‘to leave in the lurch’: meaning and origin
to desert someone in trouble—late 16th cent.—from French ‘lourche’, which denoted a game resembling backgammon and was used as an adjective meaning discomfited
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origin of ‘to take time by the forelock’
Opportunity was represented as woman completely bald except for a forelock: she can only be seized as she runs towards someone, not be caught thereafter.
Read Morethe authentic origin of ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’
early 17th century, with ‘the Dead Sea’ and ‘the deep sea’—originated in the image of a choice between damnation (‘the Devil’) and drowning (‘the sea’)
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘to warm the cockles of one’s heart’
late 17th century—probably based on the resemblance between the shape of the heart and that of a cockleshell – or of the body the shell protects
Read Moremeaning, origin and synonyms of ‘a snake in the grass’
1696—perhaps from ‘latet anguis in herba’ (a snake hides in the grass) in Virgil’s Eclogues—cf. ‘a pad [= toad] in the straw’ and French ‘il y a de l’oignon’
Read Moreorigin of the word ‘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 Moreorigin of the phrase ‘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 the phrase ‘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 the word ‘incunabula’
Latin ‘incunabula’: ‘swaddling clothes’, hence ‘beginning’—denotes the early printed books (from the 1450s to the end of the 15th century)
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