‘irregardless’: a hyperbolic form of ‘regardless’

23rd Mar 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

USA, 1795—Probably a blend of ‘irrespective’ and ‘regardless’, ‘irregardless’ means the same as ‘regardless’. It is regarded as incorrect in standard English, because the negative prefix ‘ir-’ merely duplicates the suffix ‘-less’, and is therefore unnecessary.

‘to fall off (the back of) a lorry’ (‘to be stolen’)

22nd Mar 2018.Reading time 7 minutes.

UK, 1953, humorous and euphemistic—‘to fall off (the back of) a lorry’: of goods, ‘to be acquired in dubious or unspecified circumstances’, especially ‘to be stolen’—variant with ‘truck’ came into use later in Australian and North American English

‘here’s looking at you’ (used as a toast in drinking)

21st Mar 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

USA, 1871—The phrase ‘here’s looking at you’ is used as a toast in drinking. It is now widely associated with the American film Casablanca (1942), in which Humphrey Bogart addresses Ingrid Bergman with the words “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

origin of ‘lock, stock and barrel’ (i.e., ‘completely’)

18th Mar 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

USA, 1811—based on the three principal components that make up a flintlock gun: ‘lock’ denotes the firing mechanism, ‘stock’ the handle or wooden shoulder-piece to which it is attached, and ‘barrel’ the tube down which the bullet is fired

meaning and origin of ‘to raise Cain’

15th Mar 2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

to create trouble or a commotion—USA, 1840—a euphemism for synonymous phrases such as ‘to raise the Devil’ and ‘to raise hell’—from the name of the eldest son of Adam and Eve and murderer of his brother Abel

‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’

14th Mar 2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

first recorded in a speech by Rev. George W. Bethune, transcribed in ‘Brief abstract of the fourth annual report of board of Managers of the New-York city Colonization Society’, published in ‘The American Christian Instructor’ of April 1836

the American-English phrase ‘hot under the collar’

11th Mar 2018.Reading time 3 minutes.

Of American-English origin, the colloquial phrase ‘hot under (or ‘in’) the collar’ means ‘extremely exasperated or angry’. The earliest instance that I have found is from The Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) of 8th July 1869.

How a life jacket came to be named after Mae West.

9th Mar 2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

From the name of the American film actress Mae West, renowned for her generous bust, the informal noun ‘Mae West’, attested in 1940, denotes an inflatable life jacket, originally as issued to Royal Air Force aviators during World War II.

“wedding vowels”, “tongue and cheek” and other eggcorns

7th Mar 2018.Reading time 11 minutes.

‘eggcorn’: alteration of a word or phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements as a similar-sounding word—coined in 2003 on the website Language Log with reference to a misinterpretation of ‘acorn’ as ‘eggcorn’

‘au reservoir’ (‘goodbye until we meet again’)

6th Mar 2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

A humorous alteration of ‘au revoir’ after the noun ‘reservoir’, the exclamation ‘au reservoir’ is first recorded in Little Pedlington and the Pedlingtonians (London, 1839), by the English author John Poole (1786-1872).

word histories

Category: USA & Canada