origin of the British phrase ‘—— rule(s) OK’
UK, 1971, in graffiti—preceded by a proper or common noun in the singular or plural; used to assert the pre-eminence of a specified person or thing
Read MoreCategory: French/English
How hornbooks are at the origin of ‘criss-cross’.
phonetic reduction of ‘Christ’s cross’; first element phonetically reduced as in ‘Christmas’; hence ‘criss-cross’ treated as a reduplication of ‘cross’
Read Moreorigin of ‘blanket’ and of phrases containing ‘blanket’
‘blanket’: from Old-Northern-French and Anglo-Norman forms such as ‘blankete’ (white woollen material), composed of ‘blanc’ (white) and the diminutive suffix ‘-ette’
Read Moreorigin of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’
first recorded in ‘Hudibras’ (1664), by Samuel Butler—from the first half of ‘Proverbs’, 13:24: “Whoever spares the rod hates their children.”
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘a little bird told me’
1711 in a letter by Jonathan Swift—perhaps from Ecclesiastes, 10:20: “a bird of the air shall carry the voice; and that which hath wings, shall tell the matter”
Read More‘to be saved by the bell’ – ‘être sauvé par le gong’
‘rescued from a difficult situation by a timely intervention’, from (in boxing) ‘saved from being counted out by the ringing of the bell at the end of a round’
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘one’s best bib and tucker’
18th century, of women’s clothes—‘bib’: a piece of cloth worn between throat and waist; ‘tucker’: a piece of lace or linen worn in or around the top of a bodice
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘spick and span’
mid-17th cent. in the sense ‘brand new’—from ‘spick and span new’, extension of ‘span new’, from Old Norse ‘spán-nýr’, ‘as new as a freshly cut wooden chip’
Read Moreorigin of the word ‘point-blank’
1571—probably from obsolete French ‘de pointe en blanc’, used of firing into empty space for the purpose of seeing how far a piece of artillery would carry
Read More‘to know one’s onions’ – ‘c’est mes oignons’
US, 1898: ‘to know one’s onion’ (in the singular), to be very knowledgeable about something — French, 1897: ‘c’est mes oignons’, it’s my own business
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