meaning, origin and early instances of ‘to lie doggo’

18th Apr 2019.Reading time 13 minutes.

UK, 1882—to remain motionless and quiet; to keep a low profile—probably from ‘dog’ and suffix ‘-o’, with allusion to the characteristically light sleep of a dog

meaning and origin of the phrase ‘Dunkirk spirit’

16th Apr 2019.Reading time 6 minutes.

1940 as ‘spirit of Dunkirk’—determination to endure hardship—refers to the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in May/June 1940

the military origin of the adjective ‘last-ditch’

15th Apr 2019.Reading time 13 minutes.

UK, 1845: made as a last desperate attempt—from the 18th-century phrase ‘to die in the last ditch’, ‘ditch’ denoting a defensive entrenchment

early meanings of ‘Bamboo Curtain’

13th Apr 2019.Reading time 5 minutes.

USA, 1948—notional barrier between China and non-Communist countries—after ‘Iron Curtain’—first used of censorship in South-East Asia

history of the terms ‘man Friday’ and ‘girl Friday’

11th Apr 2019.Reading time 13 minutes.

USA—‘man Friday’ 1802: alludes to the name of Robinson Crusoe’s servant in Daniel Defoe’s novel—‘girl Friday’ 1929: coined on the pattern of ‘man Friday’

meaning and origin of the British phrase ‘to go down the pan’

8th Apr 2019.Reading time 6 minutes.

UK, 1950—to be completely lost or wasted; to fail utterly—alludes to ‘pan’ in the sense of the bowl of a toilet

a hypothesis as to the origin of ‘to get down to brass tacks’

6th Apr 2019.Reading time 17 minutes.

USA, 1868—‘brass tacks’: the nails studded over a coffin, hence figuratively the end of any possibility of deceit, the return to essentials

‘come (right) down to the brass’|‘come down to brass tacks’

5th Apr 2019.Reading time 28 minutes.

USA—‘come (right) down to the brass’ (1854): get to the point; tackle the essentials—‘come down to brass tacks’ (1863): tackle the essentials

origin of the term ‘brass monkey’ (extremely cold weather)

1st Apr 2019.Reading time 15 minutes.

USA, 1838—used with reference to extreme cold, extreme heat and other notions such as ridiculousness—from jocular allusions to brass statuettes of monkeys

the figurative use of ‘bowler (hat)’: civilian life

30th Mar 2019.Reading time 7 minutes.

UK, 1925—symbol of civilian life as opposed to service in the armed forces and of demobilisation or dismissal from the army