“ad fontes!”
UK, 1710—in a situation in which any action one takes will have adverse consequences—‘cleft’, past participle of the verb ‘cleave’, means ‘split in two to a certain depth’—the image is of one being squeezed between the stick’s prongs
Read MoreUSA, 1871—The phrase ‘a whale of a (good) time’ denotes a hugely enjoyable time, and alludes to the enormousness of whales.
Read MoreUK, 1836—a person, country, etc., that appears powerful or threatening but is actually weak or ineffective—from Chinese ‘zhǐlǎohǔ’ (‘zhǐ’, paper, ‘lǎohǔ’, tiger)—used in the post-war years by the Chinese Communist Party of the USA and other reactionaries
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Australia—familiar name of St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Sydney—‘Jesus’ refers to the fact that the hospital is operated by a religious organisation—‘Hilton’ alludes to the hospital’s plushness
Read MoreUK, 1844—extreme meanness never made anyone better off—compare Book of Proverbs, 11:24: “There is one who scatters, yet increases more; and there is one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty.”
Read MoreUSA, 1976—the outcome of a situation cannot be assumed—may allude to the stereotype of a large female soprano singing the final aria of an opera—from ‘church ain’t out ’till the fat lady sings’ (1976), itself from ‘church ain’t out until the singing is over’ (1872)
Read Morea representation of the letter A in scarlet cloth which Hester Prynne is condemned to wear in The Scarlet Letter (1850), by Nathaniel Hawthorne—soon came to be used figuratively in the sense of a stigma, a mark of infamy
Read Morebe totally focused on your objective—USA — already well established in 1932—originated in the image of God’s watchful eye upon the sparrow, with reference to the gospel of Matthew, 10:29-32
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dim-witted—UK, 1955—refers to the oil lamp that is symbolically lit at the beginning of the meetings of each section of the international movement Toc H
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USA, 1938—UK, 1961—satirical phrase referring to the addiction to bingo, a game in which players mark off numbers on cards as the numbers are drawn randomly by a caller, the winner being the first person to mark off all their numbers
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word histories 