(a) close encounter of the—kind An expression derived from the title of Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (US 1977) that, in turn, is said to be taken from the categories used in the American forces to denote UFOs. A ‘close encounter 1’ would be a simple UFO sighting; a ‘close encounter 2’, evidence of an alien landing; and a ‘close encounter 3’, actual contact with aliens. The categories were devised by a UFO researcher called J. Allen Hynek – source: Rick Meyers, The Great Science Fiction Films. Used allusively to describe intimacy: ‘For a close encounter of the fourth kind, ring ****’; ‘Polanski’s new movie – Close Encounters with the Third Grade’ – graffiti, quoted 1982.
(a) closely knit community (or tightly knit community) Cliché phrase invariably invoked whenever a community is hit by trouble or tragedy. By the 1980s. ‘A local SDLP councillor, Ms Margaret Ritchie, also condemned the killing but said it would not shatter the community which had always been very closely knit’ – The Irish Times (9 August 1994); ‘When you have a community as closely knit as this one, what you do to one person affects everybody else. You can’t threaten to evict somebody and not expect to get everybody’s blood pressure up, but Schelly doesn’t seem to understand that’ – The Herald (Glasgow) (2 November 1994); ‘“Everyone will be touched by this [coach crash],” said Bill McLeod, 52, owner of a local guesthouse, “It’s such a tight-knit community…that everyone will know someone who was killed or injured”’ – The Independent (25 May 1995); ‘Relatives and friends of the Royal Welch Fusiliers held hostage in Bosnia anxiously awaited news of their fate yesterday. The 300-year-old regiment is based in the tightly knit community of Wrexham in Clwyd’ – The Independent (29 May 1995).
close-run See DAMN.
close your eyes and think of England The source that Partridge/Catch Phrases gives for this saying – in the sense of advice to women when confronted with the inevitability of sexual intercourse, or jocularly to either sex about doing anything unpalatable – is the Journal (1912) of Alice, Lady Hillingdon: ‘I am happy now that Charles calls on my bedchamber less frequently than of old. As it is, I now endure but two calls a week and when I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, open my legs and think of England.’ There was an Alice, Lady Hillingdon (1857–1940). She married the 2nd Baron in 1886. He was Conservative MP for West Kent (1885–92) and, according to Who’s Who, owned ‘about 4,500 acres’ when he died (in 1919). A portrait of Lady Hillingdon was painted by Sir Frank Dicksee PRA in 1904. The rose ‘Climbing Lady Hillingdon’ may also have been named after her. But where her journals are, if indeed they ever existed, is not known. Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, repeating the quotation in The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny (1972), calls her Lady Hillingham, which only further makes one doubt that a woman with any such a name was coiner of the phrase. Salome Dear, Not In the Fridge (ed. Arthur Marshall, 1968) has it instead that the newly wedded Mrs Stanley Baldwin was supposed to have declared: ‘I shut my eyes tight and thought of the Empire.’ We may discount Bob Chieger’s assumption in Was It Good for You, Too? (1983) that ‘Close your eyes and think of England’ was advice given to Queen Victoria ‘on her wedding night’. Sometimes the phrase occurs in the form lie back and think of England, but this probably comes from confusion with SHE SHOULD LIE BACK AND ENJOY IT. In 1977, a long-running play by John Chapman and Anthony Marriott opened in London with the title Shut Your Eyes and Think of England.
cloth-eared Phrase used to describe someone who is somewhat deaf and thus, in a transferred sense, has no taste in matters musical. Known by 1912. It is not completely obvious why ‘cloth’ is used in this phrase – maybe in contrast with a richer material.
cloud See GET OFF MY.
(to live in) cloud-cuckoo land Meaning ‘to have impractical ideas’, the expression comes from the name Nephelococcygia, suggested for the capital city of the birds (in the air) in The Birds by Aristophanes. Listed as a current cliché in The Times (28 May 1984). ‘The decision to standardize the names of authors may be a big stride for the book world. But it is only a small step towards that cloud-cuckoo-land where everybody speaks and writes English according to the same rules’ – The Times (30 May 1994); ‘Fund managers have questioned RJB’s assessment of the market after 1998 when contracts with power generators, coal’s biggest customer, expire. One banker advising an under-bidder said the RJB predictions “were in cloud-cuckoo-land”’ – The Sunday Times (27 November 1994); ‘Mr Watkinson said that the RMT’s claim for 6 per cent [pay rise] meant that the [union’s] leadership was “living in cloud cuckoo land”’ – The Independent (27 May 1995).
(on) cloud nine (or cloud seven) Meaning, ‘in a euphoric state’. Both forms have existed since the 1950s. The derivation appears to be from terminology used by the US Weather Bureau. Cloud nine is the cumulonimbus, which may reach 30–40,000 feet. Morris notes, ‘If one is upon cloud nine, one is high indeed,’ and also records the reason for cloud nine being more memorable than cloud seven: ‘The popularity…may be credited to the Johnny Dollar radio show of the 1950s. There was one recurring episode…Every time the hero was knocked unconscious – which was often – he was transported to cloud nine. There Johnny could start talking again.’ ‘Nurse John McGuinness Shares Double Rollover Lottery Jackpot…“It still hasn’t sunk in and I’ve been on cloud nine since the draw”’ – Daily Mirror (29 January 1996); ‘Scotland’s rugby centre Scott Hastings is on cloud nine after becoming a father for the second time. The newest arrival to the Hastings clan, Kerry Anne, was not expected until later in the week but she was born on Sunday night, weighing in at 7lb 2oz’ – The Herald (Glasgow) (7 February 1996).
(a) cloud no bigger than a man’s hand When something is described as such, it is not yet very threatening – as though a man could obliterate a cloud in the sky by holding up a hand in front of his face. The phrase is biblical: ‘Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand’ (1 Kings 18:44). The Reverend Francis Kilvert, on 9 August 1871, has: ‘Not a cloud was in the sky as big as a man’s hand.’ In a letter to Winston Churchill on 14 December 1952, Bob Boothby MP wrote of a dinner at Chartwell: ‘It took me back to the old carefree days when I was your Parliamentary Private Secretary, and there seemed to be no cloud on the horizon; and on to the fateful days when the cloud was no bigger than a man’s hand, and there was still time to save the sum of things.’
club See IN THE.
clumsy clot! Catchphrase from the BBC radio show Take It From Here (1948–59). A hangover from wartime slang.
clunk, click, every trip Accompanied by the sound of a car door closing and of a seat belt being fastened, this was used as a slogan in British road safety ads featuring Jimmy Savile from 1971. In 1979, someone wrote the slogan on a museum cabinet containing a chastity belt.
c’mere, big boy! Stock phrase of Florence Halop as Hotbreath Houlihan, a sexpot in the American radio show The Camel Caravan (1943–7).
coach See DRIVE A COACH.
coat See GET YOUR COAT.
Coca-Cola PHRASES See PAUSE THAT REFRESHES.
cock See BIG CONK.
(a) cock-and-bull story A long, rambling, unbelievable tale, as used notably in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1760–7). The last words of the novel are: ‘“L—d!” said my mother, “what is all this story about?” – “A cock and a bull,” said Yorick, “And one of the best of its kind, I ever heard”.’ Suggested origins are that the phrase comes from: old fables in general that have animals talking, going right back to Aesop – confirmed perhaps by the equivalent French phrase ‘coq à l’âne’ [literally ‘cock to donkey’];