Aunt Sally en · PROPN
Etymology
Apparently after My Old Aunt Sally, the title of a blackface minstrel song written by Dan Emmett in 1843.
Meanings
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A traditional game in which balls are thrown to break the pipe in the mouth of a wooden figurine resembling an old woman.
Mrs. Morel did not like the wakes. There were two sets of horses, one going by steam, one pulled round by a pony; three organs were grinding, and there came odd cracks of pistol-shots, fearful screeching of the cocoanut man's rattle, shouts of the Aunt Sally man, screeches from the peep-show lady.
1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter I, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:There were some swings, and a hooting-tooting blaring merry-go-round, and a shooting-gallery and Aunt Sallies.
1905 [1902], Edith Nesbit, chapter VIII, in Five Children and It, New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, page 220:
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(UK, figuratively) A figure drawing criticism or ridicule, especially when prejudiced or unwarranted.
IN FOUR years as India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh has come to resemble a bearded and turbaned Aunt Sally.
2008 June 26, “Manmohan Singh’s burning ambition”, in The Economist, →ISSN:But the novel is something more than a national institution; it has become the recognized channel of communication between the crank and his victims; it is the shooting gallery through which we fire our messages at that dear old Aunt Sally, the British Public.
1912 November 24, W. B. Maxwell, “The Future of the Novel”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:The finance minister, a true Aunt Sally figure, was dispatched to Moscow in search of backing.
2013 March 23, Kyran Fitzgerald, “Stakes couldn’t be higher”, in Irish Examiner:He is helpless, an Aunt Sally, a figure from a cartoon, a missionary in cassock and topi waiting with clasped hands and upcast eyes while the savages jaw away in their own lingo preparatory to plunging him into their boiling cauldron.
1999, J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace, Vintage, page 95:
- (UK, figuratively) A figure drawing criticism or ridicule, especially when prejudiced or unwarranted. ▸ an object set up to invite such criticism
Synonyms
Translations (2)
cy cocyn anelu (wooden figure) · cy cocyn hitio (wooden figure)