‘to beat Banagher’: meaning and origin
to surpass everything—Ireland, 1821—probably refers to a strong military fort at Banagher, a town in County Offaly, in the province of Leinster, Ireland
Read MoreCategory: literature
‘to pile Pelion upon Ossa’: meanings and origin
1609—to add to what is already great, also to add difficulty to difficulty—Pelion and Ossa are two mountains in Thessaly—in Greek mythology, two giants, Otus and Ephialtes, tried to pile Pelion and Ossa on Olympus in order to reach the gods and overthrow them
Read More‘tiswas’: meaning and origin
UK, 1938—a state of nervous agitation or confusion; also, occasionally: a state of physical disorder or chaos—of unknown origin; perhaps a fanciful variant of the synonymous noun ‘tizz’
Read More‘lightbulb moment’: meaning and origin
USA, 1974—a moment of sudden realisation, enlightenment or inspiration—alludes to the representation of an illuminated lightbulb above a character’s head in a cartoon or comic strip, indicating that this character has had an idea
Read More‘not to be able to [verb] for toffee’: meaning and origin
UK, 1886—to be incompetent at performing the action denoted by the verb—the underlying notion is presumably of failing to win even the smallest prize
Read More‘Mr. Plod’: meaning and origin
UK, 1963—‘Mr. Plod’, also ‘P.C. Plod’, ‘Plod’: a humorous or mildly derogatory appellation for a policeman or for the police—alludes to ‘Mr. Plod’, the name of the policeman in stories by the English author of children’s fiction Enid Blyton
Read More‘gobsmacked’: meaning and origin
‘flabbergasted’, ‘astounded’—1925, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, north-eastern England—in reference to the shock effect of being struck in the mouth, from the noun ‘gob’, denoting ‘the mouth’, and the adjective ‘smacked’, meaning ‘struck’
Read More‘caught in the headlights’: meanings and origin
used of a person who is frozen with fright or surprise, or is trying to flee, as a result of suddenly becoming the focus of attention—alludes to the habit of deer and rabbits of stopping still when dazzled by the headlights of a motor vehicle, or of running away within the headlight beam
Read More‘well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs’: meaning and early occurrences
UK (Midlands), 1939—exclamative phrase used to express astonishment or incredulity—the reason that this metaphor was chosen is unknown
Read Morenotes on the noun ‘Goddam’
designates an Englishman—originated among the French, from the fact that they regarded the exclamation ‘God damn’ as characteristic of the English—the Middle-French synonym ‘godon’ may be etymologically unrelated
Read More
word histories 