‘wallflower’ | ‘faire tapisserie’: on the fringes of a dance
UK 1801 ‘wallflower’—France 1806 ‘faire tapisserie’ (= ‘to do tapestry’)—in both cases because the person keeps their seat at the side of a room during dancing
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notes on the earliest mention of a drink called ‘cocktail’
UK, 1798—‘cocktail’ explained as being “vulgarly called ginger”—perhaps from the use of ‘ginger’ to denote a cock with red plumage
Read Morethe curious origin of ‘cordon bleu’ (first-class cook)
originally the sky-blue ribbon worn by the Knights-grand-cross of the French order of the Holy Ghost—applied by extension to other first-class distinctions
Read Morenotes on ‘Chernobyl’: biblical prophecy | cultural disaster
site of a nuclear power station accident (1986)—name associated with the end of the world in the Bible—epithet for Disneyland Paris, seen as a cultural disaster
Read More‘the beast with two backs’ | ‘la bête à deux dos’
a man and woman in the act of copulation—English: earliest in Shakespeare’s Othello—perhaps a calque of French: earliest in Rabelais’s Gargantua (1542)
Read Morecolourful English and French phrases denoting a squint
e.g. ‘one eye at St. Paul’s and the other at Charing-cross’, ‘un œil aux champs et l’autre à la ville’ (one eye at the fields and the other at the town)
Read MoreWhy ‘island’ and ‘aisle’ ought to be spelt ‘iland’ and ‘aile’.
The letter ‘s’ in both the nouns currently spelt ‘island’ and ‘aisle’ is due to folk-etymological association of those words with the unrelated noun ‘isle’.
Read Moremeaning and origin of the term ‘éminence grise’
UK, 1877—a person who wields unofficial power and influence—originally applied to Père Joseph (François Leclerc du Tremblay), French friar, confidential agent of Cardinal Richelieu
Read Morethe curious case of the French word ‘oignon’
Decided by the Académie française, the erroneous spelling ‘oignon’ (= ‘onion’) has become a symbol of prejudiced people, ignorant of the history of their own language.
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘somebody is walking over my grave’
early 18th century, in Jonathan Swift’s ‘Polite Conversation’—from the folk belief that one shudders when somebody walks over the site of one’s future grave
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