The Facts on File Dictionary of Allusions - Green Valley High School

certain ferocious Norse warriors, who customarily
worked themselves up into a wild frenzy before
going into battle, often without armor. <strong>The</strong>y were
sometimes identifi ed as the descendants of Berserk.
<strong>The</strong> word itself comes from the Icelandic
björn (bear) and serkr (shirt), a reference to the fact
that the berserks were often clad in bearskins.
“<strong>The</strong> Professor, with his face fl ushed, his nostrils
dilated, and his beard bristling, was now in a
proper berserk mood” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
<strong>The</strong> Lost World, 1912).
Bertie Wooster See jeeves.
best- laid plans gang aft agley, the (bglay) Things
rarely go according to plan, however well they
may have been planned. <strong>The</strong> expression is a
mangled quotation from the 1775 poem “To a
mouse, on turning her up in her nest with the
plough” by the Scottish poet Robert Burns
(1759–96): “<strong>The</strong> best- laid schemes o’ mice an’
men / Gang aft agley, / An’ lea’e us nought but
grief an’ pain, / For promis’d joy!” <strong>The</strong> phrase
the best- laid plans of mice and men has also
entered the common vocabulary as a description
of schemes and projects that are fated to go
wrong. We intended to get to the airport well before
boarding time, but the best- laid plans gang aft
agley.
best of all possible worlds, the An optimistic
view of our world. <strong>The</strong> expression was fi rst used
by the German phi los o pher and mathematician
Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1646–
1716) and subsequently ridiculed by Voltaire in
candide (1759), in which it was the credo of the
disaster- prone Dr. Pangloss (see panglossian).
“All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds,
he mused, blowing a great cloud of smoke into the
better to marry than to burn
air above him” (M. Lewes Kilby, Man at the Sharp
End, 1991).
best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the
See it was the best of times, it was the worst
of times.
bethel (bethbl) A Nonconformist chapel. <strong>The</strong>
word comes from the Hebrew beth El, meaning
“house of God,” and appears in Genesis 28:19 as
the name of the town on the west bank of the Jordan
River where Jacob had his dream about God
and heaven. “His family was a little Bethel, for the
Worship of God constantly and exactly maintained
in it” (Cotton Mather, “<strong>The</strong> Life of John Eliot,”
1702).
Bethesda, pool of See rise, take up thy bed,
and walk.
better a dinner of herbs than a stalled ox where
hate is It is better to be poor or to eat modest
fare among friends than to be rich or to eat well in
hostile surroundings. <strong>The</strong> saying comes from the
Bible, appearing in Proverbs 15:17: “Better is a
dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and
hatred therewith.” “Well has Solomon said—‘Better
is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled
ox and hatred therewith.’ I would not now have
exchanged Lowood with all its privations for
Gateshead and its daily luxuries” (Charlotte
Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847).
better to give than to receive See it is better to
give than to receive.
better to marry than to burn It is preferable to
enjoy the satisfactions of marriage than to be tortured
by inappropriate passions as an unmarried
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