A Dictionary of Cont..

loom 66
use and its jocular use has long since lost its
jocularity. It had better be abandoned except in
quotations of the full poem-or at least of the
quatrain.
bloom; blossom; flower. Flower is the good,
everyday word (Full many a flower is born to
blush unseen/ And waste its sweetness on the
desert air) and, though somewhat overworked
in inspirational and memorial addresses, is the
most dignified of the figurative extensions (The
flower of our youth).
Bloom, whether it be of an actual flowering
plant or, figuratively, of youth, or hope, is the
flower or the act of flowering, the coming into
full beauty or achievement (Burst to bloom, you
proud, white flower, as an unusually poetic poet
apostrophized Chicago). It has, usually, some
connotation, too, of the flower’s fragility and
impermanence.
There is another, specialized, botanical meaning
of bloom: a whitish powdery deposit or
coating on the surface of certain fruits and
leaves. This is best known in the bloom on a
peach and may affect the hackneyed reference
to the bloom of youth when it is specifically
located on the cheeks.
Blossom refers, specifically, to the flower of a
fruit-bearing tree. As a verb (she blossomed out
overnight) it is usually used figuratively to
describe a sudden flowering, overpowering in
its efflorescence and often carrying a suggestion
of the promise of fruit to come.
bloomers. The plural form refers to one garment
but is always treated as a plural, as in these
bloomers are small. In order to use the word
with a singular verb or to speak of more than
one of these garments, it is necessary to say this
pair of bloomers is small or several pairs of
bloomers. A singular form bloomer is used as
the first element in a compound, as in bloomer
elastic.
blow. The past tense is blew. The participle is
blown.
A regular past tense and participle, blowed, is
heard, as in the wind she blowed a hurricane,
but is generally condemned. It is also heard in
the exclamation 1’11 be blowed! Here it would
be fatal to try to correct this and say I’ll be
blown!
blow off steam. With the supplanting of steam
engines by diesels, the once familiar spectacle of
an engine blowing off excess steam has become
almost unknown and the figurative use of the
phrase to blow off steam is rapidly losing the
basis of literal meaning which any metaphor
must have if it is to stay alive.
blue, as an adjective meaning depressed in spirits,
dismal, downhearted, has passed from slang into
standard usage (All alone and feeling blue).
Blue in the sense of indecent, however, remains
slang, though it is interesting to see so
staid a work as The (London) Times Literary
Supplement (Nov. 28, 1952, p. 779) take cognizance
of its existence: Voltaire in his later
years retained a repertoire of “blue” stories that
he loved to retail.
The word blue occurs in an extraordinary
number of slang and colloquial phrases. Eric
Partridge, in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional
English, lists over a hundred.
blueprint can be used as a trope for plan (The
Mayor’s blueprint for the future of the city
drew a tremendous ovation from the audience),
but it is well to remember that a blueprint is the
final stage in design and should, therefore, be
used to designate only a finished and detailed
scheme or proposal.
board. There are a number of differences between
American and English use of the word board. In
both countries, for example, it can mean to provide
or receive food and lodging but in America
this has been extended to include a similar provision
for horses and dogs. One sees boarding
stables and boarding kennels widely advertised
-the latter of which in particular might strike
a visiting Englishman as the announcement of
an unusually frank low-grade rooming house.
F.O.B. (Freight On Board or Free On Board)
means in England that at the stipulated price the
goods will be loaded on an ocean-going vessel.
In America it means that they will be loaded in
or on a railroad car. This has at times led to a
serious misunderstanding.
The Board of Trade is a department of
the English government corresponding to the
American Department of Commerce. In America
a board of trade is an unofficial association
of business men.
Boardwalk is an American invention, both
the thing and the word for it. Ludwig Lewisohn’s
statement that The Anglo-American mind hides
the edges of the sea of life with a boardwalk of
ethical c0ncept.r would be completely incomprehensible
to an Englishman.
boat. See ship.
boat, be in the same. The use of we’re all in
the same boat to acknowledge a complicity or
common danger is a cliche and usually should
be avoided.
bode. See bide.
bodily. See corporal.
body. See corps.
bogey; bogie; bogy. All three spellings are used
interchangeably, though bogy (plural bogies)
is preferred for something that frightens, a
specter, and bogey for par at golf or for one
stroke above par on a hole.
bogus is an Americanism for counterfeit, sham.
Mark Twain speaks of one who had appeared
at a masquerade in red cambric and bogus
ermine, as some kind of a king. It is not used
in England but has become standard in the
United States.
Bogus is frequently replaced by the slang
word phony, also an American coinage. Whether
our richness in such words indicates an unusual
amount of fraud and sham among us or an unusually
high sense of rectitude that makes us
aware of it is a problem more for the social
philosopher than for the lexicographer.
bohemian as an adjective, referring to one with
artistic tendencies who acts with a disregard for