meaning and origin of the noun ‘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.
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the biblical origin of the phrase ‘the 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 Morethe authentic origin 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 Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘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 Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘to play possum’
‘to play possum’: American English, early 19th century—pretend to be dead, asleep, etc.—allusion to the opossum’s habit of feigning death when threatened
Read Moreorigin of ‘pipe dream’ (unattainable or fanciful hope or scheme)
pipe dream: American English, late 19th century—originally with reference to the kind of visions experienced when smoking an opium pipe
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘to have a bee in one’s bonnet’
This phrase is a transformation of ‘one’s head full of bees’, meaning scatter-brained, unable to think straight, as if bees are buzzing around in one’s head.
Read Morethe various meanings of the noun ‘owlhoot’
Coined after ‘cock-crow’, ‘owl-hoot’ means ‘dusk’. It denotes ‘an outlaw’ in Wild West fiction, hence, generally, ‘a worthless or contemptible person’.
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘to have bats in one’s belfry’
Of American-English origin, ‘to have bats in one’s belfry’ is from the image of bats flying around when disturbed, like confused thoughts in a disordered mind.
Read Moreorigin of ‘slave’ and ‘Slav’, of ‘robot’ and of ‘ciao’
The word ‘slave’ is from Medieval Latin ‘Sclavus’, ‘Slav’, because the Slavic peoples were frequently reduced to a servile condition by the Germanic conquest.
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word histories 