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

Colours to Comazants

Colours National colours -

Great Britain	Red and blue.
America, U.S.	Stars on blue, white with red stripes.
Austria	Red, white, and red.
Bavaria	Red
Denmark	Red, with white cross.
France	Blue, white, and red.
Netherlands	Red, white, and blue.
Portugal	Blue and white.
Prussia	White.
Russia	White, with blue cross.
Spain	Red, yellow, and red.
Sweden	Blue, with yellow cross.
Switzerland	Red, with white cross.

Colours Nailed to the Mast (With our), à outrance. If the colours are nailed to the mast, they cannot be lowered to express submission.

“If they catch you at disadvantage, the mines for your life is the word; and so we fight them with our colours nailed to the mast.”- Sir W. Scott: The Pirate, chap. xxi.

Colour-blindness Incapacity of discerning one colour from another. The term was introduced by Sir David Brewster. It is of three sorts: (1) inability to discern any colours, so that everything is either black or white, shade or light; (2) inability to distinguish between primary colours, as red, blue, and yellow; or secondary colours, as green, purple, and orange; and (3) inability to distinguish between such composite colours as browns, greys, and neutral tints. Except in this one respect, the colour-blind may have excellent vision.

Colour Sergeant A sergeant who carries or has charge of the regimental colours.

Colour (verb). To colour up, to turn red in the face; to blush.

Coloured Frontispiece by Phiz (A). A blush.

Colporteur A hawker or pedlar; so called because he carries his basket or pack round his neck. The term is more especially applied to hawkers of religious books. (Latin, collum, the neck; porto, to carry.)

Colt (A). A piece of knotted rope eighteen inches long for the special benefit of ship boys; a cat-o'-nine- tails.

“Look alive there, lads, or as sure as my name is Sam Weston I'll give the colt to the last man off the deck.”- J. Grant: Dick Rodney, chap. vii.

Colt (A). A barrister who attends a sergeant-at-law at his induction.

“I accompanied the newly-made Chief Baron as his colt.”- Pollock.

“Then Mr. Railey, his colt, delivered his ring to the Lord Chancellor.”- Wynne.

Colt (To). To befool, to gull. (Italian, colto, cheated, befooled.)

Colt-pixy (A). A pixy, puck, or fairy. To colt-pixy is to take what belongs to the pixies, and is specially applied to the gleaning of apples after the crop has been gathered in; these apples were the privilege of the pixies, and to colt-pixy is to deprive the pixies of their perquisites.

Colt's Revolver A fire-arm which, by means of revolving barrels, can be fired several times without intermission. This instrument was patented by Colonel Samuel Colt, U.S., in 1835.

Colt's-tooth The love of youthful pleasure. Chaucer uses the word “coltish” for skittish. Horses have at three years old the colt's-tooth. The allusion is to the colt's teeth of animals, a period of their life when their passions are strongest.

“Her merry dancing-days are done;
She has a colt's-tooth still, I warrant.”
King: Orpheus and Eurydice

“Well said, Lord Sands;
Your colt's-tooth is not cast yet.”
Shakespeare: Henry VIII., 1.3.

Columbine (3 syl.). The sweetheart of Harlequin, and, like him, supposed to be invisible to mortal eyes. Columbina in Italian is a pet-name for a lady-love, and means a little dove, a young coquette.