Blimey

Sometimes you’ll hear people say blimey or cor blimey as if they were residents of the UK.  The exclamation is one used to express surprise, excitement, or alarm.  The thing is, it seems to be used far more often by Americans and Canadians than by those from the UK.

Of course, part of the linkage is due to how blimey is used.  For example, in the March 27, 2016 Windsor Star in Windsor (Ontario, Canada), Sharon Hill reported on a British store and gift shop in Harrow, Ontario.  Set to celebrate its second anniversary in April, the shop is named Blimeys British Store and Gift Shop, and the article was titled, “Blimey: Award-winning British Shop In Harrow Still Surprising Customers.”

The previous week, Mike Tighe of the LaCross Tribune in Wisconsin (USA) wrote about the La Crosse Community Theatre auditions for their anticipated presentation of “Billy Elliot.”  The journalist made sure to use all kinds of British slang.  He made sure to mention that damp squib was British slang for total failure, and that gobsmacked was British slang for stunned.  He made sure readers knew that blinding was British slang for superb, and he made sure to include blimey in the headline, “Blimey: LCT Gets Smashing Cast for Billy Elliot.”

Even Sergio Ramos — who happens to be a Real Madrid defender — used the expression in an article published in Diario AS published in Madrid (Spain) on March 30, 2016.

Sometimes, when I’m in the shower, I start singing my head off. Lyrics just come to me and I think, ‘Blimey, what a lovely tune!’. For me, music’s a big part of my life and I take it into my professional life and share it with my team mates, and enjoy it.”

But do British newspapers and journalists use the word?  James Hall of the Telegraph used it in his  March 25, 2016 review of Ellie Goulding’s performance.  Near the end of his review titled, “Ellie Goulding Needs To Find Her Personality,” he wrote:

The other reason that Goulding needs a break was her banter. I got no sense of her personality from her between-song chat. Of course, Adele-style ‘cor blimey’ expletive-laden confessionals are not for everyone, but Goulding missed a chance to connect. There’s a fine line between saying you’re shy and appearing like you’re going through the motions.

In the 1997 play, “Home: A Play In Two Acts” by English playwright, screenwriter, award-winning novelist and a former professional rugby league player, David Storey (born 13 July 1933), the expression made its way into the Kathleen’s dialogue near the beginning of Act I.

MARJORIE:
Going to rain, ask me.

KATHLEEN:
Rain all it wants, ask me.  Cor … blimey!  Going to kill he is this.

MARJORIE:
Going to rain and catch us out here.  That’s what it’s going to do.

KATHLEEN:
Going to rain all right, in’t it?  Going to rain all right … Put your umbrella up — Sun’s still shining.  Cor blimey.  Invite rain that will.  Commonsense girl … Cor blimey .. My bleedin’ feet.

MARJORIE:
Out here and no shelter.  Be all right if it starts.

KATHLEEN:
Cor blimey … ‘Surprise me they don’t drop off … Cut clean through these will.

MARJORIE:
Clouds all over.  Told you we shouldn’t have come out.

KATHLEEN:
Get nothing if you don’t try, girl … Cor blimey!

Years earlier, as  American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature, Eugene O’Neill (16 October 1888 – 27 November 1953) began to make waves in the theater with his plays, what critics called his “most interesting play” hit its stride with a meteoric rise.

“The Emperor Jones” told the story of an African-American who was an ex-Pullman porter who arrives in the West Indies, and within two years of arriving in the West Indies, Brutus Jones makes himself emperor.  The play begins during a difficult time, after Brutus Jones has been in power for several years, and has amassed a large fortune thanks to the heavy taxes he imposed on the islanders he rule.  But times are not easy as rebellion is brewing in the capital.  A Cockney trader named Smithers is responsible for using blimey in the play.

SMITHERS:
Then you ain’t so foxy as I thought you was.  Where’s all your court?  The Generals and the Cabinet Ministers and all?

JONES:
Where dey mostly runs to minute I closes my eyes — drinkin’ rum and talkin’ big down in de town.  How come you don’t know dat?  Ain’t you sousin’ with ’em most every day?

SMITHERS:
That’s part of the day’s work.  I got ter — ain’t I — in my business?

JONES:
Yo’ business!

SMITHERS:
Gawd blimey, you was glad enough for me ter take you in on it when you landed here first.  You didn’t ‘ave no ‘igh and mighty airs in them days!

JONES:
Talk polite, white man!  Talk polite, you heah me!  I’m boss heah now, is you forgettin’?

SMITHERS:
No ‘arm meant, old top.

INTERESTING NOTE 1:  Eugene O’Neill was the father of Oona O’Neill (14 May 1925 – 27 September 1991), who was the fourth and last wife of English actor and filmmaker. Charlie Chaplin (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977).

INTERESTING NOTE 2:  During WWI, there was a soft cap with ear flaps that was known as the Gor blimey.  It was replaced in 1917 by a soft cap without flaps that looked more like military wear than the Gor blimey.   Many soldiers held on to their Gor blimey caps for winter weather anyway, due in large part to the ear flaps that helped keep their ears warm.

In Volume I of “Slang and its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of All Classes of Society For More Than Three Hundred Years” by John Stephen Farmer (7 March 1854 – 18 January 1916) published in 1890 (and of which only 750 copies were printed for subscribers only) this definition was given for blimey.

A corruption of ‘Blind me!’; an expression little enough understood by those who constantly have it in their mouths.

A year earlier in 1889, Albert Marie Victor Barrère (died 1896) and Charles Godfrey Leland (1824–1903) published, “A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant Embracing English, American, and Anglo-Indian Slang, Pidgin English, Gypsies’ Jargon and Other Irregular Phraseology.”  In Volume I, the definition for blimey is slightly different from that of Farmer’s dictionary.

Blimey (common), an apparently meaningless, abusive term.

Prior to this published entry, however, the only references to Blimey are those referring to a person’s last name such as John Blimey or Anna Blimey or some other Blimey.

It’s a fact that swearing was frowned upon during this era, and as such, substituting minced oaths was popular.  While Idiomation is unable to state definitively when blimey and cor blimey were first used, it’s reasonable to believe that they were both popular buzz phrases for the era in the 1880s, and continued to be used in the 20th century.

Devil’s Bones

Somehow, dice sound so much more menacing when referred to as devil’s bones.  So menacing, in fact, that the phrase was used by writing team Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson as the title for Jefferson Bass book “The Devil’s Bones” published on February 5, 2008.  According to Douglas R. Cobb of BestsellersWorld.com, the novel is a “page-turning, nail-biting thriller” that is guaranteed to keep the reader burning the midnight oil reading it.

On March 9, 1962 the Windsor Star published a news story entitled, “Dirty Boneshakers at Large.”  The story was originally reported in London, England and addressed the new twist crap game that was making itself known in gambling casinos.  At the time craps was one of the few games of chance permitted under Britain’s new betting regulations.  The story reported the following in part:

Something must have happened to these rules in crossing the Atlantic.  For it is hard to recognize in them the fine old traditional pastime as played on American street corners, in empty lots and in the gilded emporiums of Reno and Las Vegas.  According to the weekly, dice are known to the “expert” as “devil’s bones” or “rattlers.”  It does not say who these experts are or in what section of the United States they live.

That being said, the term devil’s bones was not an American expression that made it’s way to Britain in the 1960s.   “The Fortunes Of Nigel” written by Sir Walter Scott (1771 – 1832) and published in 1822, was the eighth title in his Waverly novels.  The first, “Waverly” was published in 1814 and the last, “Anne of Geierstein” was published in 1829.  The phrase devil’s bones is used twice in “The Fortunes Of Nigel.”  It is found on page 68:

Stand buff against the reproach of thine over-tender conscience, man, and when thous summest up, like a good arithmetician, the actions of the day, before you balance the account upon your pillow, tell the accusing spirit, to his brimstone beard, that if thine ears have heard the clatter of the devil’s bones, they hand hath not trowled them — that if thy eye hath seen the brawling of two angry boys, they blade hath not been bared in their fray.

and once again on page 113:

“Your words must be still plainer before I can understand them,” said Nigel.

“What the devil — a gamester, one who deals with the devil’s bones and the doctors, and not understand pedlar’s French!! Nay, then I must speak plain English, and that’s the simpleton’s tongue.”

“Speak, then, sir,” said Nigel; ” and I pray you be brief, for I have little more time to bestow on you.”

The Poor Robin Almanac of 1676 appears to be the one of the first publications to link dice to the expression devil’s bones when it referred to them in this way:

… cards and dice … the devil’s book and the devil’s bones.

However, it is Sir George Etherege who is credited for having linked dice and the devil’s bones together in this written passage back in 1664:

I do not understand dice … hang the devil’s bones!

Idiomation was unable to find an earlier reference to dice as the devil’s bones and so it would appear that the phrase devil’s bones dates back to 1664.

Black Out (as in “censorship”)

When people talk about black outs, they can mean one of three things:  to cut or turn out the lights or electric power; to prevent or silence information or communication; or to become unconscious. 

Preventing or silencing information or communication, either in its entirety or in part, is derived from the 15th century word “blackening” which means to defame a person.  In other words, if someone was the subject of a negative commentary on his person, it was said that the speaker was “blackening” the subject’s reputation.

It’s only from a black out — keeping the “blackening” from being expressed to others — that the subject could maintain a pristine reputation, whether it was warrantedor not.

The Milwaukee Journal of May 21, 1984 ran a news bite with the headline, “Bucks Black Out USA Telecast” and continued with this additional information in the first paragraph:

The National Basketball Association playoff game between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Boston Celtics Monday night, scheduled to be televised by the USA Network, will be blacked out within a 35-mile radius of the City of Milwaukee.

On October 8, 1965 the Windsor Star ran a news story entitled, “Reds Black Out Moon Shot News” that reported on the Soviet space program.  It read in part:

The Soviets today placed a news black-out on the face of Luna 7 hours after the space rocket was to have reached the surface of the moon.  All indications were that the unmanned instrument probe failed to make a soft landing.

Oddly enough, a black out doesn’t always have to be caused by the media as shown by an article in the Palm Beach Post on September 25, 1950 entitled, “Smoke From Canadian Fires Black Out Much Of The North.”  The story addressed the thick layers of smoke coming from Canadian forest fires in northern Alberta and effecting the Great Lakes area with smoke that “brought the darkness of night to many cities in midday.”  The states most affected by the thickest smoke palls were Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, although the smoke had also spread as far south as Virginia and Iowa.  What is particularly interesting about this natural phenomena is that:

Some callers [to the Washington Weather Bureau] wondered whether the strange darkness had anything to do with atomic bombs.  Others thought tonight’s scheduled total eclipse of the moon had arrived sooner than expected.  Street lights were turned on early in many places.

Even back at the turn of the previous century, black outs occurred as read in a news story carried in the Poverty Bay Herald in New Zealand on August, 24, 1912 about Queen Mary and her son, the Prince of Wales (23 June 1894 – 28 May 1972). 

He is only permitted to read the London Times among the English papers, and his tutor is to carefully black out anything verging on the objectionable in the Paris Temps, the only French paper he is allowed to see.

The Prince of Wales — officially invested as such in a special ceremony at Caernarfon Castle on July 13, 1911 — became Edward VIII and abdicated the throne in order to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson.

iI should be noted here that the Prince of Wales was the eldest son of the Duke and Duchess of York, who later became King George V and Queen Mary, and his great-grandmother was Queen Victoria.  When the First World War (1914–18) broke out, Edward was the minimum age required for active service and he was keen on enlisting as well as keen on serving on the front lines.

Back on track with this idiom, during the 1760s and 1770s, a political reformer and polemicist, writing under the pseudonym of Junius, portrayed the press as “an essential restraint for bad men and impediment to bad measures.”  In fact, in his book “Dedication to the English Nation” he wrote in 1772:

The liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman.

Speaking for the radicals, he stated that he was not causing dissension by way of “blackening the reputations of the nation’s leaders.”  Instead, he believed the press should have, along with others powers, the right and freedom to expose a politician’s every action.  He stated that press prosecutions did more damage than the questions and news accounts originally published by the press.  This is, in part, how incomplete, false or delayed news reports were referred to as black outs.