Shakespeare Popularized Falconry Terms

English is full of figures of speech popularized by Shakespeare. Some of those terms Shakespeare’s interest in falconry.

“Hold onto Lima,” Healy-Rennison commanded, as I tightly pinched the speckle-feathered bird’s jesses, or tethers, under my thumb. “Now she’s ‘under your thumb’,” Healy-Rennison explained with a smile. “Quite literally,” I replied, amused to learn the etymology of a phrase that I’ve used for most of my life. Only now I was standing in the place where the phrase was born – in the wet green woods of the Anglo-Irish gentry, with a giant hawk on my wrist, her jesses wrapped around my little finger. “Yet another phrase we get from falconry.” —BBC – Travel

Post was last modified on 23 Dec 2021 2:54 pm

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    • Most of it, yes. The descriptions of the hawk, and the bits weaving in TH White's experiences, were very well done. The more solipsistic waffle, not so much. Definitely worth a read.

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Dennis G. Jerz
Tags: Shakespeare

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