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

Braggadocio
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way in which a certain stratum of middle- class
America of the period liked to see itself. Goodlooking,
clean- living, and always smiling for the cameras,
they were marketed as pop’s equivalent of the Brady
Bunch.
Braggadocio (bragbdosheeo) Boastfulness, or a
person who boasts a lot. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to Edmund
Spenser’s <strong>The</strong> Faerie Queene (1590, 1596), the characters
of which include the boastful Braggadocchio
(a name arrived at through the combination
of “braggart” and the suffi x - occhio, meaning “big”).
<strong>The</strong> word “brag” referred originally to the discordant
braying of a trumpet. Spenser is thought to
have based the character on a real person, the
French nobleman the duc d’Alençon. “It might
amuse him to rub salt into her wound, to display
that notches- on- the- bedhead braggadocio shared
by so many of his fellows” (Stella Shepherd, Black
Justice, 1988).
brand of Cain See mark of cain.
brave men before Agamemnon, there were (agbmemnon)
No person, place, or era has a monopoly
on achievement or glory. <strong>The</strong> saying is a quotation
from the Odes of the Roman poet Horace (65–8
b.c.), whose original Latin version ran “Vixere fortes
ante Agamemnona.” In Greek mythology, Agamemnon
was the king of Mycenae who led the Greeks
during the Trojan War. <strong>The</strong> current national squad are
being hailed as the best ever to represent the country, but
there were brave men before Agamemnon.
brave new world A greatly changed new situation
or prospect. <strong>The</strong> phrase is a quotation from
William Shakespeare’s play <strong>The</strong> Tempest (1611), in
which miranda exclaims, on laying eyes on other
human beings for the fi rst time: “O, wonder! /
How many goodly creatures are there here! / How
beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, / That
has such people in’t!” <strong>The</strong> negative overtones
connected with the phrase date from the publication
in 1932 of the Aldous Huxley novel Brave New
World, in which the author depicts a nightmarish
future. “Our lives in this brave new world will be
tough, my friends” (Gareth Roberts, <strong>The</strong> Highest
Science, 1993).
Bray, Vicar of See vicar of bray.
bread alone, by See man cannot live by bread
alone.
bread and circuses Food and entertainment as
means to keep the masses content. <strong>The</strong> cynical
notion that a populace provided with plenty of free
food and entertainment (panem et circenses) would
never rise up in revolt was familiar to the ancient
Romans, as evidenced by the writing of the satirist
Juvenal (a.d. c. 55/60–127): “People long eagerly
for two things . . . bread and circuses.” Successive
emperors sponsored spectacles in the circuses of
Rome in the belief that these superfi cial palliatives
would preserve them from the anger of the mob
over more serious issues. TV dinners and Monday
night football, it has been cynically suggested by observers,
are the bread and circuses with which the masses are kept
in their place in modern society.
bread cast upon the waters See cast thy bread
upon the waters.
bread of affl iction Suffering or trouble. This
meta phor is biblical in origin, appearing in 1 Kings
22:27 and in 2 Chronicles 18:26: “Feed him with
bread of affl iction and with water of affl iction.”
“When I refl ect, Brother Toby, upon Man; and take