Clôture
or no
Clôture? That is the question:
Whether ‘tis better, on the whole,
to suffer
The waste and worry of malign Obstruction,
Or to take arms against the plague of Spouters,
And, by mouth-closing, foil them? To rise—to vote
No more;—and, by a vote,
to find we end
The boredom and the thousand wanton ‘blocks’
The Session’s heir to. ’Tis a consummation
116 WORDS GALORE
Devoutly to be wished. To rise—to vote—
To vote! Perchance to gag. Ay, there’s the rub;
For from that Vote what tyranny may come,
When we have wriggled from Obstruction’s coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the consideration
That makes endurance of so long a life:
For who would bear the
quips and quirks of Bartlett,
Tart Biggar’s tongue, O’Donnell’s contumely,
The gibes of gadfly Gorst, Warton’s delay,
The cheek of callow Churchill, and the spurns
That patient
Forster of rude Healy takes,
When he to them might their quietus give
With a bare majority? Who’d night-sittings bear
To yawn and faint for twenty weary hours,
But that the fear of after-hurt to Freedom,—
That
glory of our Country, whose wide bourn
No Liberal would limit, clogs the will
And makes us rather bear the ills we have,
Than fly to others that we may not measure?
Thus Caution
does make cowards of us all;
And thus the Statesman’s native resolution,
Is hampered by the cobweb coils of doubt
And politicians of great pith and prowess,
From this reform their faces turn aside,
Dreading the name of—
Clôture!
Like memorable titles good political slogans are effective because they are stereotyped expressions to be
used over and over again. Over-exposure may eventually turn a political slogan into a cliché. That has been
the fate of political slogans like
better dead than red, la lutta continua, power to the people, black is
beautiful, for Queen and country, the free world, a just peace, no surrender, the new world order,
and so
forth.
The same is true of religious sayings and advertising slogans. Religious sayings may become hackneyed
e.g.
to fall on stony ground, said of ideas that fail to win acceptance (an allusion to the parable of the sower
in Matthew 13:5–6) or
to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39). Successful advertising campaigns can suffer
the same fate, e.g. there are numerous hackneyed variations on the theme of Heineken:
[the lager that]
refreshes the parts other beers can’t reach
.
Many clichés contain words that almost invariably occur in each other’s company. Although they contain
several distinct words, these are often used as though they were single lexical items, e.g.
blissful ignorance,
quiet confidence, a commanding lead, hawks and doves, a tower of strength, a bouncing baby, a staunch
Protestant, a raving loony
.
Some clichés are called CATCH-PHRASES. Catch-phrases are popular expressions which virtually
function as lexical items. Often such expressions are associated with a well-known song, film, show, book,
118 WORDS GALORE
or a famous personality. For instance, Sherlock Holmes’s
‘elementary, my dear Watson’ (i.e. ‘obvious’) is
now part of the standard language. More examples are listed in [9.5]:
[9.5]
a.
never had it so good
From
‘Our people have never had it so good.’
(Harold Macmillan, British Prime Minister 1959–63)
b.
you ain’t seen (or heard) nothin’ yet (i.e. it is greater, worse etc. than you think.)
(From
The Barker, a 1927 Broadway play by Kenyon Nicholson.)
c.
good in parts, like the curate’s egg
A curate is taking breakfast in his bishop’s home:
‘I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones.’
‘Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent.’
(From an illustrated
joke by Gerald du Maurier in Punch 1895, vol. CIX, p. 222.)
d.
anything goes!
(=‘Anything is permissible, do exactly as you please.’
c. 930; popularised by a Cole Porter song and musical
comedy.)
e.
Never a dull moment
Used ironically in moments of excitement or danger.
(Royal Navy, dating from 1939)
(from Beale 1985)
Sometimes the origin of even a fairly recent catch-phrase is in dispute. Take the expression
the real
McCoy,
meaning ‘first rate’. This catch-phrase, applied to people and things of the highest quality since the
1880s, has two possible origins. According to Partridge (1986), it originated in Scotland where it applied to
an excellent brand of whisky.
However, in the USA it is said to have originated from one of the inventions of Elijah McCoy (1843–
1929) an African-American mechanical engineer who patented the first ‘lubricating cup’ which
continuously oiled the gears while the locomotive engine was running. (This was an important step in the
development of engine technology. Previously engines needed to make frequent stops to be oiled, which
cost their owners money in lost journeys. Lubricating caps were soon fitted on all other kinds of steam
engines.) By the 1920s, the McCoy system was considered an essential part of heavy-duty engines. If you
sold an engine, the buyer would ask if it was ‘the real McCoy’, i.e. was fitted with the McCoy system (cf. Haber
1970:51–9).
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