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

understanding heart
482
is to the central character in the hugely pop u lar
novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by U.S. author and
antislavery campaigner Harriet Beecher Stowe
(1811–96). Uncle Tom is an aged, loyal, gentle
black slave whose sufferings and ultimate martyrdom
at the hands of the vicious slave own er Simon
Legree vividly evoke the realities of life as a slave
in the period leading up to the Civil War. He was
allegedly based upon Josiah Henson (1789–1883),
a black slave and Methodist preacher brought to
London in 1876 to be presented to Queen Victoria.
He had been a fi rebrand as a youth but he had been
outpaced by a new generation of black radicals who saw
their elders as a generation of Uncle Toms.
understanding heart See judgment of solomon.
under the aegis of See aegis.
under the sun See nothing new under the
sun.
unequally yoked Improperly or unsuitably linked
in a very close partnership (usually by marriage).
<strong>The</strong> phrase is biblical in origin, being a quotation
from 2 Corinthians 6:14 in which Paul warns the
Corinthians, “Be ye not unequally yoked together
with unbelievers.” <strong>The</strong> phrase has been variously
applied to marriages between Christians and non-
Christians and more generally to any pair of partners
deemed ill matched. <strong>The</strong> two nations entered a
co ali tion against their common enemy, but it quickly
became apparent that they were unequally yoked.
unerring as the dart of Procris (prokris) Undeviating;
deadly accurate. According to Greek
legend the jealous Procris deserted her husband,
Cephalus, and was presented by the sympathetic
Diana with a dog that always caught its prey and
a dart that always hit its target and then returned
to its own er’s hand. Unfortunately when Procris
hid in some bushes to spy on her husband and any
lover he might be with, she made too much noise,
and thinking he was being stalked by a wild beast,
Cephalus hurled his javelin into the bushes, killing
her. Upon discovering his mistake Cephalus
killed himself out of grief. This last shaft was as
unerring as the dart of Procris and left its victim
stunned.
unforgivable sin See unpardonable sin.
unicorn A fabulous animal resembling a white
horse with a single horn in the middle of its forehead,
most familiar today as an emblem in heraldic
devices. Its name derives from the Latin unus cornus
(“one horn”). <strong>The</strong> unicorn made its fi rst appearance
in literature in the writings of Ctesias around
400 b.c. and was subsequently mentioned in many
medieval bestiaries. Originally described as having
a lion’s tail, a stag’s legs, and a horse’s head and
body, the unicorn was believed to be very fi erce
but also fatally attracted by chastity, allowing it to
be tricked into laying its head in the lap of a young
virgin and thus captured. Allusions to the unicorn
in modern iconography usually invoke the creature’s
identifi cation with chastity, although Christian
tradition sometimes also depicts Christ as a
unicorn. He came to think of her as some elusive unicorn,
uncatchable and remote from the ordinary world
of men.
unkindest cut of all, the <strong>The</strong> most hurtful of
injuries or insults, especially one delivered by a
person previously thought to be a friend. <strong>The</strong>
allusion is to William Shakespeare’s play Julius
Caesar (1599), in which Mark Antony shows the
crowd the “most unkindest cut of all” made in the