origin of ‘flash in the pan’ and of the French verb ‘rater’
‘flash in the pan’: originally referred to the priming gunpowder flaring up in the flash-pan without then exploding the main charge in the barrel of a firearm
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origin of the verb ‘bogart’ (to monopolise)
from ‘Don’t Bogart That Joint’ (1968), song by Fraternity of Man—alludes to the way Humphrey Bogart held a cigarette for long dialogues without smoking it
Read Moreorigin of the British phrase ‘to go for a burton’
to meet with disaster; to be ruined, destroyed or killed—UK, 1941, RAF slang: (of an airman) to be killed—perhaps from ‘to go for a drink (of Burton ale)’
Read Moreorigin of the phrase ‘good wine needs no bush’
first recorded in ‘As You Like It’, by Shakespeare—from the former practice of hanging a branch or bunch of ivy as a vintner’s sign in front of a tavern
Read Moreorigin of ‘cloud-cuckoo-land’
a realm of fantasy, dreams or impractical notions—1856 as ‘cuckoo-cloud-land’—from the name of the city built by the birds in ‘The Birds’, by Aristophanes
Read Moreorigin of ‘to take the cake’ and ‘to take the biscuit’
‘take the cake’ (US, 1839) alludes probably to cake as the prize in a contest, but maybe not to cakewalk—‘take the biscuit’ (US, 1879) used in British English
Read Morethe curious origin of ‘pie’ (baked dish)
perhaps identical to ‘pie’ (‘magpie’)—variety of ingredients maybe associated with bird’s spotted appearance or its tendency to collect miscellaneous articles
Read Moreorigin of the word ‘captcha’
early 21st century—acronym from ‘Completely Automatic Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’, with punning allusion to ‘capture’ and ‘gotcha’
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘j’accuse’
1899—public accusation in response to a perceived injustice—from the title of an open letter (1898) by Émile Zola, condemning the imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus
Read Morethe liturgical origin of ‘Quasimodo’
in full ‘Quasimodo Sunday’: the Sunday after Easter—from the opening words of the Latin introit for that day, ‘quasimodo geniti infantes’, ‘as newborn babies’
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word histories 