meaning and origin of the phrase ‘like one o’clock’
‘like one o’clock’—mid 19th century, British: with speed, eagerness, energy; perhaps with reference to the lunchtime bustle in the northern manufacturing towns
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a linguistic investigation into ‘paparazzi’
The noun ‘paparazzo’ is from the name of a photographer in La Dolce Vita (1960) by Federico Fellini. The choice of this name has been variously explained.
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘by hook or by crook’
The phrase perhaps originated in laws or customs regulating the gathering of firewood by tenants; it was perhaps a legal formula in which ‘crook’ merely reinforced ‘hook’.
Read Moresense evolution and origin of ‘conundrum’
The word ‘conundrum’, attested in 1596, originally meant ‘whimsy’, ‘oddity’. It perhaps originated as a parody of some Latin scholastic phrase.
Read Moreorigin and meanings of ‘jingo’
The current sense of ‘jingo’ originated in a 1877 patriotic song adopted by the bellicose factions within the Conservative Party during the Russo-Turkish war.
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’
A horse’s teeth reveal its age. It is therefore bad manners to look in the mouth of a horse that has been received as a gift in order to establish its value.
Read Moreorigin of the word ‘immolate’
The verb ‘immolate’ is from Latin ‘immolare’, meaning, literally, ‘to sprinkle (a victim) with sacrificial meal’, from ‘mola salsa’, ‘salted spelt-meal’.
Read Moreorigin of the word ‘sneeze’
The verb ‘sneeze’ is an alteration of the obsolete verb ‘fnese’ due to misreading or misprinting it as ‘ſnese’ (= ‘snese’).
Read Moreorigin of ‘Mothering Sunday’
The theory that the custom of visiting one’s mother on mid-Lent Sunday derived from the custom of going to one’s mother church on that day is no proven.
Read Moreorigin of the adverb ‘cap-a-pie’ (from head to foot)
English ‘cap-a-pie’ is from ‘de cap à pied’, ‘from head to foot’, used in Occitan and in the Middle French of southern France.
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word histories 