origin of ‘a baker’s dozen’ and ‘thirteen to the dozen’
from the bakers’ former practice of adding a loaf to a dozen, either as a safeguard against accusations of giving light weight or as the retailer’s profit
Read MoreCategory: United Kingdom & Ireland
origin of ‘the world is my oyster’
refers to the possibility of finding a pearl in an oyster—coined by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor, perhaps in allusion to a proverb
Read Moresexual origin of ‘merrythought’ (‘wishbone’)
‘merrythought’, late 16th century— the forked bone between the neck and breast of a bird—so called from its resemblance to a woman’s external genitals
Read More‘no man’s land’ and three different types of death
‘no man’s land’—first a place of execution outside London; then a mass burial ground during the Black Death; later an unoccupied zone between opposing forces
Read Morethe story of the two Big Bens
The Great Bell in the Parliament clock tower in London was named after Benjamin Hall, who, as First Commissioner of Works and Public Buildings, oversaw its installation in 1856.
Read Morethe long history of the word ‘blues’
‘blues’—from ‘blue’ (‘sorrowful’) and elliptically from ‘blue devils’ (‘depression’)—originally a metaphorical use of ‘blue’ (‘bruised’), as in ‘black and blue’
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘all Sir Garnet’
‘all Sir Garnet’ (late 19th cent.): highly satisfactory – from the name of Sir Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913), who conducted successful military expeditions
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘something nasty in the woodshed’
UK, 1930s—from Cold Comfort Farm (1932), by Stella Gibbons, in which a character exploits a traumatic childhood experience to exert control over her family
Read Morethe authentic origin of ‘to turn a blind eye’
early 19th century—shortening of ‘to turn the deaf ear and the blind eye’ and variants
Read Morea linguistic investigation into hooliganism
UK, late 19th cent.—probably a rendering of an Irish patronym, based on stereotypes generated by Irish immigration to Britain and popularised by theatre
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word histories 