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Midi

.

Chercher midi à quatorze heures. To look for knots in a bulrush; much ado about nothing; to explain prosily what is perfectly obvious.

⁂ There is a variant of this locution: Chercher midi où il nʹest quʹonze heures, to look for à needle in a bottle of hay; to give oneself a vast lot of trouble for nothing. At one time, hundreds of persons looked for the millennium and end of the world on fixed dates, and to them the proverb would apply.

 

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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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Mickleton Jury (The)
Microcosm
Mid-Lent Sunday
Midas
Midas-eared
Midden
Middle Ages
Middlesex
Midgard
Midgard Sormen (earth’s monster)
Midi
Midlothian
Midnight Oil
Midrashim (sing. Midrash)
Midsummer Ale
Midsummer Madness
Midsummer Men
Midsummer-Moon Madness
Midsummer Night’s Dream
Midwife (Anglo-Saxon, mid, with; wif, woman)
Miggs (Miss)