A French kiss was originally a kiss on both cheeks.
‘French kiss’—19th century: a kiss on both cheeks—early 20th century (USA): a kiss with contact between tongues
Read MoreCategory: French/English
the various meanings and origins of ‘Franglais’
Since WWI, ‘Franglais’ has been coined to denote: French spoken by an Anglophone, English spoken by a Francophone and French speech using English words.
Read More‘petrichor’: the sweet smell produced when rain falls on parched earth
a sweet smell produced when rain falls on parched earth—1964; literally ‘tenuous essence derived from rock or stone’, from Greek ‘petro’ and ‘ichor’
Read Moremeanings and origin of ‘small beer’
‘small beer’: ‘person(s) or matter(s) of little or no importance’ (first use by Shakespeare), from the literal sense ‘beer of a weak, poor or inferior quality’
Read Moreorigin of ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’
19th century—edulcoration of the legal notion of the fortress-like security of the English home, dating from the early 16th century
Read Moreorigin of ‘all my eye and Betty Martin’
second half of the 18th century—a mere fanciful extension of ‘all my eye’—maintained in a sort of artificial life by persistent conjectures about its origin
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘to cut a caper’
‘caper’: probably abbreviation of ‘cabriole’, from Italian ‘capriola’, literally ‘female roe deer’, from Latin ‘capreola’, ‘wild goat’, from ‘capra’, she-goat
Read Moreorigin of ‘castles in Spain’ and ‘castles in the air’
In French medieval chansons de geste ‘castles in Spain’ denoted fiefs that had to be conquered from the Saracens by the knights to whom they had been granted.
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘carrot and stick’
early 20th century—refers to the method of tempting a donkey to move forward by dangling a carrot before it, and beating it with a stick if it refuses
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘Box and Cox’
from the name of an 1847 farce in which a landlady lets out, unbeknown to them, the same room to two tenants, Box and Cox, the one by day, the other by night
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