Chapter Dustman has arrived to Dwarfs of D by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Dustman has arrived to Dwarfs

Dustman has arrived (The), or "The sandman is about." It is bedtime, for the children rub their eyes, as if dust or sand was in them.

Dusty Well, it is none so dusty, or Not so dusty. I don't call it bad; rather smart. Here dusty is the opposite of neat, and neat = spruce. "None so dusty" or "Not so dusty" means therefore, Not so unspruce, or rather smart.

Dusty-foot (See Pie Poudre .)

Dutch The Dutch have taken Holland. A quiz when anyone tells what is well known as a piece of wonderful news. Similar to Queen Bess (or Queen Anne) is dead; the Ark rested on Mount Ararat; etc.

Dutch Auction An "auction " in which the bidders decrease their bids till they come to the minimum price. Dutch gold is no gold at all; Dutch courage is no real courage; Dutch concert is no music at all, but mere hubbub; and Dutch auction is no auction, or increase of bids, but quite the contrary.

Dutch Clocks i.e. German clocks, chiefly made in the Black Forest. As many as 180,000 are exported annually from Friburg. (German, Deutsch, German.)

"A woman, that is like a German clock,
Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
And never going aright."
Shakespeare: Love's Labour's Lost, iii.1.

Dutch Comfort `Tis a comfort it was no worse. The comfort derivable from the consideration that how bad soever the evil which has befallen you, a worse evil is at least conceivable.

Dutch Concert A great noise and uproar, like that made by a party of Dutchmen in sundry stages of intoxication, some singing, others quarrelling, speechifying, wrangling, and so on.

Dutch Courage The courage excited by drink; pot valour.

"In the Dutch wars (in the time of Charles II.), ...the captain of the Hollander man-of-war, when about to engage with our ships, usually set ... a hogshead of brandy abroach before the mast, and bid the men drink ... and our men felt the force of the brandy to their cost." - Notes and Queries (Oct. 15, 1892, p. 304).

Dutch Gleek Tippling. Gleek is a game, and the phrase means the game loved by Dutchmen is drinking.

"Nor could be partaker of any of the good cheer except it were the liquid part of it, which they call `Dutch Gleek.' " - Gayton.

Dutch Gold Deutsche or German gold. An alloy of copper and zinc, invented by Prince Rupert of Bavaria.

Dutch Nightingales Frogs. Similarly, Cambridgeshire nightingales; Liège nightingales, etc.

Dutch School of painting is a sort of "pre-Raphaelite" exactness of detail without selection. It is, in fact, photographing exactly what appears before the artist, as faithfully as his art will allow. The subjects are generally the lower classes of social life, as pothouse scenes, drunken orgies, street groups, Dutch boors, etc., with landscapes and still-life. The greatest of the Dutch masters are: for portraits, Rembrandt, Bol, Flinck, Hals, and Vanderhelst; for conversation pieces, Gerhard Douw, Terburg, Metzu, Mieris, and Netscher; for low life, Ostade, Brower, and Jan Steen; for landscapes, Ruysdael, Hobbema, Cuyp, Vanderneer, Berchem, and A. Both; for battle scenes, Wouvermans and Huchtenburg; for marine pieces, Vandevelde and Bakhuizen; for still-life and flowers, Kalf, A. Van Utrecht, Van Huysum, and De Heem.

Dutch Toys chiefly made in Meiningen, part of the duchy of Coburg-Gotha. (Dutch, i.e. Deutsch, German.)

Dutch Uncle I will talk to you like a Dutch uncle. Will reprove you smartly. Uncle is the Latin notion of patruus, "an uncle," "severe guardian," or "stern castigator." Hence Horace, 3 Od. xii. 3, "Metuentes patruæ verbera linguæ " (dreading the castigations of an uncle's tongue); and 2 Sat. iii. 88, "Ne sis patruus mihi " (Don't come the uncle over me).