fluttering the dovecots
hot chicks and other people: i was telling my friend orson how last weekend i made the embarrassing gaffe of pairing a 2007 dutton ranch shop block pinot blanc with my meal of roasted chicken and root vegetables and the sommelier came up to me and very discreetly asked if perhaps i might want to try a heavier wine that was more suitable for the robust winter flavors of my dish. and then orson was like, “what do somalians know about wine anyway? there ain’t no no vineyards in the desert.”
indeed, orson. there surely ain’t.
however, what i lack in wine pairing, i pretend to make up for in picking out words that begin with f. therefore, in hounour of orson, please allow me to be your f-word somalian for the day. from an obscure 1922 dictionary* of “phraseological allusions”:
- Fair Maid of February: the snowdrop which blooms in February
- False as Waghorn: utterly false. Waghorn according to a Scottish proverb was nineteen times falser than the devil
- Fan with a feather: to employ wholly inefficient means to achieve one’s end
- Fanfaron: a boaster who behaves as if announced by a fanfare of trumpets
- Felo de Se: a suicide (a felon from himself)
- Fiddler’s news: stale news such as that formerly circulated by itinerant fiddlers
- Fides Carbonarii: implicit faith. A carbonaro being asked what he believed replied, “What the Church believes” and being asked once again what the Church believes replied, “What I believe”
- The Five wits: commonsense, imagination, fantasy, estimation, and memory
- Flagrante Delicto: caught in the very act
- Fleshpots of Egypt: good things of this world formerly at one’s disposal, but no longer so.
- Florimel’s Girdle: the test of chastity
- Flutter the dovecots: to cause a mild excitement in society
- A Fox’s sleep: pretended indifference to what is transpiring. In allusion to the proverbial cunning of the fox
- French Crown: baldness caused by venereal disease
- Frozen music: architecture
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*a dictionary of english phrases: phraseological allusions, catchwords, stereotyped modes of speech and metaphors, nicknames, sobriquets, derivations, from personal names, etc. edited by albert m. hyamson (1922).
