‘to have straws in one’s hair’: meaning and origin
to be insane—late 19th century—originated in the fact that in 19th-century productions of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, Ophelia appeared with straws in her hair in her ‘mad scene’
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the cinematographic origin of ‘boy meets girl’
used with reference to a conventional or idealised romance—originated (USA, 1931) in cinematographic plot summaries in which ‘boy meets girl’ featured
Read Morethe British phrase ‘to talk the hind leg off a donkey’
1808, as ‘to talk a horse’s hind leg off’—‘[animal’s] hind leg off’ is probably a hyperbolic extension of ‘to talk’, emphasising the speaker’s persistence or eloquence
Read Morethe British phrase ‘to throw a spanner in(to) the works’
British, 1925—‘to throw a spanner in(to) the works’: to cause disruption, to interfere with the smooth running of something—synonym (American English): ‘to throw a monkey wrench into’
Read MoreHow ‘lion’ came to denote a celebrity.
‘lion’: a person of note or celebrity who is much sought after—from ‘lions’: things of note, celebrity, or curiosity in a town, etc.—from the practice of taking visitors to see the lions which used to be kept in the Tower of London
Read Moreorigin of ‘the lion’s share’: ‘le partage du lion’
‘the lion’s share’ (UK, 1790)—calque of French ‘le partage du lion’ (now ‘la part du lion’)—from ‘The Heifer, the She-Goat, and the Ewe, in partnership with the Lion’, a fable by Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95)
Read Morethe phrase ‘a snowball’s chance (in hell)’
‘a snowball’s chance in hell’: no chance at all (USA, 1880)—elliptically, ‘a snowball’s chance’ (USA, 1895)—in the 1880s, ‘a snowball in hell’ was also used as a term of comparison to denote something that disappears rapidly
Read Morethe authentic—and simple—origin of ‘sleep tight’
In the phrase ‘sleep tight’ (USA, 1873), the adjective ‘tight’ is used as an adverb meaning ‘soundly’, i.e. ‘deeply and without disturbance’, as in the combination ‘tight asleep’ (USA, 1847).
Read Morethe informal British phrase ‘(as) sick as a parrot’
meaning: ‘thoroughly dejected or disappointed’—appeared (1973) in Tyne and Wear (north-eastern England)—originated apparently in football parlance, in which it soon became a cliché
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘red in tooth and claw’
UK, 1857—characterised by savage violence or merciless competition—from Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘In Memoriam’ (1850), in which ‘red in tooth and claw’ refers to Nature’s brutality
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word histories 