origin of ‘to have someone’s guts for garters’
The phrase ‘to have someone’s guts for garters’, used as a hyperbolical threat, is first recorded in the late 16th century.
Read MoreCategory: USA & Canada
meaning and origin of ‘to go postal’
‘to go postal’: to go mad—US, early 1990s—owes its origin to several recorded cases in which employees of the U.S. Postal Service have shot at their colleagues
Read Morethe authentic 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 MoreThe 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 Moremeaning and origin of ‘according to Gunter’
‘according to Gunter’: correctly; reliably—early 18th century, from the name of the English mathematician Edmund Gunter (1581-1626)
Read Moremeaning and origin 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 Moremeaning and origin 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 Morethe authentic origin 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 Morethe appearance of the phrase ‘cross 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
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