- skip - Brewer’s

Wideʹnostrils (3 syl.)

.

(French, Bringuenarilles.) A huge giant, who subsisted on windmills, and lived in the island of Tohu. When Pantagruel and his fleet reached this island no food could be cooked because Widenostrils had swallowed “every individual pan, skillet, kettle, frying-pan, dripping-pan, boiler, and saucepan in the land,” and died from eating a lump of butter. Tohu and Bohu, two contiguous islands (in Hebrew, toil and confusion), mean lands laid waste by war. The giant had eaten everything, so that there was “nothing to fry with,” as the French sayi.e. nothing left to live upon.

 

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

Whole Duty of Man
Whole Gale (A)
Whom the Gods Love Die Young [Herodotos]
Wick, Wicked
Wicked Bible
Wicked Prayer Book (The)
Wicked Weed (The)
Wicket-gate
Wicliffe (John)
Wide-awake
Widenostrils
Widow
Widow (in Hudibras)
Widow Bird
Widow’s Cap
Widow’s Piano
Widow’s Port
Wieland
Wife
Wig
Wig (A)

Linking here:

(5) Giants of Mythology