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From: Enrico C <enrico.c@spamcop.net>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Pass with flying colours [An Idiom A Day #3]
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"The half-hour before dinner has always been considered as the great
ordeal through which the mistress, in giving a dinner-party, will
either pass with flying colours, or lose many of her laurels."
Isabella Beeton (1836-1865) The Book of Household Management (1861)
I found the quote on
http://www.foodreference.com/html/qflyingcolors.html
a nice web site where you can also read witty sentences on fast food
"We think fast food is equivalent to pornography, nutritionally
speaking."
Steve Elbert
on fat people
"The reason fat people are happy is that the nerves are well
protected."
Luciano Pavarotti
or on Chinese food
"When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy
that the less known about the preparation the better..."
Calvin Trillin, Third Helpings (1983)
Ok, but what have to do flying colours with a kithchen?
Are those the colours of a soup, or chips, beans, vegetables?
Nope!
If the mistress, in giving a dinner-party, "passes with flying
colours,", that just means she passes with great success, with
distinction.
The definition from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary says:
with flying colours
If you do something such as pass an exam with flying colours, you do
it very successfully.
"Her laurels", that she might lose if she doesn't pass!, are those on
which one can rest, as everybody knows!
Here is another "flying colours" example, from the Penguin Dictionary
of English Idioms.
"We were all exptecting him to fail, but he passed with fying
colours."
Here, again, the expression of victory, "to pass with flying colours",
is enphasized by saying that a defeat was feared.
There is a sort of struggle, - we can almost see it - and someone wins
and is celebrating.
The waving colours must be those of a flag!
"To come through with flying colours is to successfully achieve a
difficult objective, such as passing an exam with distinction.", wrote
James Briggs on the "Phrase Finder" web Forum
http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/ ,
"The origin here is clearly military, but which service? Lancers
charging? A victory parade through a captured town? In reality it is a
victorious fleet sailing into harbour with their flags still flying at
their mastheads."
Some more flying colours:
" 'We came off with flying colours.' George Farquar, 'The Beaux's
Stratagem (1706). Victorious; extremely successful. The term comes
from the practice of a victorious fleet sailing into port with flags
flying from all the mastheads. By 1700 or so it was being used
figuratively, signifying any kind of triumph."
from "Fighting Words: From War, Rebellion, and other Combative Capers"
by Christine Ammer (NTC Publishing Group, Chicago).
--
Enrico C ~ No native speaker
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