origin of ‘to pull someone’s leg’
‘To pull someone’s leg’ is perhaps from the image of tripping someone literally or figuratively, of putting them at a disadvantage to make them appear foolish.
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history of ‘slapstick’
slapstick (USA): device used to make a great noise with the pretence of dealing a heavy blow, hence comedy characterised by horseplay and physical action
Read Moreorigin of ‘in a nutshell’
The phrase ‘in a nutshell’ originated in a story told by Pliny of a copy of Homer’s ‘Iliad’ supposedly small enough to be enclosed in the shell of a nut.
Read Moreorigin of ‘Boxing Day’
from the verb ‘box’, ‘to give a Christmas-box’, i.e. to give a gratuity or present to tradespeople and employees—originally a box in which money was collected
Read Moreorigin of ‘moonraker’
moonraker: a native of Wiltshire; from the tale that some of them mistook the reflection of the moon in a pond for a cheese and tried to rake it out.
Read Morethe straight and narrow
‘The straight and narrow’: allusion to the Sermon on the Mount. ‘Straight’ is an alteration of ‘strait’, meaning ‘so narrow as to make transit difficult’.
Read Moreover the moon
The phrase ‘over the moon’ means ‘very happy’, ‘delighted’. It seems to have originated in Ireland in the early 18th century.
Read Moreorigin of ‘once in a blue moon’
‘Once in a blue moon’ is a development from ‘once in a moon’, meaning ‘once a month’, hence ‘occasionally’—‘blue’ is merely a meaningless fanciful intensive.
Read Moreorigin of ‘gas and gaiters’
coined by Charles Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby (1839) in a comic passage in which an insane speaker makes a series of nonsensical statements
Read MoreOn biblical translations: “what is lacking” vs. “the number of fools”
There can be some astonishing differences between the biblical texts belonging to the scholastic tradition and those belonging to the humanist movement.
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