Chapter College Port to Colours of C by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

College Port to Colours

College Port The worst species of red wine that can be manufactured and palmed off upon young men at college. (See Widows' Port )

“We all know what college port is like.”- The Times.

Colliberts A sort of gipsy race in Poitou, Maine, and Anjou, similar to the Cagots of Gascony and the Caqueux of Brittany. In feudal times a collibert was a serf partly free, but bound to certain services. (Latin, col-libertus, a fellow freedman.)

Colluthians A religious sect which rose in the fourth century; so called from Colluthos of Alexandria, their founder.

Colly my Cow A corruption of Calainos, the most ancient of Spanish ballads. Calainos the Moor asked a damsel to wife, who said the price of winning her should be the heads of the three paladins of Charlemagne, named Rinaldo, Roland, and Olivier. Calainos went to Paris and challenged the paladins. First Sir Baldwin, the youngest knight, accepted the challenge and was overthrown; then his uncle Roland went against the Moor and smote him.

Collyridians A sect of Arabian Christians, chiefly women, which first appeared in 373. They worshipped the Virgin Mary, and made offerings to her in a twisted cake, called a collyris. (Greek, kollura, a little cake.)

Collywobbles The grips, usually accompanied with sundry noises in the stomach. These noises are called the “borbarigmus.” (The wobbling caused by a slight colic.)

Cologne The three kings of Cologne. The three magi, called Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. They are called by other names, but those given are the most generally accepted.

Colon One of the rabble leaders in Hudibras was Noel Perryan, or Ned Perry, an ostler, who loved bear-baiting, but was a very straight-laced Puritan of low morals.

Colophon The end of a book. Colophon was a city of Ionia, the inhabitants of which were such excellent horsemen that they would turn the scale of battle to the side on which they fought; hence, the Greek phrase, To add a colophonian, means “to put a finishing stroke to any matter.” (Strabo.) In the early times of printing, the statement containing the date, place, printer, and edition was given at the end of the book, and was called the colophon.     Now called the “imprint.”

“The volume was uninjured ... from title-page to colophon.”- Scott: The Antiquary.

Coloquintida or Colocynth. Bitterapple or colocynth. (Greek, kolokunthis. )

“The food that to him now is luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida.”- Shakespeare: Othello, i. 3.

Coloquintida (St. ). Charles I. was so called. He was bitter as gall to the Levellers.

“The Levellers styled him [Charles I.] an Ahab, and a Coloquintida, a man of blood, and the everlasting obstacle to peace and liberty.”- Howitt: History of England (“Charles I.,” chap. vi. p. 284).

Colorado (U.S. America). A Spanish word meaning red, referring to the red hue of the water of the river.

Colossal Gigantic. As a colossal scheme. (See below. )

Colossus or Colossos (Latin, colossus ). A giant. The Rhodian Colossos was a gigantic statue of brass, 126 feet high, executed by Chares. It is said that ships could pass full sail under the legs of this statue, but the notion of a striding statue rose in the sixteenth century, and is due to Blaise de Vigenère, who was the first to give the chef d'oeuvre of Chares this impossible position. The Comte de Caylus has demonstrated that the Apollo of Rhodes was never planted at the mouth of the Rhodian port, that it was not a striding statue, and that ships never passed under it. Neither Strabo nor Pliny makes mention of any of these things, though both describe the gigantic statute minutely. Philo (the architect of Byzantium, third century) has a treatise on the seven wonders of the world, and says that the Colossos stood on