Chapter Bush to Buttons of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

inches thick, to elevate their stature. To this sole was attached a very elegant buskin, and the whole was called cothurnus. (See Sock .)

“Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.”
Milton: Il Penseroso, 79, 80.

Buss To kiss. (Welsh, bus, the human lip; Gaelic, bus, the mouth; French, baiser, a kiss.)

“You towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds,
Must kiss their own feet.”
Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida, iv. 5.

Busterich A German god. His idol may still be seen at Sondershusa, the castle of Schwartzenburg.

Busy as a Bee The equivalent Latin phrase is “Satagis tamquam mus in matella.” (See Similes .)

Butcher The Butcher. Achmed Pasha was called djezzar (the butcher), and is said to have whipped off the heads of his seven wives. He is famous for his defence of Acre against Napoleon I.
   The Butcher. John, ninth lord Clifford, also called The Black, died 1461.
   The Bloody Butcher. The Duke of Cumberland, second son of George II. So called from his barbarities in suppressing the rebellion of the young Pretender.
   The Royalist Butcher. Blaise de Montluc, distinguished for his cruelties to the Protestants in the reign of Charles IX. of France (1502-1572).

Butcher Boots The black boots worn en petite tenue in the hunting field.

Butter Soft soap, soft solder (pron. saw-der), “wiping down” with winning words. Punch expressively calls it “the milk of human kindness churned into butter.” (Anglo-Saxon, butere or butyre, Latin, butyrum, Greek, boutyron, i.e. bou-turos, cow-cheese, as distinguished from goat- or ewe-butter.)
   Soft words butter no parsnips. Saying “ `Be thou fed,' will not feed a hungry man.” Mere words will not find salt to our porridge, or butter to our parsnips.

“Fine words, says our homely old proverb, butter no parsnips.”- Lowell.

   He looks as if butter would not melt in his mouth. He looks like a dolt. He looks quite harmless and expressly made to be played upon. Yet beware, and “touch not a cat but a glove.”

“She smiles and languishes, you'd think that butter would not melt in her mouth.”- Thackeray: Pendennis, ix.

    He knows on which side his bread is buttered. He knows his own interest. Scit uti foro.
   He that has good store of butter may lay it thick on his bread. Cui multum est piperis, etiam oleribus immiscet.
   To butter one's bread on both sides. To be wastefully extravagant and luxurious.

Butter-fingers Said of a person who lets things fall out of his hand. His fingers are slippery, and things slip from them as if they were greased with butter. Often heard on the cricket field.

“I never was a butter-fingers, though a bad batter.”- H. Kingsley.

Butter-tooth (A). A wide front tooth. (See Buck-Tooth .)

Buttered Ale A beverage made of ale or beer (without hops) mixed with butter, sugar, and cinnamon.

Buttercups So called because they were once supposed to increase the butter of milk. No doubt those cows give the best milk that pasture in fields where buttercups abound, not because these flowers produce butter, but because they grow only on sound, dry, old pastures, which afford the best food. Miller, in his Gardener's Dictionary, says they were so called “under the notion that the yellow colour of butter is owing to these plants.”

Butterflies in the cab trade, are those drivers who take to the occupation only in summer-time, and at the best of the season. At other times they follow some other occupation.

“The feeling of the regular drivers against these `butterflies' is very strong.”- Nineteenth. Century (March, 1893, p. 177).

Butterfly Kiss (A). A kiss with one's eyelashes, that is, stroking the cheek with one's eyelashes.