SHAGGY DOGS:THE EARLIEST reference to "colours" as a means of identification can be traced back to the English navy, which adopted the term in 1706 to describe their flags of identity, writes Albert Jack.
Since then, we have regularly used expressions containing the term, such as to nail one's colours to the mast. We will often hear this said of a person who is resolute in his or her principles or view of events. We might even take it as a public declaration of allegiance.
Since 1706, battleships around the world have flown their national ensign proudly from both the main mast and at other points on the vessel.
In times of battle, a flag might be lowered as a sign of surrender, as any ship taking a pounding could lower the main flag and capitulate. But it might not be a captain or senior officer taking that decision. Any frightened sailor, amid the chaos of battle, could loosen the rope and take his chances as a prisoner of the enemy.
Let's face it: an able seaman would simply be put back to work aboard the conquering ship - a considerably better option than a watery end.
To prevent this, dedicated and brave sea captains might order the flag rope to be literally nailed into the mast, preventing any sign of surrender being made during the battle. Since the early 18th century, the term has been used to describe a determined or principled person.
Sir Robert Peel used the phrase in the Croker Papers(1844) when he ridiculed a political opponent: "I have never heard him [Ashburton] make a speech during the course of which he did not nail, unnail, renail and unnail his colours again."
Arnold Bennett, when writing The Matador of the Five Towns(1912), included the line: "She could not conceive in what ignominy the dreadful affairs would end, but she was the kind of woman that nails her colours to the mast."
By contrast, to sail under false colourswould suggest we had a scoundrel on our hands. During the 18th and 19th centuries, piracy was a serious problem for the authorities, especially around Britain with its vast network of inlets and coves.
Pirate ships would sail along the coastline for months on end looking for one of the many trade ships making its way back to the ports, full of valuable goods imported via England's new trading routes all over the world. Honest and hard-working merchant seamen were likely to risk their lives in faraway lands, then face the dangers of the high seas for several years only to be ambushed by pirates just off the Cornish coast.
Lucrative cargoes could be lost forever, along with many lives. One tactic the pirates successfully adopted was to fly the ensign of a friendly nation, enabling them to get close to an unsuspecting merchant ship before revealing their true colours.
A red letter dayis a day to be looked forward to and then remembered as a special one. In the old almanacs, and more often in the ecclesiastical calendars, saints' days and Christian festivals were printed in red ink and all others displayed in black ink.
The red days were the ones religious folk looked forward to the most as it meant a great feast and a party. In modern calendars, only Sundays and public holidays are printed in red, largely as a result of tradition and not because they mark any special events.
• Extracted from Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep, by Albert Jack (Penguin Books)