A Fools’ Paradise “Fowele’s Parays, a well joyful place.” —St. Brandon: a 14th-century MS. A fools’ paradise is a state of foolish, though it may appear happy, illusion. Ancient theologians, being human, and having human limitations in outlook, divided the future state into compartments. Besides Paradise, or state of everlasting bliss, and Hades (Sheol), the pit of everlasting death, there was a “Limbo” (Latin, Limbus: a border, or edge). Dante makes...

Burn The Candle At Both Ends “Apt to light their candle at both ends; that is to say, they are apt to consume too much and work too little.”—HANWAY, Travels, it. i, 3. The meaning of this phrase is to use one’s resources unprofitably in two directions at once. Normally people burn candles at one end only. To burn a candle at both ends at the same time would be folly....

Cobbler, Stick to Your Last! “Ne supra crepldam suitor judlcaret.” (Confine your judgment to your shoemaking.) (Pliny, xxxv. X, 85.) This phrase is generally used to convey the idea that man-kind is compartmented in its knowledge, and that a man should express opinions on those matters only which he has specially studied. A doctor specialises in medicine and anatomy; a soldier in the science and art of war; an architect is...

Feather His Own Nest “By this means . . . they feather their nests well enough.” -SSUBBES: The Anatomy of Abuse (1583). Human creatures are not alone, in the great family of living things, in their seeking after comfort. Since time began, or, at least since the coming of life on our planet, it has been very natural that “the brute creation” should seek to make their surroundings as cheerful as...

Scratch A Russian And Find A Tartar “Scratch the Russian, you’ll find the Cossack.” This saying is attributed to Napoleon I, and means that, underneath the veneer, or coating, of civilisation, is barbarism in all its primitive rudeness. Russia has ever been the target of the cynic politician; the accusation, implicit or explicit, being that Russians are a people with only a pretence or semblance of civilisation; in other words, hypocritical...

A Sardonic Smile and with Sardonian smile Laughing at her, his false intent to shade. -SPENSER : Faerie .Queen, v, ix (1596). When a person smiles sardonically, we know well that it is not a smile which emanates from pleasure; rather the contrary. It is one expressing contempt or irony, as when forced to swallow a “bitter pill” of disappointment. John de Trevisa, the 14th-century translator of Higden’s Polychronicon, says, in...

Plain as a Pikestaff “A new game . . . that has no policie nor knaverie, but plaine as a pike-staffe.” -ROBERT GREENE: A Notable Discovery of Coosnage (1591). That is: no hidden, double meaning; but plain, honest, straightforward dealing. Centuries ago, “packmen,” or pedlars of cotton, linen, and woollen cloths, tramped from town to country with their bundles. They carried a staff, which was an aid in walking and a...

In A Scrape “I was generally the leader of the boys, and sometimes led them into serapes.”—FRANKLIN, Autobiography (1771). To “get into a scrape,” in colloquial speech, means: to become involved in any difficult, and perhaps distressful, situation, financially or morally. In all probability, the word “scrape,” like its cognate “scratch,” is onomatopoeic. In its nominative sense, it signifies a hollow formed by deer at certain seasons, in scraping the surface...