The Frate has to prove his doctrines by not being burned: he is to walk through the fire, and come out on the other side sound and whole.” “Nay, Goro,” said a sleek shopkeeper, compassionately, “ thou hast got thy legs into twisted hose there. “It’s the Frate’s doctrines that he’s to prove by being burned,” said that large public character Goro. The English novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans – 1819-80) had already used this image in Romola (London, 1863)-Fra Francesco, a Franciscan preacher, has challenged the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98) to walk through the fire so as to prove the divine origin of his doctrines by coming out unhurt: In this phrase, twisted clothing is a metaphor for mental confusion. In British English, knickers (short for knickerbockers) denotes short underpants worn by women or girls. The jocular British-English phrase to get one’s knickers in a twist means to become unduly agitated or angry.
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