origin of ‘skinflint’
attested 1699—from the hyperbolical phrase ‘to skin a flint’ (1656)—cf. ‘to skin a flea for its hide and tallow’ and French ‘tondre un œuf’ (‘to shave an egg’)
Read MoreCategory: French/English
origin of ‘to cut both ways’
to serve both sides of an argument; to have both good and bad effects—England, early 18th century—refers to a sword which has two cutting edges
Read Morean oxymoronic word: ‘oxymoron’
The word ‘oxymoron’ has the property it denotes: it is from Greek ‘oxús’, meaning ‘sharp’, ‘acute’, and ‘mōrόs’, meaning ‘dull’, ‘stupid’.
Read Moreorigin of ‘place in the sun’
traceable to Pensées, by Blaise Pascal (1623-62); modern use apparently originated in a speech made in December 1897 by the German statesman Bernhard von Bülow
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘incunabula’
Latin ‘incunabula’: ‘swaddling clothes’, hence ‘beginning’—denotes the early printed books (from the 1450s to the end of the 15th century)
Read MoreEating in the Romance languages
In Latin, short words having complicated irregularities in their forms gave way to simpler words with regular patterns and longer phonetic individualities.
Read MoreHow Trenet’s ‘Douce France’ became a manifesto for equality of rights.
‘Douce France’: a song composed by Charles Trenet during WWII; covered in 1986 by the French band Carte de Séjour as a manifesto for equality of rights
Read Morea curious case of misunderstanding in the Oxford English Dictionary
‘Wash the milk off your liver’: refers to the digestibility of milk, but misunderstood by the Oxford English Dictionary as referring to cowardice
Read Moreorigin of ‘cicerone’
early 18th century—from the name of the Roman orator and author Marcus Tullius Cicero, apparently in allusion to the eloquence and learning of these guides
Read MoreWhy does ‘season’ mean both ‘a division of the year’ and ‘to flavour’?
‘to season’, from Old French ‘saisonner’: ‘to do something during the proper season’, hence ‘to make appropriate to the circumstances’, ‘to flavour (a dish)’
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