An Idiosyncratic Adventure: Books of Trivia, Connections, and Unexpected Inspiration · 8:22pm Jan 5th, 2021
Blog Number 124: "Look What I Looked Up!" Edition
You ever done that thing where you take a pony's name and look it up in a reference book? I have. The ponies taken were the Main Six (plus Spike). The reference book?
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 20th Edition!
I love my book.
For those not in the know:
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is like an encyclopedia, except instead of straightforwardly defining words or elaborating on a single concept, it mentions and lists any interesting trivia, historical and mythical associations, unknown stories, near-forgotten quotations, further interconnected words, and common idioms and phrases that we often take for granted.
Originally, it was one of a bunch of books compiled by a Victorian man called the Reverend Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, who wanted to bring education to a wider audience and who was basically a reference geek a couple of centuries before it was cool. There have been multiple variations since, and the Brewer's series has taken off since his day.
I first came across a version of Brewer's in my local library, the edition with a foreword by Terry Pratchett. In fact, it was because Pratchett once talked about it elsewhere that the book first came to my attention.
I pretty much dove in and never really surfaced since, to the point I later went out and bought my own copy, the most recent edition, so that I could dive in and swim through its pages whenever I fancied an informational dip. It's overwhelming and engaging and exciting and fascinating all at once!
What's so great about it is the specialization in the obscure.
In book form, it's a combination of the Wiki Walk incarnate and a conceptual family get-together, where even the odd ones out get a place at the table. An interconnected web of unexpected ideas, some familiar, some bizarre, some straightforward, some obsolete, some completely inexplicable: each leading on to the next, over a thousand pages of language tidbits and cultural discoveries just waiting to be brought to the surface.*
* (For instance: according to Brewer's, you could describe Applejack as a "blouzelinda" but not as a similar-seeming "dowsabell", even though Rarity would prefer the latter. See the end of the blog for why!).
For a writer looking for inspiration, it's a treasure trove.
So of course I use it to look up some words and names.
For instance, if I were to write something for obscure background pony White Lightning, I could look up "white" in the dictionary and get a glimpse of its etymological connection to "wheat". I could look it up on Wikipedia and get a general (if technical) overview of its historic associations, occurrences in nature, and so on, in a single detailed article.
And I could also look up "white" in Brewer's, and get a flurry of strange and unexpected ideas, such as:
- The White Bird: The conscience, or the soul, of man, e.g. in Islamic symbolism (N.B. this and others are not found on Wikipedia's article on "white").
- Whitehall: Formerly burned-down thoroughfare in London and now the executive arm of the British government, as well as associated phrases Whitehall farce (mid-20th century bedroom farces performed at the nearby Whitehall Theatre) and Whitehall Warrior (former military officer turned civil servant, usually working there).
- The White Horse: Emblem of the Saxons, famous ancient symbol visible on the Uffington hills, and associated phrases such as White horses (foaming whiteness on large waves) and White Horse Final (soccer game incident involving fans on the pitch and a constable on an iconic white horse trying to get them off).
- White night: A sleepless night, or the prolonged days in northern Russia where the sun does not set during the Summer months.
- White's: Originally a chocolate house in London, later (as richer and more famous clientele claimed an upstairs room and gained more notoriety) morphed into one of London's first fashionable clubs. Possibly a gaming house at various points in its history.
- White Tincture: The alchemical substance that could turn any base metal into silver. Basically the runner-up in the hunt for the Philosopher's Stone.
Keep in mind, that's each from one of six pages on the theme of "white". We've got the conscience, a famous political hub, a rural symbol, a diurnal/sleep concept, a chocolate connection, and alchemy. Everything is interconnected with everything.
This is by no means a complete list, so the number of possible angles to take and threads to chase is even larger. Combine that with the Wikipedia and dictionary etymological entries, and you could easily have enough ideas to satisfy your writing for years.
Based on one word.
Definitions, overviews, allusions, and unexpected connections: imagine where they could take you, including if and when applied to ponyfic!
So let's do it!
Using the names (or parts from the names) of the seven main characters (Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Spike, Twilight Sparkle), I looked up and copied out relevant entries as samples of what the book has to offer.
Some produced obvious results (Fluttershy), others were surprisingly detailed (Pinkie Pie), some didn't quite match but had workable proxies (Twilight Sparkle), and some had really interesting neighbouring articles (Rarity).
The results are listed below alphabetically. To help make navigation easier, there is a contents section first listing the terms I looked up.
Note that:
- I treat Spike as "Spike the Dragon". Hence you get both "Spike" and "Dragon".
- "Applejack" is included under "Apple".
- "Pink", "Rare", and "Spark" substitute for "Pinkie", "Rarity", and "Sparkle" respectively, since I couldn't find an exact match for them.
- Rarity gets a couple of interesting neighbours partly because her name is too short to yield a satisfying result, and partly because they do thematically fit in their own ways, are somewhat relevant to the main entries, and yield interesting information.
- Fluttershy gets something similar with the added honorary article "Butterfly", because both her other entries ("Flutter" and "Shy") were extremely short.
Contents
Brewer's Dictionary of Ponies and Fire-Breathers
Apple
Butterfly
Dash
Dragon
Flutter
Pie
Pink
Rainbow
Rara avis
Rare
Raree show
Shy
Spark
Spike
Twilight
Brewer's Dictionary of Ponies and Fire-breathers
Apple
Apple: The apple has a related name in many languages, such as German Apfel, Russian yabloko, Welsh afal and Irish úll (earlier abhall), and the Roman town of Abella (now Avella) in Campania, Italy, was said by Virgil to be so named because it looked over apple trees (et quos maliferae despectant moinia Abellae) (Aeneid, vii, 740 (1st century BC)). The apple also appears more than once in Greek legend. See also Adam's apple; Atalanta; Avalon; Big Apple; Hesperides.
There is no mention of an apple in the Bible story of Eve's temptation. She took 'the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden' (Genesis 3:3).
For the story of William Tell and the apple see under Tell.
Applejack: An apple turnover is sometimes so called in East Anglia. In the USA the name is that of a drink distilled from fermented apple juice, something like French Calvados.
Apple of discord: A cause of dispute, or bone of contention. At the marriage of Thetis and Peleus, where all the gods and goddesses assembled, Discord (Eris), who had not been invited, threw on the table a golden apple inscribed 'For the Fairest'. Hera (Juno), Athene (Minerva) and Aphrodite (Venus) put in their claims, and Paris, as referee, gave judgement in favour of Aphrodite. This brought him the vengeance of Hera and Athene, so beginning a chain of events that led to the fall of Troy.
Apple-polishing: An attempt to win favour by gifts or flattery, from the practice of US schoolchildren taking shiny red apples to their teachers.
Butterfly
Butterfly: Figuratively, a person who can never settle on anything for long, but who flits from one interest or pleasure to another.
Butterfly effect: The notion, in Chaos Theory, that a very small difference in the initial state of a physical system can make a significant difference to the state at some later time. The allusion is to the title of a paper delivered by the meteorologist Edward Lorenz to the American Association for the Advancement of Science on 29 December 1979 in Washington: 'Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?'
Butterfly kiss: A 'kiss' given by lightly brushing a person's cheek with one's flickering eyelashes.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee: The strategy-in-a-nutshell of the US boxer Muhammad Ali (1942-2016), who was flamboyantly light on his feet for a heavyweight but packed a considerable punch. The formulation was probably the work of his aide Drew 'Bundini' Brown.
Have butterflies in one's stomach, To: To experience a fluttering sensation in one's stomach before a formidable venture.
'I always have butterflies when I open Parliament,' she [Queen Elizabeth II] remarked.
Sunday Times (25 January 1959)
Madame Butterfly: In John Luther Long's story (1897) named after her, Cio-Cio-San, a naive Japanese geisha, falls in love with the US naval officer B. F. Pinkerton only to be deserted by him when she is pregnant. When he returns to Japan married to an American she commits Hara-Kiri. Her story is familiar from David Belasco's play (1900) and above all from Puccini's opera version (1904).
Dash
Dashing White Sergeant: A lively Scottish country dance performed in sets of three. It was devised by David Anderson of Dundee c.1890 and takes its name from the title of a song composed c.1792 by General Burgoyne and subsequently incorporated into the libretto of an operetta by Sir Henry Bishop. The music of the dance is set to Bishop's tune.
Dash it all, dash my wig, dash my buttons: In these expressions 'dash' is a euphemism for 'damn'. Wig, buttons, and so on are the relics of a fashion adopted by fops and dandies in the late 19th century of 'swearing' without using profane or obscene language.
Cut a dash, To: To make a show; to get oneself looked at and talked about through one's stylish demeanour or striking appearance.
Dragon
Dragon: The Greek word drakōn is related to drakos, 'eye', and in classical legend the idea of watching is retained in the story of the dragon who guards the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides, and in the story of Cadmus. In medieval romance captive ladies were often guarded by dragons.
A dragon is a fabulous winged crocodile, usually represented as of large size, with a serpent's tail, so that dragon and serpent are sometimes interchangeable. In the Middle Ages the word was the symbol of sin in general and paganism in particular, the metaphor being derived from Revelation 12:9, where Satan is termed both 'the great dragon' and 'that old serpent', and from Psalm 91:13, where it is said 'the dragon shalt thou trample under feet'. Hence, in Christian art it has the same significance.
Among the many saints usually pictured as dragon-slayers are St Michael, St George, St Margaret, St Samson, archbishop of Dol, St Clement of Metz, St Romain of Rouen, destroyer of the huge dragon La Gargouille, which ravaged the Seine, St Philip the Apostle, St Martha, slayer of the terrible dragon Tarasque (associated with Tarascon, the saint's patronal city), St Florent, who killed a dragon which haunted the Loire, St Cado, St Maudet and St Pol, who performed similar feats in Brittany, and St Keyne of Cornwall.
Among the ancient Britons and the Welsh the dragon was the national symbol on the war standard. Hence the term Pendragon for the dux bellorum, or leader in war. See also Red Dragon.
Flutter
Flutter: A colloquial term for a small gamble. The allusion is to the excitement involved.
Flutter to the dovecotes, To: To alarm, disturb, or cause confusion among those conventionally minded or settled in their ways, as would a bird of prey in a dovecote.
Pie
Pie: A printer's term to describe the mix-up of types (as when dropped), or a jumble of letters when a word or sentence is badly printed. It may be an allusion to the mixed ingredients in a pie, or it may come from the assortment of types used in the old pie or pre-Reformation books of rules for finding the prayers proper for the day. The ordinal was called the pica or pie from the colour and confused appearance of the rules which were printed in old black-letter type on white paper, thus giving a pied appearance (Latin pica, 'magpie').
Pink
Pink: The flower may be so called because the edges of the petals are 'pinked' or notched (although alternatively the name could be from the old phrase 'pink eye', meaning a small eye). The verb 'to pink' means to pierce or perforate, also to ornament dress material by punching holes in it so that the lining can be seen, scalloping or zigzagging the edges and so on. In the 17th century it was commonly used of stabbing an adversary, especially in a duel.
'There went another eyelet-hole to his broidered jerkin!' - 'Fairly pinked, by G-d!' In fact, the last exclamation was uttered amid a general roar of applause, accompanying a successful and conclusive lunge, by which Peveril ran his gigantic antagonist through the body.
Sir Walter Scott: Peveril of the Peak, ch xxxii (1823)
The colour pink came to be associated with homosexuals from the time of the Second World War, when Nazi concentration camp prisoners identified as such were obliged to wear a pink triangle. The colour is readily accepted by the gay community, and the Pink Paper is a weekly national newspaper for lesbians and gay men, founded in 1987. The adoption of this particular colour probably comes from its traditional feminine associations, as distinct from 'masculine' blue.
Pink elephants: Hallucinations supposedly experienced by those who have drunk to excess.
In the pink: In excellent health. The phrase is an abbreviation of the expression 'in the pink of health' or 'in the pink of condition', meaning in the 'flower' or best state.
Rainbow
Rainbow: The old legend is that if one reaches the spot where a rainbow touches the earth and digs there, one will be sure to find a pot of gold. Hence visionaries, wool-gatherers, day-dreamers and the like are sometimes called rainbow chasers, because of their habit of hoping for impossible things.
Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.E. V. Harburg, 'Over the Rainbow' (song from the film The Wizard of Oz) (1939)
Rara avis
Rara avis: (Latin, 'rare bird') A phenomenon; a prodigy; something quite out of the ordinary. The term was first applied by Juvenal to the black swan, which until its discovery in Australia was unknown.
Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno (A bird rarely seen on the earth, like nothing so much as a black swan).
Juvenal: Satires, vi (2nd century AD)
Rare
Rare: Underdone, as of a steak, or less commonly, lightly cooked, as of an egg.
The word is a variant of the obsolete rear, from Old English hrēr, perhaps related to hrēran, meaning 'to stir', 'to move'.
Brewer's Etymologies
Rare Ben: The inscription on the tomb of Ben Jonson (1573-1637), the dramatist, in the north nave aisle of Westminster Abbey. 'O rare Ben Jonson', was, says John Aubrey, 'done at the charge of Jack Young (afterwards knighted), who, walking there when the grave was covered, gave the fellow eighteen pence to cut it.' 'Rare' here is Latin rarus, 'uncommon', 'remarkable'.
Raree show
Raree show: A peepshow, a show carried about in a box. In the 17th century most of the travelling showmen were Savoyards, and perhaps this represents their attempt at pronunciation of 'rare'.
Bowed to the earth with bitter woe,
Or laughing at some raree-show,
We flutter idly to and fro.Lewis Carroll: Sylvie and Bruno, Dedication (1889)
Shy
Fight shy of, To: To avoid; to resist being brought into conflict.
Spark
Sparks: A colloquial term for an electrician or a ship's radio operator.
Marks and Sparks: A colloquial jingling name for the Marks & Spencer clothes and food stores, current from about the 1940s.
In their Marks and Sparks' woollies and living in what looks like a remarkably nice housing estate, Topsy and Tim clearly stand in for classless society.
Sunday Times (5 April 1964)
Old Sparky: A grimly humorous nickname in US prison slang for the electric chair.
Spike
Spike: Slang for the workhouse, so that 'to go on the spike' was to become a workhouse inmate. 'Spike' is also a colloquialism for a High Church Anglican and the Church Times is colloquially known as 'Spiky Bits'.
Spike a drink, To: To add strong spirits, perhaps surreptitiously, to increase the alcoholic content.
Spike someone's guns, To: To render someone's plans abortive; to thwart someone's intention. The allusion is to the old way of making a gun useless by driving a spike into the touch hole.
Twilight
Twilight of the Gods, The: See Ragnarok.
Twilight sleep: A state of semi-consciousness produced by injection of scopolamine and morphia in which a woman can undergo childbirth with comparatively little pain. See also Truth Drug.
Twilight zone: The run-down area that sometimes develops around the central business district of a city.
Celtic twilight: The title used by W. B. Yeats for his collection of stories (1893) based on Irish folk-tales. Hence the term's sometimes disparaging use for Irish folklore in general.
Hope you enjoyed the reading as much as I enjoyed the writing!
Impossible Numbers, out.
P.S. To follow up from that earlier point about the "blouzelinda" and the similar-seeming "dowsabell" (a recap in the next para if you need reminding)...
(For instance: according to Brewer's, you could describe Applejack as a "blouzelinda" but not as a similar-seeming "dowsabell", even though Rarity would prefer the latter. See the end of the blog for why!).
Now for the explanation:
Blouzelinda: A country girl in John Gay's set of pastorals The Shepherd's Week (1714). She is not the usual simple rustic maiden but a stolid farm worker, milking the cows, feeding the pigs and doing other equally unromantic things. Her name is probably influenced by that of Dowsabell, but more directly derives from 'blowze' as a word for 'a ruddy, fat-faced young woman' (Chambers Dictionary, 1998).
We fair fine ladies, who park out our lives
From common sheep-paths, cannot help the crows
From flying over. - we're as natural still
As Blowsalinda.Elizabeth Barret Browning, Aurora Leigh, Bk III (1857)
Compare that notably unromantic version to "dowsabell".
Dowsabell: A common name in 16th-century poetry for a sweetheart, especially a simple country girl. It is a form of the name 'Dulcibella', popularly interpreted as French douce et belle, 'sweet and beautiful'. See also Blouzelinda.
He had, as antique stories tell,
A daughter cleaped [called] Dowsabell,
A mayden fayre and free.Michael Drayton, Eclogues (1593)
But which is Blouzelinda and which is Dowsabell? Oh, the fun you can have with a contrast like that... 
A couple of things I should mention, for clarification:
Fun stuff!
I have to point out something, though:
St. Martha herself didn't slay Tarasque, she tamed him, and then brought him into town to apologize to the people for eating their children. It was the townspeople who clubbed him to death. (Apology not accepted, I guess?)
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Just checked it on Wikipedia, and you are correct. Maybe it counts as death by proxy? But I'll concede the point.
Should be open and say I am entirely welcome to the prospect that Brewer's might contain inaccuracies that should be corrected.
Checking multiple sources is very useful in this regard.
5429213
Yeah, Martha ought to have known what was going to happen.
Nit-picks about oversimplification aside, it seems that Brewer's is a great resource. I just ordered a copy!
Well and truly fascinating. I may need to get a copy for myself.
5429217
There's something very Fluttershy about taming a draconic monster and getting it to apologize for eating people.
and 5429223
Regardless, I'm glad you found it fascinating. Reference books like these are very much my cup of tea.
5429326
It was $60 on Amazon, but really good reference books are rarely cheap. Incidentally, this is one of those cases where physical books are superior to PDFs and e-versions. You can explore a book like this, wandering (flipping) through the pages until something fascinating catches your eye.
And now I want to write a story about Fluttershy being horrified by a town of ponies that trample her apologetic monster!
This is very cool and it has at least one picture of Carrot Top, so I'm in. Gotta get my own copy!
Can't help but notice, though, that your entry on "rare (steak)" shows Rarity sporting an extremely well-done set of wings
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Oh, naturally. Besides, I can't tell you how to spend your money. Perish the thought! But I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't mention anything at all about it.
It's a good-sized book, certainly, so you're getting a fair bang for your buck. The 20th Edition has 1,517 pages, not including the introductory material at the start, the Brewer's Gems section in the middle, and A Short Dictionary of Curious Words at the end.
The first word of which is "abibliophobia: the fear or anxiety that one will run out of things to read."
You horrible person, you...
5429343
Wait, where's the Carrot? I don't recall putting in a Carrot.
On the contrary, they're very rare bordering on extinct. Rarity herself is shortly to become endangered.
I'm quite fond of apples.
5429507
Who doesn't love apples? (Apart from that one strawberry pegasus, of course).
At the library where I work:
Out here in the far-flung reaches of southern California, we have a copy of the 16th edition of Brewer's in the reference section. Because we're a proper library.
Mike