At one point, when talking with someone younger than I am, I commented on something that ended well as going out in a blaze of glory. The younger person brightened and asked, “Oh, so you like Guns and Roses?” Not seeing the connection I admitted that I didn’t know their music. “That’s who said, ‘go out in a blaze of glory.’” Well, they may have said it, but not first. It is, like a lot of what folks say, an allusion to something someone else wrote or said. Shakespeare and the Bible give us the majority of the most common allusions, but stacks of other writers have contributed to our language—though fewer and fewer people know it all the time. (As for “blaze of glory,” that appears to have originated in John Dryden’s poem “The Hind and the Panther,” written in 1686.) Below is just a smattering of allusions. There will be more in time.
Best laid plans of mice and men This line, often used as things come crashing in, refers to a line in the poem “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns. In the poem, Burns, while plowing a field, has turned up the nest of a field mouse, he mourns that his activity has disrupted the mouse’s careful preparations. “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley” (go oft awry). It’s a lovely poem that is not often read in the United States as the Scottish dialect in which it is written makes it hard for most readers to understand. Yet one of the most famous verses is easy to grasp and is perhaps the best known from the poem.
I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!
Take it with a grain of salt Romans believed that salt could make dangerous or tainted food safe, hence, anything suspicious was “taken with a grain of salt.” A prescription to take something (in this case, an antidote to poison) cum grano salis was first recorded by Pliny the Elder (a.d. 23-79) in his Natural History.
Babbitt Title character in a novel by Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt is successful but unimaginative and ruled by the opinions of others. He thinks he might want to become more cultured, but he sinks quickly back into the ordinariness of a life that is all bustle and business. The word Babbitt has come to mean any average, conforming American with no interest in culture.
Belling the cat Reference to an old fable that appears in Piers Plowman, as well as other sources, in which a mouse suggests that someone put a bell on the cat, so all mice will know when the cat is coming. A young mouse asks who is going to put the bell on the cat, reminding all that this would be a dangerous and potentially fatal task. Hence, belling the cat is being asked to undertake a dangerous task that will benefit others.
Casanova Real life seducer Giovanni Jacopo Casanova de Seingalt built his own reputation of lechery by writing his lengthy Mémoires. He led a vicious life, posing as an alchemist, preacher, gambler, diplomat, and more, in order to mingle with the upper classes. Today, if one is referred to as a Casanova, the allusion is only to the reputation for amorous escapades.
Dog in the manger In an old fable, a dog sits on the hay in the feedbox (manger) of an ox, and though the dog cannot eat the hay, he barks and snarls at the ox and will not let it eat. Today the term refers to any mean-spirited person who prevents someone else from having or enjoying something, even though it is of no use to himself or herself.
Don Juan Legendary hero of numerous plays, poems, stories, and operas. Don Juan was the son of a notable family in Seville, Spain, in the 1300s. In some versions of the story, such as Byron’s epic poem Don Juan, while still a ladies’ man, he is a more sympathetic character, but in most works, he is clearly a villain. His name became a synonym for aristocratic libertine, rake, or unprincipled playboy.
For Whom the Bell Tolls Title of a novel by Ernest Hemmingway that is an allusion to a famous poem by John Donne. In the novel, the hero, Robert Jordan, dies after blowing up a bridge during the Spanish Civil War. The allusion to the Donne poem suggests that we are connected to Jordan. Donne’s poem states, “No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Lilliputian In Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Lilliput, a land where people are only six inches tall, is one of the countries visited by Lemuel Gulliver. Lilliputian is now used to describe things that are very small.
Svengali In the novel Trilby by George du Maurier, Svengali is a sinister musician who uses his hypnotic power to control the lovely young Trilby O’Ferral. The name has come to mean anyone who has huge and generally sinister influence over someone else.
Trojan horse A reference to the massive wooden horse in Homer’s Illiad and Virgil’s Aeneid that the Greeks use to smuggle soldiers into Troy, leading to the destruction of Troy. Today, it refers to a trick that appears innocent but allows an enemy to penetrate a stronghold, or, even more recently, it is a computer program that can damage a system that is imbedded in legitimate software.
Vanity Fair A fair held in a town called Vanity in John Bunyan’s book The Pilgrim’s Progress, a place that seems to offer pleasure, but is filled with cheats, thieves, fools, knaves, fools, murder, and lies. It was then adopted by William Makepeace Thackeray as the title of his novel, which satirizes English society in the early 1800s. The heroine, Becky Sharp, sacrifices everything including, ultimately, her own happiness in order to get ahead in society. The term also applies to any preoccupation that is self-focused and vain.
