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Brewer's: Sapphics
A Greek and Latin metre, so named from Sappho, the inventor. Horace always writes this metre in four-line stanzas, the last being an Adonic. There must be a caesura at the fifth foot of…Brewer's: Say
To take the say. To taste meat or wine before it is presented, in order to prove that it is not poisoned. The phrase was common in the reign of Queen Elizabeth Nor deem it meet that you to…Brewer's: Starch
Mrs. Anne Turner, half-milliner, half-procuress, introduced into England the French custom of using yellow starch in getting up bands and cuffs. She trafficked in poison, and being…Brewer's: Tofana
An old woman of Naples immortalised by her invention of a tasteless and colourless poison, called by her the Manna of St. Nicola of Bari, but better known as Aqua Tofana. Above 600 persons…Brewer's: Tom Thumb
the nursery tale, is from the French Le Petit Poucet, by Charles Perrault (1630), but it is probably of Anglo-Saxon origin. There is in the Bodleian Library a ballad about Tom Thumb, “…Brewer's: Wool
Dyed in the wool. A hearty good-fellow. Cloth which is wool-dyed (not piece-dyed), is true throughout “and will wash.” No wool is so white…Brewer's: Veiled Prophet of Khorassan
The first poetical tale in Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh. The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan was Hakim ben Allah, surnamed the Veiled (Mokanna), founder of an Arabic sect in the eighth century…Brewer's: Vervain
Called “holy herb,” from its use in ancient sacred rites. Also called “pigeons' grass,” “Juno's tears,” and “simpler's joy.” Supposed to cure scrofula, the bite of rabid animals, to arrest…Brewer's: Bete
Morte la bête, mort le venin. Dead men tell no tales; dead dogs don't bite. When one is dead his power of mischief is over. Literally, if the beast is dead, its poison is dead also. Quand…Brewer's: Coral Beads
The Romans used to hang beads of red coral on the cradles and round the neck of infants, to “preserve and fasten their teeth,” and save them from “the falling sickness.” It was considered…Trending
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