The Word
Not-so-familiar quotations
READER PHIL MCGEE of Westford recently went looking for the origin of ''gilding the lily," he e-mailed earlier this month, and he was surprised by what he unearthed in Shakespeare. ''To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... Is wasteful and ridiculous excess," is the phrasing in ''King John." ''Can it be that whenever we say 'gilding the lily' we're ... (Full article: 778 words)
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