression of under the rose had sprung out of the abyss of a Roman debauch. That when the English matron says to her daughter, this I tell you under the rose, and bears in her mind an injunction to honest reserve in regard to some transaction important to friendship and mutual confidence-could it, I say, suggest itself to any duly feeling mind, the expression had been raked out of the filth of a Roman orgy? Besides would not the expression have survived among the descendants of those Romans? Would it have been lost in the country of its origin and survived in one where its import could not be felt? Ask the Italian, the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Greek, if any equivalent or analogous use of the term rose exists amongst them? And yet the scrub of the Times newspaper, tells you with the effrontery of falsehood, the rose has this betokening sense in all countries. HOCUS POCUS. Cheat, trick, mystification, conjuration. The phrase is a corruption of the professional cant by which conjurors (mountebanks) once designated their mystery; viz. Jokus Poki (pochi); q. e. the pocket-game, the pocket-play. Pockus, pocus, being as conjuror's Latin for poke, also pak, pok, and poksak, in the meaning of pocket and of purse. The conjuror's dress was beset with such pouches or pockets; hence in German he is called taschenspieler (pocket-player), as one who relies upon such device for the performance of his professional duties. When ready to open his budget, he announces himself to his assistants to be so, by the slang notice of Hocus Pocus est paratus! Poki has lost its grammatical case by transmission from |