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

est verse in the Bible—or in any literature’ ” (Lucy
Maud Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams, 1917).
Tuck, Friar See friar tuck.
Tuesday <strong>The</strong> third day of the week. It is named
after Tiw (tyr), the Anglo- Saxon god of war and
the sky. Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent begins, on
Ash Wednesday.
turn the other cheek To accept a personal insult
or injury passively and without retaliating. <strong>The</strong>
expression is biblical in origin, being quoted by
Christ in the course of his Sermon on the Mount,
as related in Matthew 5:38–39: “Ye have heard
that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist
not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy
right cheek, turn to him the other also.” “It is well,
I think, that violent offences, when committed,
should be met by instant rebuke. To turn the other
cheek instantly to the smiter can hardly be suitable
in these days, when the hands of so many are raised
to strike” (Anthony Trollope, <strong>The</strong> Last Chronicle of
Barset, 1867). See also eye for an eye.
Tuscan Belonging to a relatively plain and unornamented
order of classical architecture derived
from the doric style. <strong>The</strong> architects chose a grand
but somewhat restrained Tuscan style for the portico of
the bank’s new headquarters in the center of the city. See
also corinthian; ionic.
Tweed, “Boss” See tammany hall.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee A pair of individuals
or things that are so similar they are virtually
indistinguishable. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to two characters
who appear in the children’s fantasy through
the looking- glass (1865) by Lewis Carroll.
<strong>The</strong>y are depicted as two very fat twin brothers
with identical mannerisms and appearance and the
habit of each repeating everything the other says.
<strong>The</strong> names were in existence before Carroll, however,
and were applied as early as 1715 to the rival
composers Giovanni Bononcini and George Frideric
Handel, as immortalized in a poem by the contemporary
writer John Byrom: “Some say, that
Signor Bononcini / Compar’d to Handel’s a mere
ninny; / Others aver, to him, that Handel / Is
scarcely fi t to hold a candle. / Strange! That such
high dispute should be / ’Twixt Tweedledum and
Tweedledee.” “<strong>The</strong> umpires conferred, then, like
Tweedledum and Tweedledee in their striped shirts,
cantered over to the third man in the stands, who’d
been gazing at Mrs. Sherwood at the time and
missed the incident altogether, and who now waved
his down- turned palms back and forth to indicate
no foul” ( Jilly Cooper, Polo, 1991).
twilight of the gods See götterdämmerung.
twilight zone
twilight zone A mysterious area between reality
and fantasy, in which all manner of weird things
might occur. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to the cult U.S. sciencefi
ction tele vi sion series <strong>The</strong> Twilight Zone (1959–
63), which featured such bizarre phenomena as
time warps and machines capable of in de pen dent
thought and began with the words: “<strong>The</strong>re is a fi fth
dimension beyond that which is known to men. It
is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as
infi nity. It is the middle ground between light and
shadow, between science and superstition, and it
lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit
of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.
It is an area we call <strong>The</strong> Twilight Zone.”
Things were turning out so unexpectedly it was a bit like
being in the twilight zone.
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