“ad fontes!”
‘raspberry’: a rude sound (suggestive of breaking wind) made by blowing with the tongue between the lips, as an expression of mockery or contempt—UK, 1888—‘raspberry’ (short for ‘raspberry tart’): rhyming slang for ‘fart’
Read More
a cheap suit of clothes; a (cut-price) tailoring business—UK, 1920, informal—refers to Harry Mallaby-Deeley (1863-1937), a Member of Parliament who opened a cut-price tailoring business in 1920
Read Moreto take away from one person, cause, etc., in order to pay or confer something on another; to discharge one debt by incurring another—late 14th century—from the association of ‘Peter’ and ‘Paul’, the names of two leading apostles and saints, and fellow martyrs at Rome
Read Moreoriginally “If the Hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet wil go to the hil” in Of Boldnesse (1625), an essay by the English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Read Moreto muster up all one’s courage—UK, 1830—probably a calque of the French phrase ‘prendre son courage à deux mains’
Read Moredefined by Collins Dictionary as denoting “an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events”—first used in 1975 by the U.S. political scientist John Pearson Roche
Read More
a woman regarded as an object of sexual desire—UK, 1895—from ‘crackling’, denoting the crisp skin or rind of roast pork
Read More(literally): to fall heavily; (figuratively): to fail completely—UK, 1847—‘cropper’ may be derived from ‘crop’ in the phrase ‘neck and crop’ (1791), which originally referred to a heavy fall
Read More
a rebuke given in private by a wife to her husband—1625—from the idea that, in order to conduct herself properly, a wife was to rebuke her husband in secret only, i.e., in the privacy of their curtained bed
Read Moreused of a person who likes to observe other people’s activities from his or her window, in a furtive and prying manner—UK and Ireland, 1940
Read More
word histories 