betwixt and between Neither here nor there, unresolved; halfway between two alternatives. Betwixt comes from Old English and originally meant "by two"; now considered archaic, it survives largely in this expression, which dates from the nineteenth century. An 1877 play by Besant and Rice (Son of Vulcan, 1.4) has it, "She's the fool and he's the knave, so it's betwix and between."#425•
black book, (put) in one's Out of favor, disgraced. The term comes from actual listings of those to be censured or punished by the authorities, which date from the fifteenth century. The agents of Henry VIII, for example, compiled a black book of English monasteries listed as "sinful." An eighteenth-century history of Oxford University also describes a proctor's black book which, if one was listed in it, proscribed proceeding to a university degree.
Today, however, one's little black book may signify a personal address book, listing the telephone numbers of friends, especially those of the opposite sex.#433•
blood from a stone/turnip, one can't get This is a hopeless source of help (money, comfort, and so forth). Both stone and turnip date from the nineteenth century, and other versions exist in numerous languages. Dickens used the stone analogy a number of times, in David Copperfield, Our Mutual Friend, and other works, and health-food trends notwithstanding, it is more common today than turnip.
However, Clive Cussler had the latter in Sahara (1992): "'You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip,' said Giordino.
'It's a miracle we made it this far.' "#428•