W.C. Hazlitt, comp. English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases. 1907.
As comely as to As nimble as
As comely as a cow in a cage.
Langland’s Alliterative Poem on the Deposition of Richard II., Camd. Soc. p. 23. Heywood’s Proverbs, 1562, Part ii. c. 1.
As common as a barber’s chair.
As common as coals from Newcastle.
Heywood’s 2nd Part of Q. Elizabeth’s Troubles, 1606, repr. 77.
As common as Coleman-hedge.
As common as Get out. Cornw.
As cows come to town: some good, some bad.
As coy as a croker’s mare.
Croker may mean a hawker of crockery.
As crooked as a gaumeril. Yorkshire.
Gaumeril = cambrel, cambril, or gambrel. Compare Early crooked, &c., and see Atkinson’s Cleveland Glossary, 1868, p. 85.
As crooked as Crawley brook.
This is a nameless brook, arising about Wobourn, running by Crawling, and falling immediately into the Ouse, a river more meandrous than it, running above eighty miles in eighteen by land. Fuller (1662).
As crooked as Robin Hood’s bow.
As cross as a bear with a sore head.
As cross as nine highways.
As cross as two sticks.
Apparently a quibble on the double sense of cross. We say crosspatch of a peevish child or person. Patch was Wosley’s fool, and bequeathed his name to later members of the motley fraternity.
As crouse as a lopp. Yorkshire.
i.e., as brisk as a flea. Mr. Atkinson, in his Cleveland Glossary, 1868, has the couplet:—
As crouse as a new-washen louse.
This is a Scotch and Northern proverb. Crouse signifies brisk, lively.—R.
As cunning as a crowder (fiddler).
Walker’s Selections from the Gent. Mag. iv. 64.
As cunning as Captain Drake.
As cunning as Craddock, &c.
As dank as a dog.
Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Part 1, ii. 1.
As dark as pitch.
As dead as a door-nail.Or door tree. Both forms are in Piers Plowman (ed. Skeat, text A, i. 161; ed. Wright, p. 26). First Part of Hen. VI., 1594, repr. 63.
As dead as a herring.
A herring is said to die immediately after it is taken out of its element, the water; and that it dies very suddenly myself can witness: so likewise do pilchards, shads, and the rest of that tribe.—R.
As dead as charity.
Field’s Woman is a Weathercock, 1612, edit. 1828, p. 57.
As deaf as a beetle.
i.e., As dull of apprehension as the implement so called.
As dear as two eggs a penny.
As deep as a draw-well.
My mother would playfully say this of me.
As deep as Chelsea.
N. and Q.
As deep as Garrick.
I found this current in Cornwall, where Garrick’s name can scarcely have been very familiar. Mr. Pavin Phillips (Notes and Queries, 2nd A., ii. 307) states that it is well known at Haverfordwest, where, however, they make Garratt out of Garrick.
As deep as the North Star.
N. and Q.
As deep drinketh the goose as the gander.
As demure [or civil] as if butter would not melt in his mouth.
Some add, And yet cheese will not choke him. Caldo de zorra que està frio y quema. Span.—R.
As disconsolate as Dame Hockaday’s hen. Cornw.
As diurnal as a Gravesend barge.
Letter to Milton from Sir H. Wotton (Reliq. Wotton, 1672, 343). This may refer to the Gravesend tiltboat, and if so, is an early notice of it.
As dizzy as a goose.
As drunk as a Banbury tinker.
The London Chanticleers, 1659 (Hazlitt’s Dodsley, xii. 336).
As drunk as a beggar.
This proverb begins now to be disused, and, instead of it, people are ready to say, As drunk as a lord: so much hath that vice (the more is the pity) prevailed amongst the nobility and gentry of late years.—R. 1737.
As drunk as a drum.
The Women’s Petition against Coffee, 1674, p. 5.
As drunk as a lord.
As drunk as a rat.
As drunk as a thrush.
This is rather a French proverb. It refers to the alleged habit which the bird has of surfeiting itself on the juice of the grape in the South of France during its temporary sojourn there.
As drunk as a tinker’s bitch. East Anglia.
Forby’s Vocab. 1830, 26–7.
As drunk as a wheelbarrow.
As drunk as David’s sow.
An Antidote against Melancholy, 1749, p. 127. A common saying, which took its rise from the following circumstance. One David Lloyd, a Welshman, who kept an alehouse at Hereford, had a living sow with six legs, which was greatly resorted to by the curious; he had also a wife much addicted to drunkenness, for which he used sometimes to give her due correction. One day, David’s wife having taken a cup too much, and being fearful of the consequences, turned out the sow, and lay down to sleep herself sober in the stye. A company coming in to see the sow, David ushered them into the stye, exclaiming, “There is a sow for you! did any of you ever see such another?” all the while supposing the sow had really been there; to which some of the company, seeing the state the woman was in, replied, “It was the drunkenest sow they had ever beheld;” whence the woman was ever called David’s sow.—Diction. of the V. Tongue, 1788, quoted by Brady, Var. of Literature, 1826.
As dry as a bone.
As dry as a kex.
The kex is the dried stalk of the hemlock, of wild cicely (R.) and one or two other plants of the same genus. See Miss Baker’s Northampt. Gloss. art. K
As dull as a Dutchman.
As dull as ditchwater.
As dull as Dun in the mire.
Comp. Halliwell in v. From the colour of a horse it would not be easily distinguishable.
As dun as a mouse.
As fair as Lady Done. Cheshire.
Or, There’s Lady Done for you. “The Dones were a great family in Cheshire, living at Utkinton, by the Forest side. Nurses use there to call their children so, if girls; if boys, Earls of Derby.”—R.
“Sir John Done, Knight, hereditary forester and keeper of the forest of Delamere, Cheshire, died in 1629.
“When that Nimrod James the First made a progress in 1607, he was entertained by this gentleman at Utkinton, &c. He married Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Wilbraham, Esq., of Woodhey, who left behind her so admirable a character, that to this day, when a Cheshire man would express some excellency in one of the fair sex, he would say, ‘There is Lady Done for you.’”—Pennant’s Journey from Chester to London, 1793.
As false as a fox.
Alex. Montgomery, Cherry and Slae, 1597.
As false as a Scot.
I hope that nation generally deserves not such an imputation; and could wish that we Englishmen were less partial to ourselves and censorious of our neighbours.—R.
As fast as a bear in a cage.
Jack Juggler, an interlude, circa 1550, edit. 1848, p. 39.
As fast as a dog will lick a dish.
As fast as a Kentish oyster.
Green’s Tu quoque, 1614, by John Cooke (Hazlitt’s Dodsley, vi. 282).
As fast as hops.
As fat as a Bacon-pig at Martlemas.
As fat as Big Ben. Leeds.
A former bell-man [of Leeds] in great repute on account of his huge proportions.—Dialect of Leeds, 1862, p. 247.
As fierce as a dig. Lanc.
As fierce as a lion of Cotswold.
i.e., A sheep, Gloucester. So in the Interlude of Thersytes (about 1550): “—now haue at the lyons on Cotsolde,” edit. 1848, p. 58. But see Skelton’s Works, ed. Dyce, ii. 76. Another form of the expression is, “A lion with a white face,” i.e., a calf.
As fine as a horse.
See Hazlitt’s Faiths and Folklore, 1905, p. 399. “They took places in the waggon (for Chester), and quitted London early on May-morning; and, it being the custom in this month for passengers to give the waggoner, at every inn, a riband to adorn his team, she soon discovered the origin of the proverb As fine as a horse; for before they got to the end of their journey, the poor beasts were almost blinded by the tawdry, party-coloured, flowing honours of their heads.”—Life of Mrs. Pilkington, quoted in Brady’s Var. of Liter., 1826.
As fine [or proud] as a lord’s bastard.
As fine as an ape in purple.
Asinus portans mysteria.—E
As fine as fivepence, as neat as ninepence.
The first portion occurs in An Antidote against Melancholy, 1749, p. 139. But see it in Appius and Virginia, 1575, apud Dodsley, xii. 348. Compare Finer.
As fine as Kerton. Devonshire.
i.e., Crediton spinning. Comp. That’s extra, &c.
As fit as a fiddle.
Englishmen for my Money, 1616 (Hazlitt’s Dodsley, x. 529).
As fit as a fritter for a friar’s mouth.
As fit as a pudding for a friar’s mouth.
Fulwell’s Like will to Like, 1568. Day’s Blind Beggar of Bednal Green, 1659, ed. Bullen, p. 89.
As flat as a flaun [custard]. Northern.
As flat as a flounder.
As flat as a pancake.
The London Chaunticleers, 1659. Middleton and Rowley’s Roaring Girl, 1611.
As flat as ditch-water.
As flattering or fawning as a spaniel.
As fond of it as an ape is of a whip and a bell.
As free as an ape is of his tail.
As free of his gifts as a blind man of his eye.
As freely as St. Robert gave his cow.
“This Robert was a Knaresborough saint, and the old women there can still tell you the legend of the cow.”—R. A metrical life of St. Robert of Knaresborough from an early MS. was printed for the Roxburghe Club, 1821, 4to. The reputation of the saint is perhaps fresher to-day than that of a different sort of local celebrity, Eugene Aram.
As freely as the collier that called my Lord Mayor knave when he got on Bristow causey [causeway].
As fresh as a rose in June.
As fresh as an eel.
Towneley Mysteries, p. 107.
As full as a jade, quoth Bride.
As full as a piper’s bag.
As full as a toad is of poison.
As full as an egg is of meat.
“An egge is not so ful of meate, as she is ful of lyes.”—Gammer Gurton’s Needle, v. 2. Jeffreys, in 1685, in sentencing Baxter, declared that his books were as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat.
As full of honesty as a marrow-bone is full of honey.
Wever’s Lusty Juventus, circa 1550, apud Hawkins, i. 146.
As gaunt as a greyhound.
As gentle as a falcon.
Marriage of Wit and Wisdom, circa 1570, Sh. Soc. ed. p. 14.
As glad as fowl of a fair day.
As good a deed as drink.
Shakespeare’s First Part of Henry IV., ii. 1 (bis).
As good a deed as it is to help a dog over a stile.
As good a knave I know as a knave I know not.
As good a maid as Fletcher’s mare, that bore three great foals.
Detection of the Vse of Dice Playe (1552), quoted in a note to Warton’s H. E. P. 1871, iii. 405.
As good a scholar as my horse Ball.
As good as any between Bagshot and Baw-waw.
There is but the breadth of a street between them.—R.
As good as any in Kent or Christendom.
Compare Neither in Kent, &c.
As good as ever flew in the air.
As good as ever the ground went upon.
As good as ever twanged.
As good as ever water wet.
As good as ever went end-ways.
As good as George-a-Green.
Witts Recreations, 1640. repr. 1817, p. 378. “This George of Green was the famous Pindar of Wakefield, who fought with Robin Hood and Little John both together, and got the better of them, as the old ballad tells us.”—R. But the old ballad does not tell us what is true, as George was a much later hero than Robin Hood and his companions. A prose history of the celebrated Pinner was in print before 1600, but no edition anterior to 1632 is at present known. A drama, founded on his real or supposed achievements, was published in 1599; it is attributed to the pen of Robert Greene.
As good as goose-skins that never man had enough of.
As good as had the cow that stuck herself with her own horn.
As good he an addled egg as an idle bird.
As good beg of a naked man as of a miser.
As good do nothing as to no purpose.
As good eat the devil as the broth he is boiled in.
As good lost as found.
As good luck as the lousy calf that lived all winter and died in the summer.
As good never a whit as never the better.
As good out of the world as out of the fashion.
As good sit still as rise up and fall.
As good to play for nought as work for nought.
In the same sense apparently, Clarke (Parœm., 1639, p. 154) has: “You’d as good beat your heels against the ground.”
As good twenty as nineteen.
As good undone as done too soon.
As good water goes by the mill as drives it.
As grave as an old gate-post.
As greedy as a dog.
As green as grass.
As grey as grannum’s cat.
As handsomely as a bear picketh muscles.
As hard as a horn.
As hard-hearted as a Scot of Scotland.
As hasty as Hopkins, that came to gaol over-night and was hanged the next morning.
Compare Don’t Hurry, Hopkins.
As healthy as a trout.
As high as a hog, all but the bristles.
Spoken of a dwarf in derision.—R.
As high as three horse loaves.
As hollow as a gun.
Or, as a kex. V. supra.
As honest a man as any in the cards when the kings are out.
As honest a man as ever brake bread.
As honest a man as ever trod on shoe leather.
As hot as a black pudding.
Fulwell’s Like will to Like, 1568.
As hot as a toast.
As hungry [or poor] as a church mouse.
As hungry as a hawk.
As I brew so must I needs drink.
Avalez ce que vous avez brassé. Swallow ouer that which you haue browen, man: if you haue browen wel, you shal drinke the better.—Wodroephe’s Spared Houres of a Souldier in his Travels, 1623.
As if a man that is killed should come home upon his feet.
As innocent as a devil of two years old.
As intricate as a flea in a bottom of flax.
Reliquæ Wottonianæ, ed. 1672, p. 452 (Letter of Sir H. Wotton to his nephew, 27 July, 1630). The saying seems to be introduced proverbially.
As Irish as pigs in Shudehill market. Manchester.
As irrecoverable as a lump of butter in a greyhound’s mouth.
As is the gander, so is the goose.
As is the gardener, so is the garden.
As is the workman, so is the work.
As it pleases the painter.
As jealous as the man (Ford) that searched a hollow walnut for his wife’s leman.
Merry Wives of Windsor, 1602.
As kind as a kite.
As lame as a tree.
As lame as St. Giles, Cripplegate.
St. Giles was by birth an Athenian, of noble extraction, but quitted all for a solitary life. He was visited with lameness (whether natural or casual I know not); but the tradition goes, that he desired not to be healed thereof for his greater mortification. Cripplegate was so called before the Conquest, from cripples begging of passengers therein.
This proverb may seem guilty of false heraldry, lameness on lameness: and, in common discourse, is spoken rather merrily than mournfully, of such who, for some slight hurt, lag behind; and sometimes is applied to those who, out of laziness, counterfeit infirmity.—R.
As lamentable as a Lincolnshire goose after plucking time.
J. T. Smith’s Book for a Rainy Day, 1861, p. 172–3.
As lawless as a town bull.
As lazy as Ludlam’s dog, that leaned his head against the wall to bark.
Ludlam (according to Dr. Brewer) was the famous sorceress of Surrey, who lived in a cave near Farnham, called “Ludlam’s Cave.” She kept a dog, noted for its laziness, so that when the rustics came to consult the witch, it would hardly condescend to give notice of their approach even with the ghost of a bark. The dog of the proverbially “Lazy Lawrence” is also celebrated for a like habit. Sailers say, “As lazy as Joe the Marine, who laid down his musket to sneeze.”—Notes and Queries.
As lean as a rake.
As learned as Doctor Dodypoll.
See Doctor Dodypoll.
As light as a fly.
As light as a kex.
As light as the Queen’s groat.
As light on his foot as a ragman. Irish.
As like a dock as a daisy.
As like as an apple is to a lobster [or oyster].
As like as fourpence to a groat.
As like as Jack Fletcher and his bolt.
Damon and Pithias, 1571 (Hazlitt’s Dodsley, iv. 19).
As like as ninepence to nothing.
As like as two peas.
As like as York is to foul Sutton.
Sutton in Yorkshire.
As like one as if he had been spit out of his mouth.
The London Chanticleers, 1659 (Hazlitt’s Dodsley, xii. 331).
As long as a Welsh pedigree.
As long as Deansgate. Manchester.
As long as Meg of Westminster.
“This is applied to persons very tall, especially if they have hopple height wanting breadth proportionable. That there ever was such a giant woman cannot be proved by any good witness: I pass not for a late lying pamphlet, entitled, ‘Story of a monstrous tall virago, called Long Megg of Westminster;’ the writer of which thinks it might relate to a great gun lying in the Tower, called Mons Megg, in troublesome times brought to Westminster, where for some time it continued.”—R. “The large grave stone shown on the south side of the cloister in Westminster Abbey, said to cover her body, was placed over a number of monks who died of the plague, and were all buried in one grave.”—Fuller, 1662.
As long as the bird sings before Candlemas, it will greet after it.
As long as to-day and to-morrow.
As long liveth a merry man as a sad.
Porter’s Two Angrie Women of Abington, 1599, edit. Dyce, p. 49 (slightly varied).
As loud as a horn.
As loud as Tom of Lincoln.
“This Tom of Lincoln is an extraordinary great bell, hanging in one of the towers of Lincoln minster: how it got the name I know not, unless it were imposed on it when baptized by the Papists. Howbeit, this present Tom was cast in King James’s time, anno 1610.”—R. Brady quotes a different account: “This Cathedral has many bells; and particularly the northern tower is filled up, as one may say, with the finest great bell in England, which is called ‘Tom of Lincoln.’… ‘As loud as Tom of Lincoln,’ is a proverb. It weighs 4 tons 1,894 pounds, and will hold 424 gallons, ale-measure; the circumference is twenty-two feet eight inches.—Tour [through the whole Island of] Great Britain, 1742, quoted by Brady, Var. of Literature, 1826.
As love thinks no evil, so envy speaks no good.
As mad as a hatter.
I have never seen any satisfactory solution of this saying; but it appears from the dedication to the Hospital of Incurable Fools, 4to, 1600, that there was at that time living an eccentric character, perhaps not possessed of superfluous intelligence, known as John Hodgson, alias John Hatter, alias John of Paul’s Churchyard. Possibly we may here have the original “mad hatter.” Nor is it unlikely that he is the same individual whom we find figured as John o’ the Hospital in Armin’s Two Maids of Moreclacke, 1609. See farther in Nares’ Glossary, 1859, p. 641–2.
As mad as Ajax.
Loves Labours Lost, 1598.
As mad as a March hare.
Colyn Blobols Testament (Hazlitt’s Pop. Poetry, i. 105). But query marsh hare. Heywood Epigr., 2nd Hundr., 1562, 95, very properly says—
As mad as the baiting bull of Stamford.
Take the original hereof (R. Butcher, in his Survey of Stamford, page 40). William, Earl Warren, lord of this town in the time of King John, standing upon the castle walls of Stamford, saw two bulls fighting for a cow in the meadow, till all the butchers’ dogs, great and small, pursued one of the bulls (being maddened with noise and multitude) clean through the town. This fight so pleased the said Earl, that he gave all those meadows (called the Castle Meadows), where first the bull duel began, for a common to the butchers of the town (after the first grass was eaten), on condition they find a mad bull, the day six weeks before Christmas Day, for the continuance of that sport every year.—R. Compare Hazlitt’s Faiths and Folklore, 1905, p. 81.
As meet as a rope for a thief.
As meet as a sow to bear a saddle.
As melancholy as a cat.
Walker’s Parœm. 1672, p. 20.
As merry as a cricket.
Harvey’s New Letter of Notable Contents, 1593, repr. 13.
As merry as a pie.
King’s Halfe-penny worth of Wit in a Pennyworth of Paper, 1613, sign. D 3.
As merry as cup and can.
As merry as mice in malt.
As merry as the grig.
The grig is the heather, and also the grasshopper, in which sense Tennyson employs the word. As merry as a grig, I take to be synonymous with As merry (or cheerful) as a grasshopper. Some have it, As merry as a Greek.—See Mountebanks Masque, Shakesp. Soc. ed. p. 117. “Hauing spent those twelue dayes as aforesaide in Candia among those merry Greekes, we eftsoones imbarked our selues for Ciprus, to which we were some nine dayes passing: where (as the saying is) the Italians (with whom we passed to Zant) did our errand (like knights errand) against our coming. They made reporte to the Turkes inhabiting the same Ile, that we were all pirats, and that they should do wel to lay hands on vs, and to carry vs to the great Turk, their Emperor, because, besides that we were pirats, and came into Turky but as spies. Wherevpon the Turkes laid hands vpon us, euen vpon our first arriual, threatning to haue brought vs to Constantinople: howbeit they staied vs in Ciprus two daies, in which time they were indifferently well qualified in hope of money we promised them, and which they had to their full contentment ere we parted from them.”—Parry’s Acct. of Sherley’s Travels, 1601, p. 11. T. W[alkington], in the Opticke Glasse of Humors, 1607, alludes to this characteristic of the Greeks, where he speaks of Zeno (ed. 1639, p. 55):—“but so soone as hee had tasted a cup of Canary, he became of a powting Stoicke, a merry Greeke.” Other passages from early writers, in our own and other languages, might easily be quoted in support of the same theory about the Greeks, and this form of the saying being the correct one; but, after all, it would be difficult to come to a perfectly satisfactory conclusion. Both versions may perhaps he admitted as co-existent; one of the characters in Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister, performed before 1551, is Matthew Merry-Greek.
As merry as the mares.
As mild as a lamb.
As mony heads, as mony wits.
As much a kin as Lew’son Hill to Pilson-pen. Dorsetshire.
That is, no kin at all. It is spoken of such who have vicinity of habitation or neighbourhood, without the least degree of consanguinity or affinity betwixt them. For these are two high hills; the first wholly, the other partly, in the parish of Broad Windsor. Yet the seamen make the nearest relation between them, calling the one the cow, the other the calf: in which forms it seems they appear first to their fancies, being eminent sea marks.—R.
As much [or far] as York exceeds foul Sutton.
H. Stephanus (World of Wonders, 1607, translated by R. C., Translator’s Epistle to the Reader). “——it will be found to exceed them: as farre as York doth foule Sutton, to vse a Northerne phrase.” Comp. As Like as York, &c.
As much brain as a burbolt.
Ralph Roister Doister, 1566.
As much deformed as De la Motte’s house.
One gets a glimmer here: house, large, coarse feet, East (Halliwell). Mot, a jade, still in use, but more likely dollimop, a servant wench, as altered to de la mott. A house can hardly be called deformed.—Notes and Queries, March 2, 1878.
As much need of it as he has of the pip.
As much wit as three folks, two fools and a madman. Cheshire.
As naked as a Norfolk dumpling.
Day’s Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, 1659. Alluding doubtless to the tight-fitting skin, like a sausage.
As narrow in the nose as a pig at ninepence. Irish.
Said of a stingy person.—Mr. Hardman in Notes and Queries.
As natural to him as milk to a calf.
As near akin as the cates of Banbury to the bells of Lincoln.
A Knack to Know a Knave, 1594, edit. 1851, p. 376. Cates = cakes.
As necessary as an old sow among young children.
As nice as a nun’s hen.
As nice as the mayor of Banbury.
As nimble as an eel in a sand bag.