“ad fontes!”
USA, 1929: to force someone into a situation from which it is not easy to escape—the image is of someone who is painting a floor and ends up in a corner of the room with wet paint all around them (USA, 1913)
Read Moreliterally, of a jockey in horseracing (USA, 1869): to manoeuvre in order to get one’s horse into a desired position at the beginning of a race—figuratively (USA, 1881): to manoeuvre in order to gain advantage over rivals in a competitive situation
Read MoreUK, 1841—to be crowded or confined tightly together, as sardines in a tin
Read More‘to have a fancy for’—UK, 1900—loan translation from French ‘avoir un béguin pour’—French ‘béguin’ is from ‘s’embéguiner de’, meaning ‘to put on a bonnet’, hence ‘to put a sudden capricious idea into one’s head’
Read More‘extremely poor’—USA, 1810—humorous variant of ‘(as) poor as Job’, from the name of the eponymous protagonist of a book of the Old Testament, taken as the type of extreme poverty
Read More‘extremely poor’—USA, 1817—humorous variant of ‘(as) poor as Job’, from the name of the eponymous protagonist of a book of the Old Testament, taken as the type of extreme poverty
Read Morethe systematic destruction of Palestinian education by Israel—apparently coined in 2009 by Karma Nabulsi, Fellow in Politics at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford
Read Morea person whose career is believed to have been advanced by having a famous or successful relative—‘nepotism baby’ (USA, 1915)—‘nepo baby’ (USA, 2022)
Read Morea humorous redefinition of an existing word or phrase, presented as a dictionary definition—USA, 1910—a blend of the adjective ‘daffy’ and of the noun ‘definition’
Read Morerefer to the teenage years regarded as an age at which jeans are often worn—USA, from 1946 onwards—punningly after, respectively, ‘teenage’, ‘teenager’ and ‘teenaged’
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word histories 