Chapter Bogus to Bomb of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Bolingbroke Henry IV of England; so called from Bolingbroke, in Lincolnshire, where he was born. (1366, 1399-1413.)

Bollandists Editors of the Acta Sanctorum begun by John Bolland (1596-1665); the sixty-first folio volume was published in 1875.

Bollen Swollen. (Anglo Saxon, bolla, a bowl.) Hence “joints bolne-big” (Golding), and “bolne in pride” (Phaer). The seed capsule or pod of flax is called a “boll.”

“The barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled.”- Exod. ix. 31.

Bologna Stone A variety of barite, found in masses near Bologna. After being heated, powdered, and exposed to the light it becomes phosphorescent in the dark.

Bolognese School There were three periods to the Bolognese School in painting- the Early, the Roman, and the Eclectic. The first was founded by Marco Zoppo, in the fifteenth century, and its best exponent was Francia. The second was founded in the sixteenth century by Bagnacavallo, and its chief exponents were Primaticio, Tibaldi, and Nicolo dell' Abate. The third was founded by the Carracci, at the close of the sixteenth century, and its best masters have been Domenichino, Lanfranco, Guido, Schidone, Guercino, and Albani.

Bolt An arrow, a shaft (Anglo-Saxon, bolta; Danish, bolt; Greek, ballo, to cast; Latin, pello, to drive). A door bolt is a shaft of wood or iron, which may be shot or driven forward to secure a door. A thunderbolt is an hypothetical shaft cast from the clouds; an aerolite. Cupid's bolt is Cupid's arrow.
   The fool's bolt is soon spent. A foolish archer shoots all his arrows so heedlessly that he leaves himself no resources in case of need.
   I must bolt. Be off like an arrow.
   To bolt food. To swallow it quickly without waiting to chew it.
   To bolt out the truth. To blurt it out; also To bolt out, to exclude or shut out by bolting the door.
   To bolt. To sift, as flour is bolted. This has a different derivation to the above (Low Latin, bult-ella, a boulter, from an Old French word for coarse cloth).

“I cannot bolt this matter to the bran,
As Bradwarden and holy Austin can.”
Dryden's version of the Cock and Fox.

Bolt from the Blue (A). There fell a bolt from the blue. A sudden and wholly unexpected catastrophe or event occurred, like a “thunderbolt” from the blue sky, or flash of lightning without warning and wholly unexpected.

“Namque Diespiter
Igni corusco nubila dividens,
Plerumque, per purum tonantes
Egit equos volucremque currum. ...”
Horace: 1 Ode xxxiv. 5, etc.

“On Monday, Dec. 22nd [1890], there fell a bolt from the blue. The morning papers announced that the men were out [on strike].”- Nineteenth Century, February, 1891, p. 246.

    In this phrase the word “bolt” is used in the popular sense for lightning the Latin fulmen, the French foudre and tonnerre, in English sometimes for an aerolite. Of course, in strict scientific language, a flash of lightning is not a thunderbolt. Metaphorically, it means a sudden and wholly unexpected catastrophe, like a thunderbolt [flash of lightning] from a blue or serene sky.
   German: Wie ein Blitzstrahl aus blauem Aether.
   Italian: Comme un fulmine a ciel sereno.
   Latin: Audiit et coeli genitor de parte serena intonuit haevum. (Virgil: AEneid, ix. 630.)

Bolt in Tun a public-house sign, is heraldic. In heraldry it is applied to a bird-bolt, in pale, piercing through a tun. The punning crest of Serjeant Bolton, who died 1787, was “on a wreath a tun erect proper, transpierced by an arrow fesseways or.” Another family of the same name has for crest “a tun with a bird-bolt through it proper.” A third, harping on the same string, has “a bolt gules in a tun or.” The public-house sign distinguished by this device or name adopted it in honour of some family claiming one of the devices mentioned above.

Bolt Upright Straight as an arrow. A bolt is an arrow with a round knob at the end, used for shooting at rooks, etc.