origin of ‘pipe dream’ (unattainable or fanciful hope or scheme)
pipe dream: American English, late 19th century—originally with reference to the kind of visions experienced when smoking an opium pipe
Read MoreCategory: United Kingdom & Ireland
the various meanings of the noun ‘owlhoot’
Coined after ‘cock-crow’, ‘owl-hoot’ means ‘dusk’. It denotes ‘an outlaw’ in Wild West fiction, hence, generally, ‘a worthless or contemptible person’.
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘like one o’clock’
‘like one o’clock’—mid 19th century, British: with speed, eagerness, energy; perhaps with reference to the lunchtime bustle in the northern manufacturing towns
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘by hook or by crook’
The phrase perhaps originated in laws or customs regulating the gathering of firewood by tenants; it was perhaps a legal formula in which ‘crook’ merely reinforced ‘hook’.
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘to send to Coventry’
probable origin: in 1642, during the English Civil War, Royalists had been captured at Birmingham and sent to Coventry, which was a Parliamentarian stronghold.
Read More‘Kindertransport’ (evacuation of children from Nazi-controlled Europe)
Kindertransport (from German ‘Kinder’, children): operation from 1938 to 1940 to evacuate (mostly Jewish) children from Nazi-controlled areas of Europe to the UK
Read Moreorigin of ‘Gorgeous Wrecks’ (members of the Volunteer Training Corps)
‘Gorgeous Wrecks’ (UK, WWI): members of the Volunteer Training Corps, from the letters ‘G.R.’ (‘Government Recognition’) interpreted as meaning ‘Georgius Rex’
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘hung’ in ‘hung parliament’
In ‘hung parliament’, ‘hung’ means ‘in which no political party has an overall majority’ – cf. the US expression ‘hung jury’, where ‘hung’ means ‘unable to decide’.
Read Moresense evolution and origin of ‘conundrum’
The word ‘conundrum’, attested in 1596, originally meant ‘whimsy’, ‘oddity’. It perhaps originated as a parody of some Latin scholastic phrase.
Read Moreorigin of ‘Grauniad’ (colloquial name for The Guardian)
‘Grauniad’, the nickname for the Guardian, was reportedly given to this British newspaper by the magazine Private Eye because of its typesetting errors.
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