“ad fontes!”
meaning: to try especially hard to achieve something or do it well—originally ‘to go the second mile’—alludes to the gospel of Matthew, 5:41: “And whosoeuer shall compell thee to goe a mile, goe with him twaine”
Read Morethe practice of coasting downhill in a motor vehicle, with the engine disengaged—USA, 1949, lorry-drivers’ slang—one of the phrases in which ‘Mexican’ denotes basic devices or processes compared unfavourably with more advanced equivalents
Read More(the type of) something easy, effortless or pleasant—USA, 1937—originally denoted, in golf caddies’ slang, a nine-hole round, with some reference to the literal sense of the phrase
Read Morea genre of popular fiction featuring wealthy and glamorous characters who typically engage in frequent sexual encounters and extravagant spending—USA, 1985 & 1986, in reference to British novelist Jackie Collins and U.S. novelist Judith Krantz
Read Morealso ‘to be all thumbs’—to be extremely clumsy (i.e., lacking in manual dexterity)—19th century—variants of the original phrase ‘each finger is a thumb’, already proverbial in the mid-16th century
Read Morea married man living apart from his wife—UK, 1822—coined after ‘grass widow’
Read Moreforms nouns with the sense ‘genetically modified ——’; also, occasionally, with the sense ‘—— relating to genetic modification’—first used in 1992 by Paul Lewis to form ‘Frankenfood’—from ‘Frankenstein’, the title character of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel
Read Moregenetically modified food—but had been used earlier by members of Weight Watchers in the sense of food one is addicted to—in reference to ‘Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus’ (1818), by Mary Shelley
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a synthesizer designed to be held in the manner of a guitar, with one hand playing a keyboard while the other operates controls on an extended handle—USA, 1979—from ‘key-’ in ‘keyboard’ and ‘-tar’ in ‘guitar’
Read Morea factor speculatively included in a hypothesis or calculation, especially to account for some unquantified but significant phenomenon or to ensure a desired result—USA, 1947
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