| 词汇 | gild the lily |
| 词源 | gild the lily. Everybody knows that this expression is wrong and hackneyed as well, but it is still used to describe something superfluous, and I’d bet that it comes to mind first as gild the lily even to most of those fastidious few who correctly say paint the lily. The fault lies, of course, in confusing what Shakespeare re- ally wrote in King John, when the Earl of Salisbury makes his protest against the king’s second coronation. Therefore, to be possessed with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess. Since to gild comes first in the pertinent line and it is just as ri- diculous to gild a lily as to paint one, the phrase was often re- membered as to gild the lily. Perhaps the old phrase to gild the pill also helped create the confusion. It meant to coat a bitter pill with sugar and gave gild wide currency as a word meaning “to cover over, to paint” (not to paint with gold necessarily). As for King John, he was far from “ridiculous.” The unscrupulous king, who had unjustly seized the throne after the death of his brother Richard in 1199, wanted a second coronation because like any shrewd politician he knew that the awe-inspiring spec- tacle would win him more support among his subjects. |
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