‘to squeeze someone until the pips squeak’: meaning and origin
to exact the maximum payment which a person can afford—coined in 1918 by Eric Geddes with reference to the reparations exacted from Germany following WWI
Read Moremeaning and origin of the word ‘pogue’
Via Irish ‘póg’, Irish-English ‘pogue’ (a kiss) is from ecclesiastical Latin ‘pacem’ (kiss of peace)—the name of the band is from ‘pogue mahone’ (kiss my arse).
Read Moremeaning and origin of the word ‘incunabula’
Latin ‘incunabula’: ‘swaddling clothes’, hence ‘beginning’—denotes the early printed books (from the 1450s to the end of the 15th century)
Read More‘the rough end of the pineapple’: meaning and origin
‘the rough end of the pineapple’: harsh or unfair treatment—said to be an Australian phrase, but may have originated in the USA in the mid-20th century
Read MoreEating in the Romance languages
In Latin, short words having complicated irregularities in their forms gave way to simpler words with regular patterns and longer phonetic individualities.
Read Moreorigin of the phrase ‘the land of Nod’
‘the land of Nod’: a state of sleep—punning allusion to the name of the region to which Cain went after he had killed his brother Abel (Genesis, 4:16)
Read Morea Northern-English word: ‘mardy’
‘mardy’: ‘sulky’, ‘moody’—from ‘mard’, dialectal alteration of ‘marred’, meaning, of a child, ‘spoilt’, and the suffix ‘-y’, meaning ‘having the qualities of’
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘everything but the kitchen sink’
The phrase ‘everything but the kitchen sink’, or ‘the kitchen stove’, and variants mean ‘practically everything imaginable’—origin: USA, early 20th century
Read Morea curious case of misunderstanding in the Oxford English Dictionary
‘Wash the milk off your liver’: refers to the digestibility of milk, but misunderstood by the Oxford English Dictionary as referring to cowardice
Read Morethe colonial origin of the word ‘kidnap’
original meaning of ‘kidnap’, late 17th century—to steal or carry off children or others in order to provide servants or labourers for the American plantations
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word histories 