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

a child. The lucky child does not need to wait for the gift, for it is born with it in its mouth or inherits it from infancy.

Borough English is where the youngest son inherits instead of the eldest. It is of Saxon origin, and is so called to distinguish it from the Norman custom.

“The custom of Borough English abounds in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, the neighbourhood of London, and Somerset. In the Midlands it is rare, and north of the Humber ... it does not seem to occur.”- F. Pollock: Macmillan's Magazine, xlvi. (1882).

Borowe St. George to borowe, i.e. St. George being surety. (Danish, borgen, bail, Swedish, borgan, a giving of bail.)

Borr Son of Ymer, and father of Odin, Ville, Ve, and Hertha or Earth. The Celtic priests claimed descent from this deity. (Celtic mythology. )

Borrow A pledge. To borrow is to take something which we pledge ourselves to return. (Anglo-Saxon, borg, a loan or pledge; verb borg-ian.)

“Ye may retain as borrows my two priests.”- Scott: Ivanhoe, chap. xxxiii.

Borrowed days of February (The ). 12th, 13th and 14th of February, said to be borrowed from January. If these days prove stormy, the year will be favoured with good weather; but if fine, the year will be foul and unfavourable. These three days are called by the Scotch Faoilteach, and hence the word faoilteach means execrable weather.

Borrowed days of March The last three days of March are said to be “borrowed from April.”

“"March said to Aperill,
I see 3 hoggs [hoggets, sheep] upon a hill;
And if you'll lend me dayes 3
I'll find a way to make them dee [die].
The first o' them wus wind and weet,
The second o' them wus snaw and sleet,
The third o' them wus sic a freeze
It froze the birds' nebs to the trees.
When the 3 days were past and gane
The 3 silly hoggs came hirpling [limping] hame.”

Bortell The bull, in the tale of Reynard the Fox. (Heinrich von Alkman.)

Bos [ei] in lingua. He is bribed to silence; he has a coin (marked with a bull's head) on his tongue. Adalardus, in Statutis Abbatiæ Corbeiensis (bk. i. c. 8), seems to refer to the bos as a coin. “Boves et reliquam pecuniam habeat ... unde et ipse et omnis familia ejus vivere possit ” (i.e. plenty of gold and silver ...). Plautus, however, distinctly says (Persa, ii. 5, 16), “Boves bini hic sunt in crumena ” (Two bulls in a purse.) The Greeks had the phrase bouz epi glwtthz. Servius tells us that even the Romans had a coin with a bull stamped on it. (See Pliny, 18, 3.) Presuming that there was no such coin, there cannot be a doubt that the word Bos was used as the equivalent of the price of an ox.