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

popularly supposed to have its origins in the
gladiatorial arenas of ancient Rome. When a gladiator
was defeated, the crowd was invited to decide
his fate by showing a collective thumbs- up, in
which case the gladiator was allowed to live, or a
thumbs- down, in which case he was put to death.
In reality no one is sure exactly what sign the crowd
made with their thumbs to indicate their decision,
as suggested by John Dryden’s description of such
a moment in his translation of the Third Satire of
Juvenal (1693): “Infl uenced by the rabble’s bloody
will, / With thumbs bent back they popularly kill.”
<strong>The</strong> use of thumbs- up or thumbs- down as understood
today may date back only as far as early Hollywood
fi lm reenactments of such gladiatorial
contests. <strong>The</strong> chairman has just given his thumbs- up to
the new project, providing certain conditions are met in
advance.
Thursday <strong>The</strong> fi fth day of the week. <strong>The</strong> day was
named after thor, the Norse god of thunder. In
Britain elections generally take place on a Thursday. In
the United States Thanksgiving is always the last Thursday
in November.
Thyestean feast (thiesteebn) A feast at which
human fl esh is served. <strong>The</strong> reference is to Thyestes,
a Greek who committed adultery with the
wife of his brother Atreus. In revenge Atreus murdered
the children of Thyestes and fed them to
him at a banquet. Thyestes realized what he was
being offered and fl ed the feast, laying a curse on
his brother’s house hold. No one ever found the body,
but few dared voice the suspicion that many shared, that
the unlucky parents had unwittingly taken part in a
Thyestean feast.
thy will be done An expression of acquiescence
to another’s wishes. <strong>The</strong> phrase comes from the
tilt at windmills
Lord’s Prayer, as rendered in Matthew 6:9–10:
“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy
name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in
earth, as it is in heaven.” (See also Luke 22:42.)
“Thy will be done,” replied the managing director’s secretary
with heavy irony as she gathered together the documents
he had left on the desk for her.
Tiananmen Square (teeanbnmen) An act of violent
repression directed against supporters of
democracy. Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China,
was the scene of a huge pop u lar demonstration in
favor of demo cratic po liti cal reform in 1989; it
ended on June 4 when the Chinese army moved
in and massacred many of the unarmed students
maintaining their peaceful protest in the square.
God forbid we ever see a Tiananmen Square in this
country.
tidings of great joy See good tidings of great
joy.
tilt at windmills To oppose imaginary threats or
enemies. <strong>The</strong> reference is to Don Quixote (1605,
1615) by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–
1616), in which the deluded hero don quixote
mistakes a group of distant windmills for giants
and rides off to fi ght them, only to impale his lance
in the sails and be lifted high off the ground. In
modern usage, the phrase is also sometimes
employed when people commit themselves to a
struggle they appear very unlikely to win. “To criticize
language for being ‘misleading’ as to the state
of affairs in the real world is to tilt at windmills,
because language is not so much a limpid pool
through which we are to glimpse the truth as a
muddy pond full of the debris of history and
ideology” (Deborah Cameron, Feminism and Linguistic
<strong>The</strong>ory, 1992).
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