‘to drive pigs (to market)’: meaning and origin
to snore—UK, 1828—this phrase likens a person’s snoring to the sound made by a herd of pigs
Read MoreCategory: literature
‘please the pigs’: meaning and early occurrences
meaning: if circumstances permit, if all is well—first recorded in 1683—of unknown origin
Read More‘food for powder’: meaning and origin
soldiers, especially low-ranking recruits, collectively regarded as expendable in war—UK, 1740—coined by William Shakespeare in Henry IV, Part 1 (1598)
Read More‘godwottery’: meanings and origin
gardening or garden design in an affected, fussily decorative or over-elaborate style; archaic and affected language—UK, 1931—alludes to “A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!”, in My Garden (1893), by the Manx poet T. E. Brown
Read More‘hot-arsed’: meaning and origin
slang—(used especially of women) lustful; sexually aroused or arousing—first recorded in The Confession of the New Married Couple (London, 1683)
Read More‘autumn-spring’: meanings and origin
a period of warm, springlike weather occurring in the autumn—hence, figuratively, a late period of youthfulness—first used from 1639 onwards by the Anglican clergyman and historian Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)
Read More‘Bunburying’: meaning and origin
UK, 1895—the use of an imaginary person as a fictitious excuse for visiting a place or avoiding obligations—from ‘Bunbury’, the name of an imaginary character in The Importance of being Earnest (first performed in 1895), by Oscar Wilde
Read More‘prunes and prism(s)’: meaning and origin
a prim or affected facial expression or manner of speaking; affected mannerisms, superficial accomplishments—originally, in Little Dorrit (1857), by Charles Dickens, a phrase spoken aloud in order to form the lips into an attractive shape
Read Morenotes on ‘no joy without alloy’
also ‘no joy without annoy’—meaning: there is a trace of trouble or difficulty in every pleasure—was already a common proverb in the late sixteenth century
Read More‘Bardolatry’: meaning and origin
excessive reverence for William Shakespeare—1901, coined by George Bernard Shaw—from ‘the Bard’, an epithet of William Shakespeare, and the combining form ‘-olatry’, forming nouns with the sense ‘worship of’, ‘excessive reverence for’
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