‘(as) poor as Job’s turkey’: meaning and origin
‘extremely poor’—USA, 1817—humorous variant of ‘(as) poor as Job’, from the name of the eponymous protagonist of a book of the Old Testament, taken as the type of extreme poverty
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‘that’s rich, coming from —’: meaning and origin
UK, 1836—that’s a surprisingly unfair criticism, considering that the person who has just made it has the same fault—here, ‘rich’ means ‘preposterous’, ‘outrageous’
Read More‘one might hear a pin drop’ | ‘one can hear a pin drop’
‘one might hear a pin drop’ (UK, 1739): the silence and sense of expectation are intense—‘one can hear a pin drop’ (UK, 1737): one has a keen sense of hearing
Read More‘usherette’: meanings and origin
USA, 1906: a female attendant who shows people to their seats in a church—USA, 1907: a female usher at Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera House—from ‘usher’ and the suffix ‘-ette’, forming nouns denoting women or girls linked with, or carrying out a role indicated by, the first element
Read More‘to be economical with the truth’: meaning and origin
Ireland, 1832—particularly associated with Lord Robert Armstrong and the ‘Spycatcher’ trial (1986)—‘economy of truth’ was used in 1796 by Edmund Burke
Read More‘padre’s hour’: meaning and origin
UK, 1942—a weekly hour of religious instruction provided by chaplains to British-Army units—‘padre’ (literally ‘father’) is colloquially used to designate and address a male chaplain in the armed forces
Read More‘a blessing in disguise’: meaning and origin
an apparent misfortune that works to the eventual good of the recipient—first half of the 18th century (from 1713 onwards) in the plural form ‘blessings in disguise’
Read Morenotes on the phrase ‘to be more popular than Jesus’
notoriously used of the Beatles by John Lennon in an interview published in the Evening Standard (London, England) of 4 March 1966—but had been used earlier, for example in 1927 of Charlie Chaplin
Read More‘backstabbing’: meaning and origin
UK, 1803, as an adjective—UK, 1842, as a noun—in reference to the action or practice of attacking, or acting against, someone in a treacherous or underhand manner
Read More‘to embiggen’: meaning and origin
to make bigger or greater, to enlarge—UK, 1884, as a translation of ancient Greek ‘μεγαλύνειν’ as used in the Acts of the Apostles, 5:13—recoined in 1996 in the U.S. animated television series The Simpsons
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