bullet See BITE THE.
(a) bull in a china shop A clumsy person. This is a proverbial saying in many languages but, apart from English, the animal named is invariably an elephant. From Captain Marryat, Jacob Faith, Chap. 15 (1834): ‘Whatever it is that smashes, Mrs. T. always swears it was the most valuable thing in the room. I’m like a bull in a china-shop.’
bull’s foot See DOESN’T KNOW HIS.
bully for you! A congratulatory phrase, latterly perhaps used a touch resentfully and ironically. ‘I’ve just won the lottery and married the woman of my dreams…’ ‘Bully for you!’ Established by the mid-19th century. A Punch cartoon (5 March 1881) drawn by Gerald du Maurier has the caption ‘Bully for little Timpkins!’
(a) bumper bundle From the radio record request shows Family Favourites and Two-Way Family Favourites on the BBC (1945–84). Cliff Michelmore, who used to introduce the programme from Hamburg, and later met and married the London presenter, Jean Metcalfe, recalled the origin of the phrase (in 1979): ‘It was invented by Jean. Her road to Damascus was at the crossroads on Banstead Heath one Sunday morning when driving in to do the programme. It was used to describe a large number of requests all for the same record, especially “Top Ten” hits, circa 1952–3.’
buried their own See THEY CAME.
Burleigh’s nod A significant nod of the head, whose meaning may be explained in any way. Referring to William Cecil (1st Lord Burleigh), the English courtier and politician (1520–98). Within R. B. Sheridan’s play The Critic (1779), there is a performance of a mock-tragedy on the Spanish Armada. Burleigh is represented as too preoccupied with affairs of state to be able to say anything, so he shakes his head and the character Puff explains what he means: ‘Why by that shake of the head, he gave you to understand that even though they had more justice in their cause and wisdom in their measures – yet, if there was not a greater spirit shown on the part of the people – the country would at last fall a sacrifice to the hostile ambition of the Spanish monarchy…’ ‘The devil! – did he mean all that by shaking his head?’ ‘Every word of it – if he shook his head as I taught him.’ Hence, also, the expression ‘To be as significant as the shake of Lord Burleigh’s head’.
(a) Burlington Bertie A swell gentleman, named after the one with the ‘Hyde Park drawl and the Bond Street crawl’, commemorated in a song with words and music by Harry B. Norris (first published 1900) and performed by Vesta Tilley. Not to be confused with ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’, a parody written in 1915 by William Hargreaves for his wife, Ella Shields, the male impersonator. In this song, now the better remembered of the two, Bertie is a more down-at-heel character.
BURMA Meaning, ‘Be Upstairs Ready, My Angel’. Lovers’ acronym for use in correspondence and to avoid military censorship. Probably in use by the First World War.
burn, baby, burn! A black extremists’ slogan that arose from the August 1965 riots in the Watts district of Los Angeles when 34 people were killed and entire blocks burnt. The 1974 song with this title by Hudson-Ford had other connotations. Indeed, it has been suggested that the phrase arose as a joke expression of sexual encouragement a year or so before the riots. Popularized by the Black disc jockey Magnificent Montague, it was called out by audiences to singers and musicians.
(to) burn daylight To waste time. Shakespeare twice uses this expression. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, II.i.52 (1601), Mistress Ford says: ‘We burn daylight.’ In Romeo and Juliet, I.iv.43 (1594), Mercutio says, ‘Come, we burn daylight, ho…I mean, sir, in delay / We waste our lights in vain, light lights by day.’ Hence, Burning Daylight, the title of a novel (1910) by Jack London.
(a) burning question The subject of the hour; what really needs to be addressed. Popular from the 19th century onwards. Benjamin Disraeli used the phrase in 1873. ‘The source of the Boulangist election expenditure is a burning question in France’ – St James’s Gazette (16 January 1889). ‘The burning question of the week has been whether a school teacher, now dead, beat boys during the 1960s. More than a quarter of the Times’s letters page was devoted to this urgent subject on Thursday, and nearly as much again on Friday’ – Independent on Sunday (1 May 1994).
(to) burn one’s boats To close off all one’s avenues of retreat. The OED2 is hopeless on this point – it’s earliest citation is from only 1886. Brewer (1894) has a short piece concentrating on the meaning and origin – ‘The allusion is to Julius Caesar and other generals, who burned their boats or ships when they invaded a foreign country, in order that their soldiers might feel that they must either conquer the country or die, as retreat would be impossible.’ So to Notes and Queries, which had a look at the matter three times between 1922 and 1932 and, first of all, found two allusions to the act (if not an actual use of the phrase) in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776). In Chap. 13, Asclepiodotus does it, acting for Constantius in the recovery of Britain from the usurper Allectus (circa AD 296), and in Chap. 56: Robert Guiscard proposes this measure before the battle of Durazzo in October 1081 – whether it was carried out is not very clear. Then Edward J. G. Forse contributes this: ‘The gentleman who “burnt his boats” was Agathocles, Tyrant of Syracuse. The details will be found in Smith’s Dictionary of Biography. This is worth recording, for most dictionaries (even Weekley) give all sorts of more recent instances, and some years ago I had an infinity of trouble in tracing the phrase back to what seems to be the original incident that started the expression.’ Compare (to) burn one’s bridges, meaning exactly the same thing. The earliest citation for this is Mark Twain in 1892.
(to) burn the midnight oil To sit up and work beyond midnight; to slave over something. Known by 1744. ‘Mr Moore, a council member since the mid-1970s, said: “I have three partners (one of whom is about to be a council member of the Irish institute), and I get tremendous support from them. But it does mean that I have to burn a lot of midnight oil to keep my end going”’ – The Independent (3 May 1994); ‘At a time of year when students and staff used to be in the classroom, students are now wandering around like lost sheep while the staff burn the midnight oil trying to get marking completed in a week’ – letter to the editor, Times Higher Education Supplement (24 February 1995).
burn your bra! A feminist slogan from America, circa 1970, encouraging women to destroy an item of apparel quite clearly designed by a male chauvinist and likely to make a woman more of a sex object. There is an analogy with the burning of draft-cards as a protest against the Vietnam War.
(to) bury the hatchet Meaning, to settle an