‘Chatty Cathy’: meaning and origin
USA, 1949—a person (originally and chiefly a girl or a woman) who is especially talkative—popularised from 1960 onwards by a proprietary name for a child’s talking doll manufactured by Mattel
Read MoreCategory: linguistics
‘to drain the main vein’: meaning and origin
to urinate—slang—2nd half of the 20th century—based on the sound /eɪn/, common to the verb, adjective and noun that compose it—‘main vein’ probably refers to the penis
Read More‘quel idiot!’: meaning and origin
UK, 1917—‘what an idiot!’—a borrowing from French
Read More‘quelle surprise!’: meaning and origin
UK, 1884—‘what a surprise!’—a borrowing from French—chiefly used ironically, to imply that a situation or event is unsurprising, typical or predictable
Read MoreHow Voltaire (and English) revived the French verb ‘désappointer’
Voltaire revived the use of ‘désappointer’ in the sense ‘to frustrate the expectation or desire of (a person)’ with reference to this use of the English verb ‘disappoint’.
Read MoreIs ‘(as) right as a trivet’ an alteration of ‘(as) tight as a rivet’?
It has been said that ‘(as) right as a trivet’ an alteration of ‘(as) tight as a rivet’. But the latter phrase, which postdates the former, originally meant ‘extremely tight’, not ‘thoroughly or perfectly right’.
Read More‘dangling participle’: meaning and origin
USA, 1890—a participle, often found at the beginning of a sentence, that appears from its position to modify an element of the sentence other than the one it was intended to modify
Read More‘Gloria Soame’: meaning and origin
Australia, 1965—the Strine equivalent of ‘glorious home’—‘Strine’: the English language as spoken by Australians
Read More‘Aqua Libra’: meaning and origin
proprietary name for a soft drink supposed to maintain or restore the body’s alkaline balance—Ireland & UK, 1986—from the Latin nouns ‘aqua’ (water) and ‘libra’ (a balance)
Read More‘eureka moment’: meaning and origin
a moment of sudden discovery, inspiration or insight—1918—from the reputed exclamation of Archimedes when he realised that the volume of a solid could be calculated by measuring the water displaced when it was immersed
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word histories 