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

Shirley Temple
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who shows the way forward. <strong>The</strong> phrase comes
from John 5:35, which describes John the Baptist:
“He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were
willing for a season to rejoice in his light.” It also
appears in Proverbs 4:18: “But the path of the just
is as the shining light, that shineth more and more
unto the perfect day.” “She’s a capital girl, and
she ought to marry a missionary, or one of your
reformer fellows, and be a shining light of some
sort” (Louisa May Alcott, An Old Fashioned Girl,
1870).
Shirley Temple A sweet- natured young girl,
especially one with curly golden hair. <strong>The</strong> original
Shirley Temple (b. 1928) became famous throughout
the world as a child star in 1930s movies,
among them Little Miss Marker (1934), Curly Top
(1935), and Dimples (1936). <strong>The</strong> movies projected
her as the ideal child—loving, innocent, and
cheerful—though many found her per for mances
saccharine. She retired from movies at a fairly
early age and later in life found a new career as a
diplomat. She behaved like Shirley Temple but was
really about as innocent as Mae West.
shirt of Nessus (nesbs) A misfortune from
which it is impossible to escape. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to
the death of hercules, which came about after he
put on a shirt soaked in the poisonous blood of the
centaur Nessus, offered to him by his own wife,
Deianeira. According to the legend Deianeira had
become jealous after the dying Nessus told her
Hercules had fallen in love with the beautiful Iole.
Nessus also told her that by making her husband
wear a shirt soaked in the centaur’s blood her husband
would be restored to her, so Deianeira dipped
the shirt in Nessus’s blood and sent it to her husband.
<strong>The</strong> pain infl icted by the centaur’s blood was
so agonizing that ultimately Hercules sought relief
from it by throwing himself onto a funeral pyre.
“<strong>The</strong> words stuck to him like the shirt of Nessus,
lacerating his very spirit” (Anthony Trollope, Doctor
Wortle’s School, 1881).
shoot the messenger See kill the messenger.
shot heard round the world <strong>The</strong> shooting of a
bullet or some other event that proves to have
momentous international signifi cance. <strong>The</strong> phrase
has been applied to more than one such shot in
history, but is particularly associated with the fi rst
shot of the American Revolution. It was fi red on
the morning of April 19, 1775, when a force of
farmers and minutemen confronted British troops
across a bridge at Concord, Massachusetts. An
unidentifi ed man fi red the fi rst shot without any
order being given, and the fi rst of many battles
was joined. <strong>The</strong> phrase was later incorporated by
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) in his “Concord
Hymn” (1836): “By the rude bridge that arched
the fl ood, / <strong>The</strong>ir fl ag to April’s breeze unfurled, /
Here once the embattled farmers stood, / And
fi red the shot heard ’round the world.” In 1914
another “shot heard round the world” was fi red by
Gavrilo Princip at sarajevo, triggering World
War I. In 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald fi red a shot that was
heard round the world.
shoulders of giants See on the shoulders of
giants.
show the cloven hoof See cloven hoof.
Shulamite (shoolbmit) A remarkably beautiful
woman. According to the Song of Solomon 6:13,
the Shulamite is the beloved. <strong>The</strong> word could be a
variant form of Shunammite, which means “a girl
from Shunem,” or a feminine form of Solomon, in