Chapter Bonnet Lairds to Boots of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Bonnet Lairds to Boots

Bonnet Lairds Local magnates of Scotland, who wore the Braid Bonnet.

Bonnet-piece A gold coin of James V. of Scotland, the king's head on which wears a bonnet.

Bonnet Rouge The red cap of Liberty worn by the leaders of the French revolution. It is the emblem of Red Republicanism.

Bonnie Dundee John Graham, of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee (1650-1689).

Bonnyclabber A drink made of beer and buttermilk. (Irish, bainne, milk; claba, thick or thickened.)

“With beer and buttermilk, mingled together, ...
To drink such ... bonny-clapper.”
Ben Jonson: The New Inn, i. 3.

Bono Johnny John Bull is so called in the East Indies.

Bontemps Roger Bontemps (French). The personification of “Never say die.” The phrase is from Béranger.

“Vous pauvres, pleins d'envie;
Vous riches, desireux;
Vous, dont le char dévie
Après un cours heureux;
Vous, qui perdrez peut-être
Des titres éclatans,
Eh! gai! prenez pour mâitre
Le gros Roger Bontemps.” Béranger.

Ye poor, with envy goaded;
Ye rich, for more who long;
Ye who by fortune loaded,
Find all things going wrong
Ye who by some disaster
See all your cables break,
From henceforth for your master
Bluff Roger Bontemps take. E. C. B.

Bonus A bounty over and above the interest of a share in any company. (Latin, bonus quæstus, a good profit or bounty. The interest or fruit of money put out in an investment was by the Romans called the quæstus.)
   Bonus Homerus. (See Homer.)

Bonzes (sing. Bonze ). Indian priests. In China they are the priests of the Fohists; their number is 50,000, and they are represented as idle and dissolute. In Japan they are men of rank and family. In Tonquin every pagoda has at least two bonzes, and some as many as fifty.

Booby A spiritless fool, who suffers himself to be imposed upon. In England the Solan goose is called a booby or noddy. (Spanish, bobo; German, bube.)
   A booby will never make a hawk. The bird called the booby, that allows itself to be fleeced by other birds, will never become a bird of prey itself.

Booby (Lady ). A caricature on Richardson's Pamela. A vulgar upstart, who tries to seduce Joseph Andrews. (Fielding: Joseph Andrews.)

Booby-trap (A ). A pitcher of water, book, or something else, balanced gingerly on the top of a door set ajar, so that when the booby or victim is enticed to pass through the door, the pitcher or book falls on him.

Book (Ang.-Saxon, boc; Danish, beuke; German, buche, a beech-tree). Beechbark was employed for carving names on before the invention of printing.

“Here on my trunk's surviving frame,
Carved many a long-forgotten name. ...
As love's own altar, honour me:
Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree.”
Campbell: Beech Tree's Petition.

Book The dearest ever sold. A Mazarin Bible at the Thorold sale, in 1884, bought by Mr. Quaritch, book-seller, Piccadilly, London, for 3,400 for a copy.

Book The oldest in the world. That by Ptah-Hotep, the Egyptian, compiled in the reign of Assa, about B.C. 3366. This MS. is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It is written on papyrus in hieratic characters, and is a compilation of moral, political, and religious aphorisms. It strongly insists on reverence to women, politeness, and monotheism. Ptah-Hotep was a prince of the blood, and lived to the age of 110 years.
   Book. Logistilla gave Astolpho, at parting, a book which would tell him anything he wanted