origin of ‘avoirdupois’: goods sold by weight
from Old French and Anglo-Norman ‘aveir de peis’, ‘goods of weight’, as distinguished from the goods sold by measure or number
Read MoreCategory: French/English
How ‘lion’ came to denote a celebrity.
‘lion’: a person of note or celebrity who is much sought after—from ‘lions’: things of note, celebrity, or curiosity in a town, etc.—from the practice of taking visitors to see the lions which used to be kept in the Tower of London
Read Moreorigin of ‘the lion’s share’: ‘le partage du lion’
‘the lion’s share’ (UK, 1790)—calque of French ‘le partage du lion’ (now ‘la part du lion’)—from ‘The Heifer, the She-Goat, and the Ewe, in partnership with the Lion’, a fable by Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95)
Read Morethe informal British phrase ‘(as) sick as a parrot’
meaning: ‘thoroughly dejected or disappointed’—appeared (1973) in Tyne and Wear (north-eastern England)—originated apparently in football parlance, in which it soon became a cliché
Read Moreadolescence: ‘the awkward age’ – ‘l’âge ingrat’
UK, 1832—‘the awkward age’: the adolescence, when one is no longer a child but not yet properly grown up, a time of life characterised by physical and emotional changes—translates in French as ‘l’âge ingrat’, ‘the thankless age’
Read More‘to play footsie with somebody’ – ‘faire du pied à quelqu’un’
USA, 1917 (with ‘footie’): to touch somebody’s foot lightly with one’s own foot, especially under a table, as a playful expression of romantic interest—hence also, figuratively: to have underhanded dealings with somebody
Read Moreorigin of ‘double Dutch’ and ‘High Dutch’ (‘gibberish’)
‘double Dutch’, 19th century—from ‘Dutch’ in the sense of a language that few people can speak, and ‘double’ as a mere intensifier—‘High Dutch’, 17th century—loan translation from French ‘haut allemand’ (= ‘High German’), used in the sense of gibberish
Read More‘maelstrom’ (a whirlpool off the west coast of Norway)
late 16th century—from early modern Dutch ‘maelstrom’ (now ‘maalstroom’)—originally a proper name designating a powerful whirlpool in the Arctic Ocean, off the west coast of Norway, which was formerly supposed to suck in and destroy all vessels within a wide radius
Read Morethe shadowy history of the word ‘silhouette’
1763 in French, 1798 in English—from the name of Étienne de Silhouette (1709-67), Controller-General of Finances in 1759—perhaps because he might have invented the portrait in profile obtained by tracing the outline of a head or figure by means of its shadow
Read Morethe history of ‘burnsides’, ‘sideburns’ and ‘sideboards’
After Ambrose Burnside, Union general in the U.S. Civil War, ‘burnsides’ (1866) denotes thick side whiskers worn with a moustache and clean-shaven chin; on the pattern of ‘side whiskers’, it was altered to ‘sideburns’ (1875), itself altered to ‘sideboards’ (1882).
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