miniature microscopes
“In the early eighteenth century the microscope was just beginning to become popularized; ladies wore miniature microscopes on their wrists and amateur scientists . . . were frequently satirized in poems and plays. Both the simple act of looking through the microscope and its larger implications for use in research showed that to be miniaturized in the eighteenth century was not merely to be reduced. On the contrary, the miniature became magnified.”
—Cynthia Wall, from The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope , 1998, a wonderful anthology concerning the famous “heroi-comical” poem.
a perfect and absolute blank
“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines”
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply,
“They are merely conventional signs!”
“Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank”
(So the crew would protest) “that he bought us the best—-
A perfect and absolute blank!”
—Lewis Carroll, from The Hunting of the Snark.
the knave of diamonds
“The Knave of Diamonds tries his wily Arts,
And wins (oh shameful Chance!) the Queen of Hearts.”
—Alexander Pope, from The Rape of the Lock, 1714.
locks will turn to grey
“But since, alas! frail Beauty must decay,
Curl’d or uncurl’d, since Locks will turn to grey,
Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,
And she who scorns a Man, must die a Maid;
What then remains, but well our Pow’r to use,
And keep good Humour still whate’er we lose”
—Alexander Pope, from The Rape of the Lock, 1714.
diamond flat
“A secret party of surveyors [was taken] to lay out the 3,000 acre future Brilliant City, complete with neighborhoods: Discovery Claim, Ruby Gulch, Diamond Flat, Sapphire Hollow. On this trip there were of course more diamonds. Alfred Rubery, a rich Englishman, found one of the fabled anthills. At first he couldnt believe his eyes. It was a sure-enough anthillnatural to this area . . . a foot or two high, made of coarse rock and mineral grains. But this one was sprinkled with many red and white stones of uniform size. Looking closer, he realized they were rubies and diamonds. Practically screaming with ecstasy, he shoveled the whole thing into a sack, ants and all.”
—Kevin Krajick, from Barren Lands: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic, 2002. Watch out, Alfred, the anthill was real, but the overall scheme is a hoax!
black gold
“You old black gold you’ve taken my lung,
Your dust has darkened my home.
And now I am old and you’ve turned your back,
Where else can an old miner go”
—Blue Diamond Mines by Jean Ritchie, 1964.
blue diamond mines
“In the mines, in the mines,
In the Blue Diamond mines,
Ive worked my life away.
In the mines, in the mines,
In the Blue Diamond mines,
Oh, fall on your knees and pray.”
—fromBlue Diamond Mines by Jean Ritchie, 1964.
color blind
“You must be color blind, his mother told him.
He looked at the box of water colors: alizarin, vermillion, yellow, ultramarine, cobalt, blue green, yellow green, black, white, brown, orange.
It was tantalizing. He could see every color there. He knew every shade of difference between those colors. He looked about at the trees out on the street, at the color of the sidewalks, at houses. No inflection of color escaped him. He recognized every one. He wasnt color blind, he knew he wasnt. But he couldnt name those colors. Why hadnt he got a set that had names beside each colour . . .”
—Julian Lee Rayford, from Cottonmouth, 1941.
beat the whites with the red wedge
To beat the whites with the red wedge is not only to win the Civil War, improve the economy, and build collectivism; it is also to force the wedge into all the white zones of experience. . . . the closed, all-enveloping roundness of white investment must everywhere be opened and pierced by red sharpness.
—Jean-Franois Lyotard, celebrating the famous 1919 poster by El Lissitzky. Translated by Yve-Alain Bois in El Lissitzky: Radical Reversibility, Art in America, April 1988.
karat.
1 : a unit of fineness for gold equal to 1/24 part of pure gold in an alloy.
—MerriamWebster Online Dictionary.