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The meaning and origin of the expression: It beggar'd all description

It beggar'd all description

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What's the meaning of the phrase 'It beggar'd all description'?

In Shakespeare's day the verb 'to beggar' meant 'to exhaust' or 'make a beggar' of. To beggar description meant 'to be so incredible as to make all description impossible - literally, for the speaker to be lost for words.

What's the origin of the phrase 'It beggar'd all description'?

From Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, 1606.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS:
I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The meaning and origin of the phrase 'It beggar'd all description'The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion - cloth-of-gold of tissue-
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.

Gary Martin - the author of the phrases.org.uk website.

By Gary Martin

Gary Martin is a writer and researcher on the origins of phrases and the creator of the Phrase Finder website. Over the past 26 years more than 700 million of his pages have been downloaded by readers. He is one of the most popular and trusted sources of information on phrases and idioms.

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