A Tale Told by an Idiom

[steepholm]

Yesterday one of my Japanese language partners asked me about the "故事" (koji) used in English. What are koji, you ask (as I did)? Apparently they are "idioms derived from historical events or classical literature of China". Did British history yield many idioms in common use?

I have to admit, my mind went blank. It's easy enough to come up with idioms swiped from literature, notably Shakespeare, but history? Most English idioms seem to come from common experiences, crafts and professions, the natural world, and so on. They don't tend to involve famous people or events - or, if they do, they don't stretch beyond a single word (Canutian, anyone?). The best I've come up with so far is "met his Waterloo".

There are some from the classical world - which stands to Britain much as classical China to Japan: "cut the Gordian knot", "Caesar's wife", or even "a cobbler should stick to his last". I could probably think of a few more, but it's still surprisingly thin pickings.

It's not that my mind is badly stocked with interesting facts and anecdotes (many of questionable veracity) about British and classical history, but that they've somehow failed to morph into idioms. We know about Alfred and the cakes, for example, or Robert the Bruce and the spider, but there isn't any common idiom derived from either encounter that might be muttered by people in similar circumstances.

Is there a rich vein of such sayings that has somehow slipped my mind? I would of course be happy to hear suggested examples!

Comments

[thistleingrey]

"Once more into the breach" [sic] is a bit of a dodge re: history, but I hear it sometimes in the US--probably colonial conservatism, high-cultural aspiration, or some such.

I too would be interested to know whether I've missed such sayings, or they've slid off me. To my limited understanding, CJK usages do tend to be more allusive to Chinese writings on balance, whereas English tends to draw from folk material. (Vague, even more limited understanding says it's true also of German.)

I wonder whether the (different) ways in which Ælfric and Wulfstan laced high allusions into their homiletic material would count as making allusions folksy--but I'd need also to reread them.

[steepholm]

It's strange, isn't it, how different cultures filter these things differently? I don't think we can quite count "once more...", since it's a literary quotation - albeit from a history.

[thistleingrey]

Right--I saw your Shakespeare exception. There may be a middle area including something like Shakespeare's works, I think, since the Chinese allusive space includes Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is even more pseudo- in its historicity.

[lilliburlero]

The one that immediately occurred to me was 'Dunkirk spirit', if I've got the notion right?

[steepholm]

Oh yes, that's often used; good call.

[lilliburlero]

Black Hole of Calcutta? And this I did not know.

[steepholm]

Oh, good one! And I didn't know that either!