Quotable quotes

Some thoughts from the Oxford English Dictionary and its quotation files on...

Proper Charlies...
1714 Spectator, Fifty Chaplins, all in their proper Accoutrments.

...sans-culottes lap-dogs...
1816 J. Mackintosh Jrnl. 21 Feb., The Duke of Devonshire has brought a poodle dog from Paris, who growls when 'Vive le roi' is cried out to him.

...keeping up appearances...
1903 Daily Chron., Anyone with an elementary knowledge of the breathing apparatus must see the evil of mouth breath- ing, which...causes facial distortion...Ladies in particular should study this subject if they would preserve their good looks.

...early evidence of continental drift...
c1440 Morte Arth., The roo* and the raynedere reklesse thare ronnen.
*i.e., roe deer

...getting that wash whiter than white...
1969 H. E. Pinto Treen, Others used a soap substitute composed of balls of hog's dung in lye made with wood ashes and chamber-pot water.

...and yet another Freudian slip.
1979 Globe & Mail (Toronto), Explicitly sexual material will now be hidden in plastic wrapping, and placed on shelves at least sex feet high, beyond young children's reach.