meaning and origin of ‘Procrustean bed/Procrustean remedy’
a means of enforcing conformity—Greek mythology: Procrustes was a robber who made his victims fit a bed by either stretching them longer or cutting them shorter
Read MoreAuthor: Pascal Tréguer
meaning and origin of the phrase ‘to go commando’
USA, 1974—to wear no underpants—originated in university slang—perhaps because commandos wear no underpants in order to prevent crotch rot and rashes
Read Moremeaning and possible origin of ‘to push the boat out’
UK, 1915—to be lavish in one’s celebrations or spending—Army and Navy slang: to buy a round of drinks—’a boat’ might be metaphorical for ‘a glass’ (i.e., ‘a drink’)
Read Moremeaning, origin and early instances of ‘to lie doggo’
UK, 1882—to remain motionless and quiet; to keep a low profile—probably from ‘dog’ and suffix ‘-o’, with allusion to the characteristically light sleep of a dog
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘Dunkirk spirit’
1940 as ‘spirit of Dunkirk’—determination to endure hardship—refers to the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in May/June 1940
Read Morethe military origin of the adjective ‘last-ditch’
UK, 1845: made as a last desperate attempt—from the 18th-century phrase ‘to die in the last ditch’, ‘ditch’ denoting a defensive entrenchment
Read Moreearly meanings of ‘Bamboo Curtain’
USA, 1948—notional barrier between China and non-Communist countries—after ‘Iron Curtain’—first used of censorship in South-East Asia
Read Morehistory of the terms ‘man Friday’ and ‘girl Friday’
USA—‘man Friday’ 1802: alludes to the name of Robinson Crusoe’s servant in Daniel Defoe’s novel—‘girl Friday’ 1929: coined on the pattern of ‘man Friday’
Read Moremeaning and origin of the British phrase ‘to go down the pan’
UK, 1950—to be completely lost or wasted; to fail utterly—alludes to ‘pan’ in the sense of the bowl of a toilet
Read Morea hypothesis as to the origin of ‘to get down to brass tacks’
USA, 1868—‘brass tacks’: the nails studded over a coffin, hence figuratively the end of any possibility of deceit, the return to essentials
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