Brewer's: Steenie

(2 syl.). A nickname given by James I. to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. The half-profane allusion is to Acts vi. 15, where those who looked on Stephen the martyr “saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.”

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Related Content