A worshipper of Brahma, and the highest caste in the Hindu priestly order. The original American designation of Brahmin was applied to the social, literary, political aristocracy of Boston by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935). Today the intellectual and politcal linkage to Boston has vanished. "Brahmin" appies, sometimes pejoratively, to an influential group in politics,education,law and other fields. The name carries connotations of elitism and snobbishness.
bread and circuses:
From the Latin, panem et circenses. Juvenal (60-140), the Roman satirist,cynically remarked, "The people eagerly want two things---bread and circuses." The Roman government supplied these in lavish quantities: public spectacles or entertainments designed to distract the people from the failures of government but providing no solutions to its problems. Hence any cynical, governmental diversion or distraction from the people's central concerns is characterized as a "bread-and-circuses" approach.
bridge of sighs:
An enclosed 16th-century Venetian bridge that led from the Doge's palace to the former Pozzi Prison. Trials were held in the ducal palace. Condemned prisoners then passed through the bridge as they were led to the prison.
A "bridge of sighs" is a journey towards retribution.
blue bird of happiness:
The object of a search by the woodcutter's children Tyltyl and Mytyl in Maurice Maeterlinck's drama "The Blue Beard" (1909). Used symbolically today for elusive happiness.
boondocks or boonies:
An uninhabited backwoods or marsh. Now any remote area far from the activities of big-city life.
Bible Belt:
Areas in the South and Midwest of the United States where religious fundamentalism is a powerful political force. Publishers of textbooks, for example, must consider how their treatment of evolution will go over in the Bible Belt. Librarians are often pressured to remove from their shelves certain books that are offensive to the mentality of some Bible Belt readers, and politicians are often judged by their position on single-issue causes fanatically held by Bible-Belt voters.
~Facts on File Dictionary of Cultural and Historical Allusions.
