“ad fontes!”
MEANING The phrase to beggar belief (or description) means to be too extraordinary to be believed (or described). ORIGIN The literal meaning of the verb to beggar is to make a beggar of, exhaust the means of, reduce to beggary. It came to be used figuratively to mean to exhaust the resources […]
Read MoreMEANING to smell a rat: to detect something suspicious ORIGIN The first known use of this phrase is in The Image of Ipocrysy, an anonymous poem written around 1540, denouncing “the cruell clergy”: (published in 1843) Suche be owr [= our] primates, Our bisshopps and prelates, Our parsons and curates, With other […]
Read Morean alternative explanation of the phrase “it is raining cats and dogs”
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘strawberry preacher’
Read MoreIn ‘Indian summer’, ‘Indian’ merely denotes something other than that denoted in Europe by the simple noun ‘summer’—as in ‘Indian corn’ (‘maize’).
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