Chapter Cross as a Bear to Crucial of C by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Cross as a Bear to Crucial

Cross as a Bear or Cross as a bear with a sore head.

Cross as the Tongs The reference is to tongs which open like a pair of scissors.

Cross as Two Sticks The reference is to the cross .

Crossing the Hand Fortune-tellers of the gipsy race always bid their dupe to “cross their hand with a bit of silver.” This, they say, is for luck. Of course, the sign of the cross warded off witches and all other evil spirits, and, as fortune-telling belongs to the black arts, the palm is signed with a cross to keep off the wiles of the devil. “You need fear no evil, though I am a fortune-teller, if by the sign of the cross you exorcise the evil spirit.”

Crossing the Line - i.e. the equator.

Crotalum A sort of castanet,rattled in dancing. Aristophanes calls a great talker krotalon (a clack).

Crotchet A whim; a fancy; a twist of the mind, like the crotch or crome of a stick. (See Crook.)

“The duke hath crotchets in him.”
Shakespeare: Measure for Measure, iii. 2.

Crotona's Sage Pythagoras. So called because at Crotona he established his first and chief school of philosophy. Such success followed his teaching that the whole aspect of the town became more moral and decorous in a marvellously short time. About B. C. 540.

Crouchback (See Red Rose .)

Crouchmas from the Invention of the Cross to St. Helen's Day (May 3rd to August 18th). Not Christ- mas, but Cross-mas. Rogation Sunday is called Crouchmas Sunday, and Rogation week is called Crouchmas.

“From bull-cow fast,
Till Crouchmas be past” [i.e. August 18th].
Tusser: May Remembrances.

Crow As the crow flies. The shortest route between two given places. The crow flies straight to its point of destination. Called the bee-line in America.
   Crow. (See Raven.)
   I must pluck a crow with you; I have a crow to pick with you. I am displeased with you, and must call you to account. I have a small complaint to make against you. In Howell's proverbs (1659) we find the following, “I have a goose to pluck with you,” used in the same sense; and Chaucer has the phrase “Pull a finch, ” but means thereby to cheat or filch. Children of distinction among the Greeks and Romans had birds for their amusement, and in their boyish quarrels used to pluck or pull the feathers out of each other's pets. Tyndarus, in his Captives, alludes to this, but instances it with a lapwing. In hieroglyphics a crow symbolises contention, discord, strife.

“If a crow help us in, sirrah, we'll pluck a crow
together.” - Shakespeare: Comedy of Errors, iii. 1.

“If not, resolve before we go,
That you and I must pull a crow.”
Butler: Hudibras, part ii. 2.

Crow over One (To), is to exult over a vanquished or abased person. The allusion is to cocks, who always crow when they have vanquished an adversary.

Crowbar An iron with a crook, used for leverage. (Anglo-Saxon, cruc.)

“Science is as far removed from brute force as this sword from a crowbar.” - Bulwer-Lytton: Leila, book ii. chap. i. p.33.

Crowd or Crouth. A species of fiddle with six or more strings. The last noted player on this instrument was John Morgan, who died 1720. (Welsh, crwth.)

“O sweet consent, between a crowd and a Jew's harp!”Lyly.

Crowdero One of the rabble leaders encountered by Hudibras at a bear-baiting. The original of this character was one Jackson or Jephson, a milliner, who lived in the New Exchange, Strand. He lost a leg in the service of the Roundheads, and was reduced to the necessity of fiddling from alehouse to alehouse for his daily bread. The word means fiddler. (See above, Crowd.)