Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses/Cyclops/311
Annotations[edit | edit source]
patois (French) a regional or substandard dialect. The word patois originally meant: incomprehensible speech, or rude language, which is the point the Citizen is making about English.
cabinet d'aisance (French) water closet, toilet.[1]
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen is a quotation from Thomas Gray's "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard"
Conspuez les Anglais! Perfide Albion! (French) Down with the English! Treacherous England.[2] Conspuez derives from the Latin conspuere (to spit on), though the primary meaning in French is to boo. The latter phrase, Perfidious Albion, is of obscure origin.[3] Variants of this phrase have been used a byword for English fickleness since the 13th century, while the familiar form was probably coined by Augustin, Marquis of Ximenez in 1793. See also 316.26-27.