- skip - Brewer’s

Herring

.

Dead as a shotten herring. The shotten herring is one that has shot off or ejected its spawn. This fish dies the very moment it quits the water, from want of air. Indeed, all the herring tribe die very soon after they are taken from their native element. (See Battle.)

By gar de herring is no dead so as I vill kill him.ʹ—Shakespeare: Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. 2.

Neither barret the better herring. Much of a muchness; not a pin to choose between you; six of one and half a dozen of the other. The herrings of both barrels are so much alike that there is no choice whatever. In Spanish: “Qual mas qual menos, toda la lana es pelos.”


Two feloes being like flagicious, and neither barell better herring, accused either other, the kyng Philippus … sitting in judgement vpon them … . condemned both the one and the other with banishmente.”—Erasmus: Apophthegmes.

 

previous entry · index · next entry

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

previous entry · index · next entry

Heroes scratched off Church-doors
Heroic Age
Heroic Medicines
Heroic Size
Heroic Verse
Herod
Herod’s Death (Acts xii. 23)
Herodotus of Old London (The)
Heron-crests
Herostratos or Erostratos
Herring
Herring-bone (in building)
Herring-pond (The)
Hertford
Hertha
Hesione
Hesperia
Hesperides
Hesperus
Hesychasts (pron. He-se-kasts)
Hetærism

Linking here:

Dead