Garnet, All Sir

views updated

Garnet, All Sir all as it should be, highly satisfactory; the term, recorded from the late 19th century, refers to the British soldier Sir Garnet Wolseley (1833–1933). The leader of several successful military expeditions, he was regarded as the ideal of the modern professional soldier, and was the model for the ‘modern Major-General’ in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance (1879).

More From encyclopedia.com