I was just asked about the origin of the phrase "can't hold a candle to," and now that I've looked it up I'm going to share it with you all. In the words of the OED:
to hold a candle to another: lit. to assist him by holding the candle while he works; hence, to help in a subordinate position. not to be able or fit to hold a candle to: not fit to hold even a subordinate position to, nothing to be compared to.My favorite of the citations: 1773 BYROM Poems, Others aver that he to Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a candle. Posted by languagehat at October 21, 2005 09:26 PM
Byrom's verse (on the feuding patrons of Bononcini and Handel) is also notable for introducing Tweedledum and Tweedledee into the vernacular.
Posted by: Ben Zimmer at October 21, 2005 11:10 PMIn Russian, "svechku [ne] derzhal" means "was [not] an eye-witness". It comes from a movie, AFAIK.
Posted by: miram at October 21, 2005 11:48 PMThat's excellent! Thanks for the link to the full poem, Ben Zimmer. It's little things like this that make me look forward to the languagehat RSS every morning.
Posted by: zhwj at October 22, 2005 12:08 AMBen beat me to it!
Byrom also penned this memorable quatrain:
"God bless the King, I mean the Faith's Defender;
God bless - no harm in blessing - the Pretender;
But who Pretender is, or who is King,
God bless us all - that's quite another thing."
Lord Byrom was also the author of "Dom Juam", right?
Posted by: John Emerson at October 22, 2005 07:53 AMI add my thanks to Ben, and to aldi for the followup quatrain.
John Emerson: He also wrote Caim and The Prisoner of Chillom, and I believe he once lived in Aberdeem.
miram: Thanks for the Russian phrase; it's not in my dictionaries, but while looking for it I ran across the odd expression davat' svechku 'to rear, prance (of a horse).'
Posted by: language hat at October 22, 2005 09:09 AMWhose shoes I am not worthy to bear- Matt iii,II via Brewers (ed. 1963) referring to a slave's job.
I have heard shoe/sandal not worthy to wipe/tie versions of this idea applied to a third person, rather than an admission of humility.
Posted by: zhoen at October 22, 2005 10:23 AMNow, investigate "carry a torch".
Posted by: Cryptic Ned at October 23, 2005 02:06 PMIf you ever go on a guided walk around the older and darker parts of the city of London, the tourist guides will tell you, as an article of faith, that this refers to the link-men and link-boys who used to hold lighted torches to guide people (to take a name almost at random, Samuel Pepys) through the unlit, narrow streets to their homes. As such, it would fit LH's dictionary definition quite well.
So if you weren't even good enough to do that for someone then you were definitely extremely inferior. But, to repeat, this is the tourist guides' explanation so almost certainly wrong!
Do any other languages have this?