‘nation of shopkeepers’: meaning and origin
UK, 1759: first applied to Japan—1794 (during the French Revolution): the disparaging use in reference to Britain was popularised by the French phrase ‘nation boutiquière’
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‘little-girl-lost’ | ‘little-boy-lost’: meaning and origin
USA, early 1930s—adjectives—‘little-girl-lost’: resembling (that of) a small girl who has lost her way—‘little-boy-lost’: resembling (that of) a small boy who has lost his way
Read More‘to roll back the years’: meaning and early occurrences
Britain, 1782—to evoke or recreate a previous time, state or condition; to make it seem as if no time has passed
Read More‘to put a bomb under (a person or thing)’: meaning and origin
to disrupt; to shake up; to rouse to action—USA, 1902
Read More‘penny-a-liar’: meaning and origin
UK, 1839—jocular variant of ‘penny-a-liner’ (i.e., a journalist who was paid at the rate of a penny a line, a person who produced mediocre journalistic work) with the implication that such journalists fabricated falsehoods
Read More‘penny-a-line’: meanings and origin
UK, early 19th century, derogatory—used attributively of a journalist who was paid at the rate of a penny a line, hence also of low-quality writing
Read More‘spy in the cab’: meaning and origin
a tachograph—coined in Manchester (England), in September 1968, by lorry drivers who opposed the proposed introduction of the tachograph into lorries
Read More‘to live in each other’s pockets’: meaning and early occurrences
to live in excessively close proximity or interdependence—1762: “the company squeezed themselves into one another’s pockets” in a letter by Horace Walpole
Read More‘cackle-cutting’: meaning and origin
UK, 1904—refers to the action of making someone stop chattering—from the colloquial imperative phrase ‘cut the cackle (and come to the horses)’, meaning: stop talking (and get to the heart of the matter)
Read More‘on the wrong/right side of history’: meanings and early occurrences
USA, 1888—at variance/in line with the (likely) thought, practice or judgement of the future; at odds/coincident with how commentators view (or are likely to view) an issue or action retrospectively
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word histories 