origin of ‘to bite the bullet’
late 19th century—from the practice consisting for a soldier in biting on a bullet when being flogged
Read MoreCategory: USA & Canada
The verb ‘unfriend’ was coined in the 17th century.
The verb unfriend was coined by the Church of England clergyman Thomas Fuller (1608-61) in The Appeal of Injured Innocence (1659).
Read Moreaccording to Gunter
‘according to Gunter’: correctly; reliably—early 18th century, from the name of the English mathematician Edmund Gunter (1581-1626)
Read Moreorigin of ‘to walk one’s chalks’
to go off—19th cent.—from a procedure consisting in making a person walk on a straight line drawn with chalk in order to establish whether they are inebriated
Read Moreorigin of ‘by a long chalk’
‘by a long chalk’: in a great degree, by far — 19th century, from the practice of using chalk to mark up the points scored in a game
Read More‘adultescent’ and its synonyms
blend of ‘adult’ and ‘adolescent’: adult who has retained the interests, behaviour or lifestyle of adolescence — origin USA, first attested in 1945
Read Moreorigin of ‘out of the blue’
from ‘a bolt out of the blue’, denoting a sudden and unexpected event, with reference to the unlikelihood of a thunderbolt coming from a clear blue sky
Read Morecross my heart (and hope to die)
origin: USA – 2nd half of the 19th century – from the action of making a small sign of the cross over one’s heart, which sometimes accompanies the words
Read Moreorigin of ‘to go haywire’
From the practice of using hay-baling wire for makeshift repairs, ‘haywire’ came to mean crudely made, improvised, hence disorganised, erratic, crazy.
Read Moreorigin of ‘first catch your hare’
‘First catch your hare’ (early 19th cent.): originated in popular humour ascribing this phrase to ‘The Art of Cookery’ (1st published 1747), by Hannah Glasse
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