Brewer's: Reply Churlish

(The). Sir, you are no judge; your opinion has no weight with me. Or, to use Touchstone's illustration: “If a courtier tell me my beard is not well cut, and I disable his judgment, I give him the reply churlish, which is the fifth remove from the lie direct, or rather, the lie direct in the fifth degree.”

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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