“ad fontes!”
Of American-English origin, the phrase to look, or to feel, like something the cat has brought in means to look, or to feel, exhausted or bedraggled. The earliest instances of the form, if not of the phrase, that I have found are in, and as the title of, a story published in The Perrysburg Journal (Perrysburg, Ohio) of 2nd February 1877 […]
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one of the versions of The Peaceable Kingdom (circa 1834), by Edward Hicks image: National Gallery of Art (Washington DC) The expression peaceable kingdom, in the sense of a state of harmony among all creatures as prophesied in the Book of Isaiah, 11:1-9, first appeared in the King James Version (1611): […]
Read MoreThe phrase like a cat on hot bricks and its American-English equivalent like a cat on a hot tin roof mean very agitated or anxious. An earlier form of the phrase was recorded by the English naturalist and theologian John Ray (1627–1705) in A Collection of English Proverbs (2nd edition – 1678): To go like […]
Read MoreOf American-English origin, the expression to have an axe to grind (American-English spelling ax) means to have a private reason for doing, or being involved in, something. It has often been attributed to Benjamin Franklin [note 1]. For example, the New English Dictionary (NED – 1888), as the Oxford English Dictionary was known, mentions “a […]
Read MoreMEANING The phrase to be barking up the wrong tree means to be pursuing a mistaken or misguided line of thought or course of action—cf. also origin of ‘gone coon’. ORIGIN In Americanisms, Old and New. A Dictionary of Words, Phrases and Colloquialisms peculiar to the United States, British America, the West Indies, […]
Read MoreThe phrase trick or treat is a traditional formula used at Hallowe’en by children who call on houses threatening to play a trick unless given a treat or present. In early use, the phrase was also tricks or treats, treat or trick, and variants. This phrase seems to have originated in Ontario (capital: Toronto), a province of […]
Read MoreThe phrase (as) happy as a clam means well pleased, quite contented—cf. also happy as a sandboy and happy as Larry. In Dictionary of English Phrases (2008), Robert Allen explains: This American simile is more understandable in its full form, happy as a clam in high water (or at high tide). In these conditions, clams […]
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“HUNS KILL WOMEN AND CHILDREN!” “TELL THAT TO THE MARINES!” First-World-War US recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg image: Disappearing Idioms This poster, which attracted a great deal of attention, portrays an angry-looking young man in the act of pulling off his coat as though he were anxious to get into a fight. The […]
Read MoreUSA, 1881—seems to have originated in the image of a torchlit procession or/and of a firework display that illuminate(s) a town
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MEANING The phrase back to the drawing board is used to indicate that an idea, scheme or proposal has been unsuccessful and that a new one must be devised. ORIGIN This phrase originated in a cartoon by the U.S. cartoonist Peter Arno (Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr – 1904-68), published in The New […]
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