DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE, GIVING THE Derivation, Source, or Origin of Common Phrases, Allusions, and Words that have a Tale to Tell. BY THE REV. E. COBHAM BREWER, LL.D., OF TRINITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE; Author of "Guide to Science," Guide to Every-day Knowledge," &c. &c. CASSELL, PETTER, AND GALPIN; AND 596, BROADWAY, NEW YORK. Ref Cam. Radel. ( PREFACE. "WHAT has this babbler to say ?" is substantially the question of every one to whom a new book is offered. For ourselves, it will be difficult to ft ish an answer in a sentence equally terse and explicit; yet our book has a definite scope and distinct speciality, which we will proceed to unfold. We call it a "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," a title wide enough, no doubt, to satisfy a very lofty ambition, yet not sufficiently wide to describe the miscellaneous contents of this "alms-basket of words." As the Gargantuan course of studies included everything known to man and something more, so this sweep-net of a book encloses anything that comes within its reach. It draws in curious or novel etymologies, pseudonyms and popular titles, local traditions and literary blunders, biographical and historical trifles too insignificant to find a place in books of higher pretension, but not too worthless to be worth knowing. Sometimes a criticism is adventured, sometimes an exposition. Vulgar errors, of course, form an item; for the prescience of the ant in laying up a store for winter, the wisdom of the bee in the peculiar shape of its honey-comb, the disinterestedness of the jackal, the poisonous nature of the upas tree, and the striding of the Rhodian Colossos, if not of the nature of fable, are certainly "more strange than true." In regard to etymology, it forms a staple of the book, which professes to give "the derivation, source, or origin of words that have a tale to tell." Thus, abandon is to "desert your colours;" church means "a circle," and not "God's house," as is usually given; prevaricate is "to go zig-zag," or "plough a crooked furrow;" scrupulous is to get a "stone in one's shoe;" sir is cousin german to the Greek "anax," a |