Nigel Rees - A Word In Your Shell-Like стр 12.

all over by Christmas See BY CHRISTMAS.

all over the place like a mad womans underclothes In her book Daddy, We Hardly Knew You (1989), the writer Germaine Greer recalls that, when she was growing up in Australia in the 1940s, this was her mothers phrase to describe an untidy room. In consequence, Greer used The Madwomans Underclothes as the title of a collection of her assorted writings (1986). Partridge/Slang does not find this precise expression but in discussing the phrase all over the place like a mad womans shit points to the euphemistic variants cited by G.A. Wilkes in A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms (1978): like a mad womans knittingcustardlunch box. So, Australian it seems to be.

all passion spent And calm of mind, all passion spent line 1758 (the last line) of Miltons dramatic poem Samson Agonistes (1671). Hence, All Passion Spent, the title of a novel (1931) by Vita Sackville-West (a study of ageing and independence in old age). The story of it belongs to a later and final book still to be written: of our hero, ambition laid aside, all passion spent, learning to accept defeat, growing old gracefully Arthur Bryant, Samuel Pepys: The Saviour of the Navy, Preface (1949 edn).

all piss and wind Empty, vacuous of a man prone to bombast and no achievement, apparently derived from the earlier saying All wind and piss like a barbers cat, known by 1800.

all publicity is good publicity A modern proverb dating from at least the 1960s, but probably as old as the public relations industry. Alternative forms include: theres no such thing as bad publicity; theres no such thing as over-exposure only bad exposure; dont read it measure it; and I dont care what the papers say about me as long as they spell my name right. The latter saying has been attributed to the American Tammany leader Big Tim Sullivan. CODP includes it in the form Any publicity is good publicity and finds no example before 1974. In Dominic Behans My Brother Brendan (1965), however, the Irish playwright is quoted as saying, There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary. James Agate in Ego 7 (for 19 February 1944) quotes Arnold Bennett as having said, All praise is good, and adds: I suppose the same could be said about publicity.

all quiet on the Western Front A familiar phrase from military communiqués and newspaper reports on the Allied side in the First World War. Also taken up jocularly by men in the trenches to describe peaceful inactivity. It was used as the title of the English translation of the novel Im Westen nichts Neues [From the Western Front Nothing to Report] (1929; film US 1930) by the German writer Erich Maria Remarque. The title is ironic a whole generation was being destroyed while newspapers reported that there was no news in the west. Partridge/Catch Phrases hears in it echoes of All quiet on the Shipka Pass cartoons of the 18778 Russo-Turkish War that Partridge says had a vogue in 19156, though he never heard the allusion made himself. For no very good reason, Partridge rules out any connection with the American song All Quiet Along the Potomac. This, in turn, came from a poem called The Picket Guard (1861) by Ethel Lynn Beers, a sarcastic commentary on General Brinton McClellans policy of delay at the start of the Civil War. The phrase (alluding to the Potomac River which runs through Washington DC) had been used in reports from McLellans Union headquarters and put in Northern newspaper headlines. All quiet along the Potomac continues to have some

use as a portentous way of saying that nothing is happening.

all right for some! Meaning, some people have all the luck! a good-humoured expression of envy. Im just off to the West Indies for an all-expenses paid holiday All right for some! From the mid-20th century.

all roads lead to Rome Whatever route you follow (especially in thinking), you will reach a common objective. The earliest use of this proverb in English is in a treatise by Chaucer on the astrolabe (1391), in which he states, Right as diverse paths leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome. In Medieval Latin, this was expressed as: mille vie ducunt hominem per secula Romam [a thousand roads lead man for ever towards Rome]. This reflects the geographical fact that the Roman road system did indeed seem to radiate outwards from Rome.

all rowed fast, but none so fast as stroke A nonsensical compliment relating to effort. In Sandford of Merton, Chap. 12 (1903), Desmond Coke wrote: His blade struck the water a full second before any other: the lad had started well. Nor did he flag as the race wore on: as the others tired, he seemed to grow more fresh, until at length, as the boats began to near the winning-post, his oar was dipping into the water nearly twice as often as any other. This is deemed to be the original of the modern proverbial saying which is used, for example, in its all rowed fast form in The Challenge episode of the TV adaptation of The Forsyte Saga (1967). The misquotation is sometimes thought to have been a deliberate distortion of something written earlier than Coke, by Ouida, designed to demonstrate the ladys ignorance of rowing, or indeed of any male activity Peter Farrer in Oxford Today (Hilary, 1992). The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985) refers to the ridicule Ouida suffered for her inaccuracies in matters of mens sports and occupations, of which this might be one.