Aunt Sally
English
[edit]
Etymology
[edit]Apparently after My Old Aunt Sally, the title of a blackface minstrel song written by Dan Emmett in 1843.
Proper noun
[edit]- A traditional game in which balls are thrown to break the pipe in the mouth of a figurine resembling an old woman. [from 19th c.]
- 1905 [1902], Edith Nesbit, chapter VIII, in Five Children and It, New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, page 220:
- There were some swings, and a hooting-tooting blaring merry-go-round, and a shooting-gallery and Aunt Sallies.
- 1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter I, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:
- 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.
- (figurative, chiefly UK) A figure drawing criticism or ridicule, especially when prejudiced or unwarranted. [from 19th c.]
- 1912 November 24, W. B. Maxwell, “The Future of the Novel”, in The New York Times[1], →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.
- 1999, J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace, Vintage, page 95:
- 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.
- 2013 March 23, Kyran Fitzgerald, “Stakes couldn’t be higher”, in Irish Examiner[3]:
- The finance minister, a true Aunt Sally figure, was dispatched to Moscow in search of backing.