Bullet:
If someone is told to chew or bite on the bullet then they are advised
to accept their punishment. The Bullet in this instance was a real one.
It was a point of honour in some regiments that soldiers never cried
out when under the discipline of the cat o'nine tails. In order to
remain quiet, they literally chewed a bullet. If they did sing out,
then they were termed a "nightingale". An alternative explanation comes
from the time of the Indian Mutiny. Cartridges at that time came in two
parts, the missile part inserted into the base and held there with
grease. This grease was either pork or cow fat. In order to prime the
bullet the two parts had to be bitten apart and the base filled with
powder before re-inserting the missile. Pigs are untouchable to Hindus
and cows are holy animals, not to be desecrated. In consequence the
Hindu soldiers fighting for the British were damned when they bit the
bullet, whatever the fat used.
Another offering from Victoria Dennis. On what authority she bases her
opinion is not given, but it makes interesting reading. Bite
the bullet simply means "endure the inevitable", which does not
necessarily entail punishment. Soldiers weren't given a bullet to bite
during floggings (when they were generally given a piece of leather)
but during battlefield surgery. A bullet was used because lead is just
soft enough that the man wouldn't break his teeth biting it; bullets
with tooth marks have actually been found near American Revolution
battlefields.
The Indian Mutiny explanation is total garbage, I'm afraid. Quite apart
from anything else, to use the Lee-Enfield cartridge you had to bite
off the end of the cartridge at the opposite end to the bullet; the
bullet was what you had to avoid biting! In fact this account of the
"greased cartridges" incident is about as inaccurate as it could
possibly be; whoever originated it obviously didn't know anything about
the subject whatever. The cartridges were not "in two parts"; the
grease didn't "hold" anything "in the base" but was used externally to
lubricate and prevent damp; the grease wasn't actually pig or cow fat
at all - this was a malicious rumour spread to encourage mutiny; pigs
aren't untouchable to Hindus, but to Moslems; and the Indian soldiers
were not actually forced to use the cartridges at all. (As soon as they
heard the rumour about the grease, the Indian army authorities, who
knew just how horrifying that idea was to the troops, instantly
withdrew the new cartridges.)
Bully: "Bully for you" is a term indicating praise. At first sight it
seems an odd use of "bully" until one realises that the word had a 16th
century meaning of fine fellow, sweetheart which probably came from the
middle Dutch Boele = Lover.
Bunkum: If something is a load of old bunkum then it's regarded as
rubbish, unreliable or even frankly untruthful. The expression comes
from the US congress where, in about 1820 Representative Felix Walker,
when asked why he had made such a vociferous, angry and flowery speech,
replied "I wasn't speaking to the House, but to Buncombe!" which was
his constituency in North Carolina. To debunk something has the same
basis.
Burton: To go for a Burton implies that someone has been killed or
completely ruined. World War Two pilots used this expression when
colleagues did not return from missions; it seemed less permanent than
saying that their fellow pilots had died. It is supposed to refer to
Burton Ale, a strong beer brewed at the time, with the implication that
their friends had only popped out for a drink. It may be that it refers
to when they crashed into the sea, or went down in the drink (a more
obvious slang term) linking it to Burton's fine ales!
Furthermore, it could be that it is one of several
expressions which transferred from the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS)
when it was merged into the RAF in 1918. If so, there are two possible
derivations. The first refers to a 'Spanish Burton' which was an
ingenious but complicated pulley arrangement made up of three blocks.
Indeed, so complicated was the Spanish Burton, and so rarely used, that
hardly anyone could remember how to do it. Thus it became the standard
answer to anyone in authority enquiring the whereabouts of a missing
member of a working party: 'he's gone for a burton'. The other
explanation comes from the term 'a-burton' an unusual method of stowing
wooden casks or barrels sideways across the ship's hold. The advantage
of this was that they took up less space and were individually more
accessible than when stowed in the fore-and-aft line. The disadvantage,
however, and the reason why it was rarely employed, was that the entire
stowage could easily collapse. Hence the implication of knocking a man
over. (Source of RNAS derivations: 'Salty Dog Talk: The Nautical
Origins of Everyday Expressions' by Bill Beavis and Richard G.
McCloskey (Sheridan House; originally published in London in 1983)).
However the phrase is recorded in the 15th century as a euphemism for
"to die", thus making all of these suggestions most unlikely!
Bush: To beat about the bush indicates that someone gets to the point
in a round about way. This saying is several hundred years old and
comes from hunting. The beaters beat for the hunters, often around
bushes; however they never catch the prey, always the hunters, who go
directly to the quarry.
Butt: The butt of a joke is the person who comes out ridiculed when a
story is told, i.e. the target of the joke, thereby using the word in
the same sense as rifle or archery Butts.
By: By and by; i.e. in due course or at the appropriate moment. Here's
another very old expression, going back at least to the time of
Chaucer. Originally Bi and bi meant "in order; neatly spaced" and was
known to refer to Time as well as Objects. Thus something occurring at
an appropriate interval after something else could be regarded as
having a neat and tidy relationship to it.
By and Large indicating "on the whole"; "generally speaking" is another
nautical saying. It comes from sailing days when all was dependent on
the wind. By means "close hauled, to within six points of the wind with
the wind before the beam": Large means "with the wind on the quarter,
abaft the beam". Many ships sailed best when they had the winds either
"by" or "large", or a little of each, the average of them "on the
whole".
