Who will bell the cat

‘Belling the Cat’ is a fable also known under the titles ‘The Bell and the Cat’ and ‘The Mice in Council’. Although often attributed to Aesop, it was not recorded before the Middle Ages and has been confused with the quite different fable of Classical origin titled ‘The Cat and the Mice’.  

The Fable concerns a group of mice who debate plans to nullify the threat of a marauding cat. One of them proposes placing a bell around its neck, so that they are warned of its approach. The plan is applauded by the others, until one mouse asks who will volunteer to place the bell on the cat. All of them make excuses. The story is used to teach the wisdom of evaluating a plan not only on how desirable the outcome would be, but also on how it can be executed. It provides a moral lesson about the fundamental difference between ideas and their feasibility, and how this affects the value of a given plan.

This illustration, for Jean de La Fontaine's fables, by Gustave Doré shows the 'rats' in council so his version of the fable must have had rats in place of mice.

Well-oiled

I used the expression well-oiled in relation to my burned hand recently – i.e. I was keeping my hand well-oiled, that is, covered in oil.  It also means operating efficiently.  But well-oiled has a more common colloquial use – it means drunk. 

  

Locavore

I frequently put archaic words on this blog but here is one from modern times.  A locavore is a consumer who only buys locally produced food and other products.  The name was an invention of four San Francisco women in 2005 who set out on a culinary adventure to see if they could live only on things found within 100 miles.

Paraphernalia and parapherna

If I were to enumerate my favourite sounding words paraphernalia would be on that list.  It is a noun meaning miscellaneous articles, especially the equipment needed for a particular activity; trappings associated with a particular institution or activity (often such as are regarded as superfluous).  

Its origins are as a legal word and in the mid-17^th century it meant those articles of personal property which the law allowed a married woman to keep, and, to a certain extent, deal with as her own.  i.e. not a lot!! 

The Latin word parapherna meant, in Roman law meant a wife’s articles over and above her dowry – which remained her husband’s.  In the 18^th century that word too came into English law to mean the same thing – the wife’s belongings that hadn’t come as her dowry.

Dowsabel

 Young maid in a doorway by Otto Plitz

In the 16^th century a dowsabel was a sweet young maid. Dowsabell can be spelled with one or two ‘l’s but either way it is pronounced DOW-suh-bell

Dowsabell is the daughter of Cassamen, a knight of Arden, who fell in love with a shepherd.   In ‘Dowsabell’ - a ballad by Michael Drayton (1563 – 1631)  the two make love with Arcadian simplicity, and vow eternal fidelity.

    With that she bent her snow-white knee,

    Down by the shepherd kneeléd she,

    And him she sweetly kist.

    With that the shepherd whooped for joy

    Quoth he, `There's never shepherd boy

    That ever was so blist.'

By the 17^th century it had also come to be used as a forename (first known use said to be 1652 but one suspects it may have been earlier and followed its use by Drayton).  It’s origins may have been in the Latin name Dulcibella – sweet and beautiful.

Fiasco

A fiasco is a thing that is a complete failure; a disaster, especially in a ludicrous or humiliating way.  I recently read about a fiasco full of wine! 

 It turns out to be a typical Italian style of bottle, usually with a round body and bottom, partially or completely covered with a close-fitting straw basket.  The sort of bottle that Chianti used to appear in with a  good steak dinner at Berni Inns when I was young.  I've quaffed many a fiasco - and also been a part of a few!

To bite the bullet

   To "bite the bullet" is to endure a painful or otherwise unpleasant situation that is seen as unavoidable.  The phrase was first recorded by Rudyard Kipling in his 1891 novel The Light that Failed.   It is often stated that it is derived historically from the practice of having a patient clench a bullet in his or her teeth as a way to cope with the pain of a surgical procedure without anesthetic. But evidence for biting a bullet rather than a leather strap during surgery is sparse.  It os more likely to have evolved from the British empire expression "to bite the cartridge", which dates to the Indian Rebellion of 1857. In this version of the etymology, the idea of tolerating necessary hardship refers to the British wish that the sepoys would ignore any small presence of animal fat in their paper cartridges.