Chapter Bosh to Boucan of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Bothie System The Scotch system of building, like a barrack, all the outhouses of a farmstead, as the byres, stables, barns, etc. The farm menservants live here. (Gaelic, bothag, a cot or hut, our booth.)

“The bothie system prevails, more or less, in the eastern and north-eastern districts.”- J. Begg, D.D.

Botley Assizes The joke is to ask a Botley man, “When the assizes are coming on?” and an innuendo is supposed to be implied to the tradition that the men of Botley once hanged a man because he could not drink so deep as his neighbours.

Bottes A propos de bottes. By the by, thus: Mais, Mons., à propos de bottes, comment se porte madame votre mère?

“That venerable personage [the Chaldæan Charon] not only gives Izdubar instructions how to regain his health, but tells him, somewhat a propos des bottes ... the long story of his perfidious adventure.”- Nineteenth Century, June, 1891, p. 911.

Bottle Looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. Looking for a very small article amidst a mass of other things. Bottle is a diminutive of the French botte, a bundle; as botte de foin, a bundle of hay.
   Hang me in a bottle. (See Cat.)

Bottle-chart A chart of ocean surface currents to show the track of sealed bottles thrown from ships into the sea.
Bottle-holder One who gives moral but not material support. The allusion is to boxing or prize-fighting, where each combatant has a bottle-holder to wipe off blood, refresh with water, and do other services to encourage his man to perserve and win.

“Lord Palmerston considered himself the bottle-holder of oppressed States. ... He was the stead-fast partisan of constitutional liberty in every part of the world.”- The Times.

Bottle-imps The Hebrew word for familiar spirits is oboth, leather bottles, to indicate that the magicians were wont to imprison in bottles those spirits which their spells had subdued.

Bottle-washer (Head ). Chief agent; the principal man employed by another; a factotum. Head waiter or butler (botteller).

Bottled Beer is said to have been discovered by Dean Nowell as a most excellent beverage. The Dean was very fond of fishing, and took a bottle of beer with him in his excursions. One day, being disturbed, he buried his bottle under the grass, and when he disinterred it some ten days afterwards, found it so greatly improved that he ever after drank bottled beer.

Bottled Moonshine Social and benevolent schemes, such as Utopia, Coleridge's Pantisocracy, the dreams of Owen, Fourier, St. Simon, the New Republic, and so on.

“Godwin! Hazlitt! Coleridge! Where now are their `novel philosophies and systems'? Bottled moonshine, which does not improve by keeping.”- Birrell: Obiter Dicta, p. 109 (1885).

Bottom
   A ship's bottom is that part which is used for freight or stowage.
   Goods imported in British bottoms are those which come in our own vessels.
   Goods imported in foreign bottoms are those which come in foreign ships.
   A full bottom is where the lower half of the hull is so disposed as to allow large stowage.
   A sharp bottom is when a ship is capable of speed.
   At bottom. Radically, fundamentally: as, the young prodigal lived a riotous life, but was good at bottom, or below the surface.
   At the bottom. At the base or root.

“Pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.”- Ruskin: True and Beautiful, p. 426.

   From the bottom of my heart. Without reservation. (Imo corde.)

“If one of the parties ... be content to forgive from the bottom of his heart all that the other hath trespassed against him.”- Common Prayer Book.

   He was at the bottom of it. He really instigated it, or prompted