“ad fontes!”
the earliest occurrences of ‘feet of clay’, used without explicit reference to the Bible, date from the French Revolution (1789-1799) and translate French ‘pieds d’argile’
Read Moreslang, disparaging: a person of small stature—from 1677 onwards in bilingual dictionaries (English-French and French-English) by Guy Miege
Read MoreUK, 1907: ‘to ghostwrite’ (to write a book, an article, etc., for another person, under whose name it is then published—USA, 1908: ‘ghostwriter’ (a person who ghostwrites)
Read Morethe returns from an activity or undertaking do not warrant the time, money or effort required—calque of French ‘le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle’—1603, in John Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays
Read MoreUK, 1917—‘what an idiot!’—a borrowing from French
Read MoreUK, 1884—‘what a surprise!’—a borrowing from French—chiefly used ironically, to imply that a situation or event is unsurprising, typical or predictable
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USA, 1936—characteristic or reminiscent of the Left Bank (‘Rive Gauche’ in French), the part of Paris south of the River Seine, noted for its intellectual and artistic life
Read MoreFrench, 1848; English, 1861—a small, oblong cake made of choux pastry, filled with cream, and typically topped with chocolate icing—literally ‘lightning’—origin unknown
Read MoreVoltaire revived the use of ‘désappointer’ in the sense ‘to frustrate the expectation or desire of (a person)’ with reference to this use of the English verb ‘disappoint’.
Read MoreFrench, 1769, in Voyage sentimental, a translation by Joseph-Pierre Frenais of A Sentimental Journey (1768) by Laurence Sterne
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word histories 