early instances of ‘Kilroy’
first recorded at Kearns air force base and Salt Lake City, both in Utah, in June and July 1945; originally seen merely as an amusing legend
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How hornbooks are at the origin of ‘criss-cross’.
phonetic reduction of ‘Christ’s cross’; first element phonetically reduced as in ‘Christmas’; hence ‘criss-cross’ treated as a reduplication of ‘cross’
Read Moreorigin of ‘blanket’ and of phrases containing ‘blanket’
‘blanket’: from Old-Northern-French and Anglo-Norman forms such as ‘blankete’ (white woollen material), composed of ‘blanc’ (white) and the diminutive suffix ‘-ette’
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘to be part and parcel of’
from the legal formula ‘part and parcel’, in which both nouns meant ‘an integral portion of something’, the second noun merely reinforcing the first
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘on the spur of the moment’
UK, 1784—elaborated on the archaic ‘on the spur’, which meant ‘in great haste’ and referred to the use of spurs to urge a horse forward
Read MoreWhy ‘ache’ ought to be written ‘ake’.
The spelling ‘ache’ (erroneously derived from Greek ‘ákhos’) instead of ‘ake’ is largely due to Samuel Johnson in A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
Read Moreorigin of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’
first recorded in ‘Hudibras’ (1664), by Samuel Butler—from the first half of ‘Proverbs’, 13:24: “Whoever spares the rod hates their children.”
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘Paul Pry’
UK, 1826—from the eponymous character played by John Liston in a comedy by John Poole, which premiered at the Haymarket Theatre, London, on 13th September 1825
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘nosey parker’
UK, late 19th century—apparently with reference to a probably fictitious individual named Parker, taken as the type of someone inquisitive
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘a little bird told me’
1711 in a letter by Jonathan Swift—perhaps from Ecclesiastes, 10:20: “a bird of the air shall carry the voice; and that which hath wings, shall tell the matter”
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word histories 