Nigel Rees - A Word In Your Shell-Like стр 23.

sides of the Atlantic in the 19th century. In Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph by Edgar Johnson, we find (183941): Dickens was brilliant in routing everybody at Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral, although he himself failed to guess a vegetable object mentioned in mythological history and belonging to a queen, and was chagrined to have it identified as the tarts made by the Queen of Hearts. In the same book, in a chapter on the period 185865, we also read: [Dickens] was swift and intuitive in Twenty QuestionsOn one occasion, he failed to guess The powder in the Gunpowder Plot, although he succeeded in reaching Guy Fawkes. Presumably, then, the game was known by both names, though Dickens also refers to a version of it as Yes and No in A Christmas Carol (1843). Twenty Questions is referred to as such in a letter from Hannah Moore as early as 1786. Yet another name for this sort of game (by 1883) appears to have been Clumps or Clubs.

animals See ALL ANIMALS.

(the) Animated Meringue Nickname of (Dame) Barbara Cartland (19022000), British romantic novelist and health food champion, who employed a chalky style of make-up in addition to driving around in a pink and white Rolls-Royce. She was thus dubbed by Arthur Marshall who said that far from taking offence, Miss Cartland sent him a telegram of thanks. Compare: At dinner that night it was Eleanor herself who mentioned the name of a certain statesman, who may be decently covered under the disguise of X. X., said Arlington Stringham, has the soul of a meringue Saki, The Chronicles of Clovis, The Jesting of Arlington Stringham (1911).

annus mirabilis Phrase for a remarkable or auspicious year, in modern (as opposed to classical) Latin. Drydens Annus Mirabilis: the year of wonders was published in 1666, but the idea was known before this, viz. Mirabilis annus secundus; or, the Second year of prodigies: Being a true and impartial collection of many strange signes and apparitions, which have this last year been seen in the heavens, and in the earth, and in the waters (1662). In the Netherlands, 1566 used to be known (but not until the mid-19th century) as wonderjaar, because of its crucial role in the start of the Dutch revolt. The opposite term annus horribilis was popularized by Queen Elizabeth II in a speech in the City of London (24 November 1992) to mark her fortieth year on the British throne: 1992 is not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an Annus Horribilis. She was reflecting her current mood: she had a cold, part of Windsor Castle had been burned down four days previously and the marriages of three of her children had collapsed or were collapsing. She states that she had the phrase from a correspondent. It seems more likely that it was inserted by the Queens private secretary and speechwriter, Sir Robert Fellowes, having been written in a Christmas card sent to Her Majesty by her former Principal Private Secretary, Sir Edward Ford.

another See HERES A FUNNY.

another country Julian Mitchells play Another Country (1981; film UK 1984) shows how the seeds of defection to Soviet Russia were sown in a group of boys at an English public school. The title comes not, as might be thought, from the celebrated line in Christopher Marlowes The Jew of Malta (circa 1592): Fornication: but that was in another country; / And besides the wench is dead. Rather, as the playwright has confirmed, it is taken from the second verse of Sir Cecil Spring Rices patriotic Last Poem (1918), which begins I vow to thee, my country and continues And theres another country, Ive heard of long ago / Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know. In the original context, the other country is Heaven, rather than the Soviet Union, of course. Another Country had earlier been used as the title of a novel (1962) by James Baldwin.

another day another dollar! What one says to oneself at the conclusion of toil. Obviously of American origin but now as well known in the UK where there does not appear to be an equivalent expression using pound instead of dollar. Partridge/Catch Phrases dates the phrase from the 1940s in the UK and from circa 1910 in the US.

another little drink wouldnt do us any harm This boozers jocular justification for another snort is rather more than a catchphrase. Allusion is made to it in Edith Sitwells bizarre lyrics for Scotch

Rhapsody in Façade (1922): There is a hotel at Ostend / Cold as the wind, without an end, / Haunted by ghostly poor relations/ And Another little drink wouldnt do us any harm, / Pierces through the sabbatical calm. The actual origin is in a song with the phrase as title, written by Clifford Grey to music by Nat D. Ayer and sung by George Robey in the show The Bing Boys Are Here (1916). It includes a reference to the well-known fact that Prime Minister Asquith was at times the worse for wear when on the Treasury Bench: Mr Asquith says in a manner sweet and calm: / And another little drink wouldnt do us any harm.