Chapter Bob to Bogtrotters of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Bodkin When he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin. (Hamlet, iii. 1). A stiletto worn by ladies in the hair, not a dagger. In the Seven Champions, Castria took her silver bodkin from her hair, and stabbed to death first her sister and then herself. Prexida stabbed herself in a similar manner. Shakespeare could not mean that a man might kill himself with a naked dagger, but that even a hair-pin would suffice to give a man his quietus.

Bodkin To ride bodkin. To ride in a carriage between two others, the accommodation being only for two.     Dr. Payne says that bodkin in this sense is a contraction of bodykin, a little body, which may be squeezed into a small space.

“If you can bodkin the sweet creature into the coach.”- Gibbon.

“There is hardly room between Jos and Miss Sharp, who are on the front seat, Mr. Osborne sitting bodkin opposite, between Captain Dobbin and Amelia.”- Thackeray: Vanity Fair.

Bodle A Scotch coin, worth the sixth of a penny; so called from Bothwell, a mint-master.

“Fair play, he car'd na deils a boddle.”
Burns: Tam o' Shanter, line 110.

   To care not a bodle = our English phrase, “Not to care a farthing.”

Bodleian Library (Oxford). So called because it was restored by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1597.

Body (Anglo-Saxon, bodig.)
   A regular body, in geometry, means one of the five regular solids, called “Platonic” because first suggested by Plato. (See Platonic Bodies.)
   To body forth. To give mental shape to an ideal form.

“Imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown.”
Shakespeare: Midsummer Night's Dream, v.1

Body and Soul To keep body and soul together. To sustain life; from the notion that the soul gives life. The Latin anima, and the Greek psyche, mean both soul and life; and, according to Homeric mythology, the departed soul retains the shape and semblance of the body, hence the notion of ghosts. Indeed, if the soul is the “principle of life,” it must of necessity be the facsimile of every living atom of the body. (See Astral Body .)

Body-colour (A). Is a paint containing a body or consistency. In water-colours it is mixed with white lead and laid on thickly.

Body Corporate (A). An aggregate of individuals legally united into a corporation.

Body Politic (A). A whole nation considered as a political corporation; the state. In Latin, totum corpus reipublicae.

Body-snatcher (A). One who snatches or purloins bodies, newly buried, to sell them to surgeons for dissection. By a play on the words, a bum-bailiff was so called, because his duty was to snatch or capture the body of a delinquent.     The first instance of body-snatching on record was in 1777. It was the body of Mrs. Jane Sainsbury from the burial ground near Gray's Inn Lane. The men, being convicted, were imprisoned for six months.

Boemond The Christian King of Antioch, who tried to teach his subjects arts, laws, and religion. Pyrrhus delivered to him a fort, by which Antioch was taken by the Christians after an eight months' siege. Boemond and Rogero were two brothers, the sons of Roberto Guiscardo, of the Norman race. (Tasso: Jerusalem Delivered.)

Boeotia According to fable it is so-called because Cadmus was conducted by an ox (Greek bous) to the spot where he built Thebes; but, according to fact, it was so called because it abounded in cattle. (Greek, Boiotia.)