There Is Many A Slip Between The Cup And The Lip
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There Is Many A Slip Between The Cup And The Lip
''There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip'' is an English proverb. It implies that even when a good outcome or conclusion seems certain, things can still go wrong, similar in meaning to "don't count your chickens before they hatch". The modern proverb dates to the early 19th century, with English-language predecessors dating back to the 16th century, based on Latin and Greek templates reaching back to at least the 2nd century. Origin There is a reference to the many things that can intervene between cup and lip already in an iambic verse by Lycophron (3rd century BC) quoted by Erasmus. There is a slight similarity between the wording of the proverb and that of an unattributed Greek iambic trimeter verse quoted by Cicero in one of his letters ''Ad Atticum'' (51 BC), but here refers to the geographical distance between Cicero and his correspondent. The English proverb is almost identical with a Greek hexameter, : :"Much there is between the cup and the tip of the lip." Th ...
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Proverb
A proverb (from la, proverbium) is a simple and insightful, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic speech, formulaic language. A proverbial phrase or a proverbial expression is a type of a conventional saying similar to proverbs and transmitted by oral tradition. The difference is that a proverb is a fixed expression, while a proverbial phrase permits alterations to fit the grammar of the context. Collectively, they form a folklore genre, genre of folklore. Some proverbs exist in more than one language because people borrow them from languages and cultures with which they are in contact. In the West, the Bible (including, but not limited to the Book of Proverbs) and medieval Latin (aided by the work of Erasmus) have played a considerable role in distributing proverbs. Not all Biblical proverbs, however, were distributed to the same extent: one scholar has gathered evidence to show ...
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Argonauts
The Argonauts (; Ancient Greek: ) were a band of heroes in Greek mythology, who in the years before the Trojan War (around 1300 BC) accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece. Their name comes from their ship, '' Argo'', named after its builder, Argus. They were sometimes called Minyans, after a prehistoric tribe in the area. Mythology The Golden Fleece After the death of King Cretheus, the Aeolian Pelias usurped the throne from his half-brother Aeson and became king of Iolcus in Thessaly (near the modern city of Volos). Because of this unlawful act, an oracle warned him that a descendant of Aeolus would seek revenge. Pelias put to death every prominent descendant of Aeolus he could, but spared Aeson because of the pleas of their mother Tyro. Instead, Pelias kept Aeson prisoner and forced him to renounce his inheritance. Aeson married Alcimede, who bore him a son named Jason. Pelias intended to kill the baby at once, but Alcimede summoned her kinswome ...
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A Tale Of A Tub (play)
''A Tale of a Tub'' is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Ben Jonson. The last of his plays to be staged during his lifetime, ''A Tale of a Tub'' was performed in 1633 and published in 1640 in the second folio of Jonson's works. History The play was licensed for publication by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 7 May 1633, and acted by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre; it was the only one of Jonson's post-1614 plays not premiered by the King's Men. The play was also performed at Court on 14 January 1634, before King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria – though it was not well received. Scholars are divided on the date of authorship of the play. Some judge it to be an early work, first composed perhaps around 1596, that Jonson later revised not long before its 1633 production. Recent opinion holds that the Jonson wrote the play in the era when it premiered, the early 1630s, and that its apparently archaic aspects are deliberate artistic ch ...
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Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satirical plays ''Every Man in His Humour'' (1598), '' Volpone, or The Fox'' (c. 1606), '' The Alchemist'' (1610) and '' Bartholomew Fair'' (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I." Jonson was a classically educated, well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era (1603–1625) and of the Caroline era (1625–1642)."Ben Jonson", ''Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge'', volume 10, p. 388. His ancestor ...
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Euphues
''Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit'' , a didactic romance written by John Lyly, was entered in the Stationers' Register 2 December 1578 and published that same year. It was followed by ''Euphues and his England'', registered on 25 July 1579, but not published until Spring of 1580. The name ''Euphues'' is derived from Greek ευφυής (''euphuēs'') meaning "graceful, witty." Lyly adopted the name from Roger Ascham's ''The Scholemaster'', which describes Euphues as a type of student who is "apte by goodnes of witte, and appliable by readines of will, to learning, hauving all other qualities of the mind and partes of the bodie, that must an other day serue learning, not trobled, mangled, and halfed, but sounde, whole, full & hable to do their office" (194). Lyly's mannered style is characterized by parallel arrangements and periphrases. The style of these novels gave rise to the term ''euphuism''. Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish e ...
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John Lyly
John Lyly (; c. 1553 or 1554 – November 1606; also spelled ''Lilly'', ''Lylie'', ''Lylly'') was an English writer, dramatist of the University Wits, courtier, and parliamentarian. He was best known during his lifetime for his two books '' Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit'' (1578) and its sequel ''Euphues and His England'' (1580), but perhaps best remembered now for his plays. Lyly's distinctive and much imitated literary style, named after the title character of his two books, is known as ''euphuism''. Biography John Lyly was born in Kent, England, in 1553/1554, the eldest son of Peter Lyly and his wife, Jane Burgh (or Brough), of Burgh Hall in the North Riding of Yorkshire. He was probably born either in Rochester, where his father is recorded as a notary public in 1550, or in Canterbury, where his father was the Registrar for the Archbishop Matthew Parker and where the births of his siblings are recorded between 1562 and 1568. His grandfather was William Lily, the grammarian ...
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George Pettie
George Pettie (1548–1589) was an English writer of romances. His style influenced Robert Greene (dramatist), Robert Greene, and paved the way to euphuism. Life He was younger son of John Le Petite or Pettie of Tetsworth and Stoke Talmage, Oxfordshire, by his wife Mary, daughter of William Charnell of Snareston, Leicestershire. He became a scholar of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1564, and graduated B.A. on 29 March 1569. According to Anthony Wood (antiquary), Anthony Wood, William Gager of Christ Church was a close friend. At Christ Church, Pettie was servitor to Thomas Bernard (priest), Thomas Bernard, with Richard Verstegan. Pettie travelled abroad, and apparently had some military experience. On returning home he concentrated on writing. Guazzo's Civile Conversation. He died, according to Wood, during July 1589, in his prime, at Plymouth. He was buried in "the great Church" at Plymouth. Works The success of ''The Palace of Pleasure'' (1566–7) of William Painter (author), Willi ...
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William Lambarde
William Lambarde (18 October 1536 – 19 August 1601) was an English antiquarian, writer on legal subjects, and politician. He is particularly remembered as the author of ''A Perambulation of Kent'' (1576), the first English county history; ''Eirenarcha'' (1581), a widely read manual on the office and role of justice of the peace; and ''Archeion'' (completed c.1591, though not published until 1635), a discourse that sought to trace the Anglo-Saxon roots of English common law, prerogative and government. Early life, education and career William Lambarde was born in London on 18 October 1536. His father John Lambarde was a draper who served three times as Master of the Drapers' Company, an alderman and a sheriff of London. The Manor of Westcombe in Greenwich, demolished in 1725, was their family home... In 1556, Lambarde was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, where he studied Law. In 1568, with Laurence Nowell's encouragement, he published a collection of Anglo-Saxon laws, ''Archaio ...
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Jennifer Speake
Jennifer Speake, ''née'' Drake-Brockman (born 1944, Toronto) is a Canadian-British freelance writer and editor of reference books. Life Jennifer Anne Speake was born in Toronto in 1944. She was the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Guy Percy Lumsden Drake-Brockman and Vera Mary McLeod Harrison Topham, later of Hilton, KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. She has an MA and BPhil. Career Working at Oxford University Press, Speake helped ''OED'' editor John Simpson bring out a second edition of his ''Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs'', and a third edition in 1998. She became sole editor for the fourth (2003) and subsequent editions. Speake's other work included a biography of Thomas Vaughan, a philosopher from Wales. Speake's three-volume 2003 encyclopedia of travel literature received a 2004 Reference and User Services Association award. One reviewer called it "an amazing collection of those people, famous, not-so-famous, and infamous alike, who have traveled the world over, with ...
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Richard Taverner
Richard Taverner (1505 – 14 July 1575) was an English author and religious reformer. He is best known for his Bible translation, commonly known as Taverner's Bible, but originally titled . Life and works Taverner was born at Brisley (about 20 miles northwest of Norwich). In his youth at Christ Church, Oxford, Taverner got into trouble for reading William Tyndale's New Testament, which was being circulated and promoted there by Thomas Garret. In February 1528, Cardinal Wolsey attempted to apprehend Garret, who escaped temporarily with the help of his friend Anthony Dalaber. After being brought back to Oxford, Garret and Dalaber participated in a public act of penance along with Taverner and others who would play a significant part in the Reformation. He studied at Corpus Christi College and Cardinal College at the University of Oxford, later earning at an MA at Cambridge University. He entered the Inner Temple to study law in 1534. Later, under Thomas Cromwell's dir ...
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Adagia
''Adagia'' (singular ''adagium'') is the title of an annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs, compiled during the Renaissance by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Erasmus' collection of proverbs is "one of the most monumental ... ever assembled" (Speroni, 1964, p. 1). The first edition, titled ''Collectanea Adagiorum'', was published in Paris in 1500, in a slim quarto of around eight hundred entries. By 1508, after his stay in Italy, Erasmus had expanded the collection (now called ''Adagiorum chiliades tres'' or "Three thousands of proverbs") to over 3,000 items, many accompanied by richly annotated commentaries, some of which were brief essays on political and moral topics. The work continued to expand right up to the author's death in 1536 (to a final total of 4,151 entries), confirming the fruit of Erasmus' vast reading in ancient literature. Commonplace examples from ''Adagia'' Some of the adages have become commonplace in many European language ...
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French Language
French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French ( Francien) largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the ( Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to France's past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is an official language in 29 countries across multiple continents, most of which are members of the ''Organisation internationale de la Francophonie'' ...
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