à propos de bottes

• a propos de bottes

Borrowed from French à propos de bottes; literally “on the subject of boots”.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌæpɹəˌpəʊ də ˈbɒt(s)/

à propos de bottes

1. (dated) Apropos of nothing; without connection to anything; unrelatedly, by the way.
   • 1850 October, "Pisistratus Caxton" (pseudonym of Edward Bulwer Lytton), My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life, Chapter X, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, Number 420, William Blackwood & Sons, page 403:

     In fact, the renovated appearance of this monster—à propos de bottes, as one may say—had already excited considerable sensation among the population of Hazeldean.

   • 1885, Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, “Narrative of the Spirited Old Lady”, More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter, Longmans, Green, & Co., page 86:

     ‘That is a strange remark,’ said he; ‘and à propos de bottes, I never continue a cigar when once the ash is fallen; […] ’

   • 1892 May 14, author not named, Essence of Parliament — Extracted from the Diary of Toby, M.P., in Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, 2005 Gutenberg edition,

     Suddenly jumped up; shook fist at back of ASQUITH's unoffending head, and, à propos de bottes, "wanted to know about the swindling companies and their shareholders?"

   • 1907, Porter Lander MacClintock, Literature in the Elementary School, 2011 Gutenberg edition,

     Of course, it is rather characteristic of the folk-mind, as of the child-mind, to heap up incidents à propos de bottes; but as this is one of the characteristics to be corrected in the child by his training in literature, so it is one of the faults which should exclude a fairy-tale from his curriculum.

   • 1921, Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria, Harcourt, Brace and Company, page 190:

     Moody, restless, and unhappy, he wandered like a ghost about the town, bursting into soliloquies in public places, or asking odd questions, suddenly, à propos de bottes.

   • 1952, Anthony Powell, A Buyer's Market (A Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 2), Fontana Books, page 225:

     Analysis at that moment was in any case out of reach, because I realised that I had been left, at that moment, standing silently by Mrs Wentworth, to whom I now explained, à propos de bottes, that I knew Barnby.