“ad fontes!”
‘to have a fancy for’—UK, 1900—loan translation from French ‘avoir un béguin pour’—French ‘béguin’ is from ‘s’embéguiner de’, meaning ‘to put on a bonnet’, hence ‘to put a sudden capricious idea into one’s head’
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1990—a street in which many satellite dishes are attached to the front of the buildings—‘satellite dish’: a bowl-shaped antenna used to view satellite television
Read MoreUK, 1933—cursive handwriting as learnt in elementary school as a stage beyond printing individual letters separately—from the adjective ‘joined-up’, meaning ‘conjoined’
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Ireland & Britain, 1850—a person who goes round the streets in the early morning to awaken factory hands—from ‘to knock somebody up’, meaning ‘to awaken somebody by knocking at the door’
Read More1673—a person who aggravates distress under the guise of administering comfort—alludes to Job’s reply to his friends in the Book of Job, 16:2
Read Morethe systematic destruction of Palestinian education by Israel—apparently coined in 2009 by Karma Nabulsi, Fellow in Politics at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford
Read MoreUK, 1950, as ‘old boy net’—a system of favouritism and preferment operating among people of a similar social, usually privileged, background, especially among former pupils of public schools
Read MoreIreland, 1989—treatment given to hospital patients in overcrowded and inappropriate spaces such as corridors and waiting rooms—had been used earlier (UK, 1980) of treatment given to schoolchildren
Read Morea dish consisting of deep-fried battered fish fillets served with potato chips—Lancashire, England, 1886 (1879, as ‘fried fish and chipped potatoes’)
Read More1962: a type of popular music that is rapidly discarded—also, 1967: Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, regarded as a lachrymose piece of music by Igor Stravinsky—‘Kleenex’: a proprietary name for a soft, disposable paper tissue
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word histories 