origin of ‘to have, or to get, egg on one’s face’

5th April 2018.Reading time 10 minutes.

USA, 1946—‘to have, or to get, egg on one’s face’: to be, or to get, embarrassed or humiliated by the turn of events—refers either to having eggs thrown at one’s face or to yolk stains left on the face after the careless eating of a soft-boiled egg

‘handbag’: how Thatcher enriched the English language

16th March 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

‘handbag’: to bully or coerce by subjecting to a forthright verbal assault or criticism—originally used with reference to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Economist (7 August 1982)—from literal meaning ‘to batter or assault with a handbag’

origin of ‘handicap’: ‘hand in cap’ (name of a game)

11th February 2018.Reading time 13 minutes.

mi-17th century—probably from ‘hand in (the) cap’, used of a sort of game in which players put forfeit money in a cap and then drew from it—later applied to a race between two horses (the better of which carried extra weight), arranged by such rules

the Page-Three girl of the British tabloid The Sun

5th February 2018.Reading time 12 minutes.

British English—‘Page Three’, or ‘Page 3’: a feature which appeared daily on page three of the British tabloid The Sun (London), and included a pin-up picture of a topless or nude young woman; this feature first appeared on 17 November 1970.

‘pennies from heaven’ and its predecessor

29th January 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

Bing Crosby popularised ‘pennies from heaven’ in the 1936 film and song of the same name, but the phrase already existed; and Abraham Burstein, rabbi and author, had used ‘pennies falling from heaven’ in The Ghetto Messenger in 1928.

origin of ‘to jump on the bandwagon’

22nd January 2018.Reading time 7 minutes.

Often used in phrases such as ‘to jump on the bandwagon’, meaning to join the popular or apparently winning side, ‘bandwagon’ denotes a popular party, faction or cause that attracts growing support; its primary meaning is a wagon used for carrying the band in a parade.

‘happy-clappy’ (cheerful and hand-clapping)

18th January 2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

‘happy-clappy’: a member of a Christian group whose worship is marked by enthusiastic participation; composed of ‘happy’ and of the noun ‘clap’ suffixed with ‘-y’—with allusion to the cheerful singing and hand-clapping regarded as typical of charismatic religious services

meaning and origin of ‘violon d’Ingres’

5th January 2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

First recorded in The Bystander (London) on 24 January 1906, this French phrase means ‘hobby, pastime’; it refers to the passion that the French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) had for playing the violin.

‘See you later, alligator’ originated in U.S. teenagers’ slang.

29th December 2017.Reading time 10 minutes.

The colloquial see you later, alligator, which originated in American English, is a catchphrase used on parting. The expected response is in, or after, a while, crocodile. The earliest instance that I have found is from Teenagers’ Slang Expressions Are Explained by Columnists, by “Jackie and Jane, Star-Bulletin Teen Columnists”, published in the […]

the Christian-Latin origin of ‘Noël’

16th December 2017.Reading time 5 minutes.

French—from the noun use of the Latin adjective ‘natalis’ (from Christian-Latin ‘natalis dies’, ‘day of birth’), denoting the festival of the nativity of Christ