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Girdle (g hard)

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A good name is better than a golden girdle. A good name is better than money. It used to be customary to carry money in the girdle, and a girdle of gold meant a “purse of gold.” The French proverb, “Bonne renommée vaut mieux que ceinture dorée,” refers rather to the custom of wearing girdles of gold tissue, forbidden, in 1420, to women of bad character.

Children under the girdle. Not yet born.

All children under the girdle at the time of marriage are held to be legitimate.”—Notes and Queries.

If he be angry, he knows how to turn his girdle (Much Ado about Nothing, v. 1). If he is angry, let him prepare himself to fight, if he likes. Before wrestlers, in ancient times, engaged in combat, they turned the buckle of their girdle behind them. Thus, Sir Ralph Winwood writes to Secretary Cecil:


“I said. ‘What I spake was not to make him angry.ʹ He replied, ‘If I were angry, I might turn the buckle of my girdle behind me.ʹ”—Dec. 17, 1602.

He has a large mouth but small girdle. Great expenses but small means. The girdle is the purse or purse-pocket. (See above.)

He has undone her girdle. Taken her for his wedded wife. The Roman bride wore a chaplet of flowers on her head, and a girdle of sheep’s wool about her waist. A part of the marriage ceremony was for the bridegroom to loose this girdle. (Vaughan: Golden Grove.)

The Persian regulation-girdle. In Persia a new sort of “Procrustēs Bed” is adopted, according to Kemper. One of the officers of the king is styled the “chief holder of the girdle,” and his business is to measure the ladies of the harem by a sort of regulation-girdle. If any lady has outgrown the standard, she is reduced, like a jockey, by spare diet; but, if she falls short thereof, she is fatted up, like a Strasburg goose, to regulation size. (See Procrustes.)

To put a girdle round the earth. To travel or go round it. Puck says, “Iʹll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.” (Midsummer Night’s Dream, ii. 2.)

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Ginnunga Gap
Giona (g soft)
Giotto
Giovanni (Don)
Gipsy (g soft)
Gipsy (The)
Giralda (g soft)
Gird
Gird up the Loins (To)
Girder (A)
Girdle (g hard)
Girdle (Florimel’s)
Girdle (St. Colman’s)
Girdle of Venus
Girl
Girondists (g soft)
Girouette
Gis (g soft)
Gitanos
Give and Take (policy)
Give it Him (To)

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Golden Girdle
Procrustes Bed