(to) cock a snook A snook is the derisive gesture made with thumb and hand held out from the nose (though the phrase is also used figuratively for a cheeky gesture). ‘To take a sight’ is an alternative phrase. Both were known by the mid-19th century; indeed, OED2 has ‘cock snooks’ in 1791. The game of snooker derives its name not from this but rather from the military nickname for a raw recruit.
cocked hat See KNOCK SOMETHING.
Cocker See ACCORDING TO.
(a) cock-up on the catering front Catchphrase from the BBC TV series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976–9) written by David Nobbs. Reggie’s brother-in-law, Jimmy Anderson (played by Geoffrey Palmer) had a military background and, in civilian life, used military turns of phrase to explain things away. For example, ‘No food. Bit of a cock-up on the catering front…’ Really something of a format phrase.
(the) cocks may crow but it’s the hen that lays the egg Informal proverb. Uttered by Margaret Thatcher, when British Prime Minister, at a private dinner party in 1987 (according to Robert Skidelsky in The Sunday Times, Books (9 April 1989). A London News Radio phone-in (December 1994) had this version: ‘The cock does all the crowing but the hen lays all the eggs.’ ‘My grandmother’s all-embracing put down of males: “He’s a clever old cock, but he can’t lay eggs”’ – Margaret Rawles (2000). Apperson finds the obvious original, ‘The cock crows but the hen goes’, in use by 1659.
cocoa See GRATEFUL.
coconut See GIVE THE MAN.
coffin See DRIVE A NAIL.
coffin nails Derogatory name for cigarettes, from a 1957 British newsreel, but Partridge/Slang suggests an origin circa 1885 and in catchphrase form – ‘Another nail in your coffin!’ (said to someone lighting up). OED2 has it from Texas in 1888. Indeed, it is possibly American – Mieder & Co.’s Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992) has two (undated) entries of the ‘Every cigarette is a nail in your coffin’ type. The journal Proverbium (1992) also suggests that ‘Cigarettes are coffin nails’ may have originated in Kentucky.
cold See AS COLD; IN THE.
cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey The derivation of this phrase meaning ‘extremely cold’ (known by 1835) may have nothing to do with any animal. A brass monkey was the name given to the plate on a warship’s deck on which cannon balls (or other ammunition) were stacked. In cold weather the brass would contract, tending to cause the stack to fall down. ‘Monkey’ appears to have been a common slang word in gunnery days (and not just at sea) – there was a type of gun or cannon known as a ‘monkey’ and a ‘powder monkey’ was the name for a boy who carried powder to the guns. Philip Holberton challenged this theory (1998): ‘Why would anyone use an expensive metal like brass on which to stack cannon balls? If the stack is going to collapse in cold weather, what will happen to it in a seaway? In pictures I have seen, the bottom row of a stack of cannon balls fitted into a wooden grid or a series of hollows like an old-fashioned egg-rack.’ Brian J. Goggin (1999) said no evidence had been found of the phrase in any nautical writings from the era of warships with cannon.
cold hands, warm heart A forgiving little phrase, for when having shaken hands and found the other person’s to be cold. A proverb first recorded in 1903 (CODP).
(to give someone the) cold shoulder Meaning, ‘to be studiedly indifferent towards someone’. Known by 1820, this expression is said to have originated with the medieval French custom of serving guests a hot roast. When they had outstayed their welcome, the host would pointedly produce a cold shoulder of mutton to get them on their way.
(a) cold war Any tension between powers, short of all-out war, but specifically that between the Soviet Union and the West following the Second World War. This latter use was popularized by Bernard Baruch, the US financier and presidential adviser, in a speech in South Carolina (16 April 1947): ‘Let us not be deceived – we are today in the midst of a cold war.’ The phrase was suggested to him by the speechwriter Herbert Bayard Swope, who had been using it privately since 1940.
collapse of stout party A catchphrase that might be used as the tag-line to a story about the humbling of a pompous person. It has long been associated with Punch and was thought to have occurred in the wordy captions given to that magazine’s cartoons. But as Ronald Pearsall explains in his book with the title Collapse of Stout Party (1975): ‘To many people Victorian wit and humour is summed up by Punch when every joke is supposed to end with “Collapse of Stout Party”, though this phrase tends to be as elusive as “Elementary, my dear Watson” in the Sherlock Holmes sagas.’ At least OED2 manages to find a reference to a ‘Stout Party’ in the caption to a cartoon in the edition of Punch dated 25 August 1855.
colour See ANY COLOUR.
(a/the) colour bar Name given to the divisions, legal and social, between white people and ‘people of colour’ in the first half of the 20th century. Known by 1913.
Columbus and the egg A reference to the anecdote of Christopher Columbus’s egg. Someone, jealous of his success, pointed out that if he had not discovered the New World someone else would have done so. Columbus did not reply directly but asked the other people present if they could make an egg stand on its end. When they failed, he broke the end of the egg and stood it up that way. The moral was plain: once he had shown the way, anyone could do it. From Margery Allingham, Death of a Ghost, Chap. 1 (1934): ‘“Ah,” said Mr Potter, “remember Columbus and the egg. They could all make it stand up after he’d shown them how to crack it at one end. The secret was simple, you see, but Columbus thought of it first”.’
column See AGONY.
comb See FIGHT BETWEEN; FINE-TOOTH.
come See AND STILL THEY.
(to) come a cropper (or fall/get) To have a bad fall (physically) or, in a transferred sense, to run into major misfortune, particularly when things seem to be going well. Possibly from a horse-riding accident where the rider might fall with a crop (handle of a whip) in the hand. Also the phrase ‘neck and crop’ means ‘completely’. Known by the mid-19th century. R. S. Surtees, Ask Mamma, Chap. 53 (1858): ‘[He] rode at an impracticable fence, and got a cropper for his pains.’ Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now (1875): ‘He would “be coming a cropper rather”, were he to marry Melmotte’s daughter for her money, and then find that she had got none.’
come again? ‘Repeat what you have just said, please!’ Usually uttered, not when the speaker has failed to hear the foregoing but cannot believe or understand it. British and American use by the 1930s, at least.
(the) comedy is ended The last words of François Rabelais (who died about 1550) are supposed to have been: ‘Tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée [bring down the curtain, the farce is played out].’ The attribution is made, hedged about with disclaimers, in Jean Fleury’s Rabelais et ses oeuvres (1877) and also in the edition of Rabelais by Motteux (1693). In Lermontov’s novel A Hero of Our Time (1840), a character says: ‘Finita la commedia’. At the end of Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s opera Il Pagliacci [The