Words - skip - Brewer’s

Lamp

To smell of the lamp. To bear the marks of great study, but not enough laboured to conceal the marks of labour. The phrase was first applied to the orations of Demosthenes, written by lamp-light with enormous care.

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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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