“ad fontes!”
Jonathan Swift’s grave, marked by a simple brass plaque on the floor at the west end of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, is adjacent to that of his great friend in life, Stella (Esther Johnson – 1681-1728): plaques marking the graves of Jonathan Swift and Esther Johnson Latin sæva indignatio, meaning savage indignation, expresses a […]
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The Charley Horse. The charley horse is abroad in the land and wasteth not at noonday. He is to a baseball player as the dingbat of commerce or the Indian to a St. Louis man. He stalketh seeking what player’s reputation he may devour. He is an iconoclast. He bats the pitcher out of […]
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The phrase to toe the line means to accept the authority, policies or principles of a particular group, especially unwillingly. Its literal sense is to stand or crouch with the toes touching the line, especially at the start of a race or fight. The current meaning is an extension of a figurative usage, […]
Read MoreIn cricket, from the resemblance between the figure 0 and a duck’s egg, the term duck’s egg denotes the zero (i.e. 0) placed against a batsman’s name in the scoring sheet when he fails to score. This was explained in Very Hard Cash (1863), a novel by the English novelist and playwright Charles Reade (1814-84): […]
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The phrase not to give, care or be worth a tinker¹’s curse, cuss² or damn (or elliptically a tinker’s) is an intensification of not to give, care or be worth a curse, cuss or damn, with reference to the bad language reputedly used by tinkers. The low repute in which tinkers were held is also […]
Read MoreThe name Hogs Norton, also Hog’s Norton and Hogsnorton, denotes a fictional town renowned for its uncultured and boorish inhabitants. It has often been used in depreciative phrases suggesting that someone is a native or inhabitant of this town. These phrases have variously associated the name: – with present-day Hook Norton, a town in Oxfordshire […]
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Greenwich Village Fair – “Hot Dogs” – June 1917 photograph: Library of Congress The term hot dog denotes a sausage, especially a frankfurter, served hot in a long roll split lengthways. In US slang, the noun dog has been used to denote a sausage since the late 19th century. This usage is first recorded […]
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photograph: Farm Shop The noun mayonnaise denotes a thick, creamy sauce consisting of egg yolks emulsified with oil and seasoned, used as a cold dressing or accompaniment for salad, eggs, fish, etc., or as the base for other sauces. It is used in two French phrases: la mayonnaise prend, literally, the mayonnaise […]
Read MoreThe phrase to leave no stone unturned means to try every possible course of action in order to achieve something. (The equivalent French phrase has a cosmic dimension since it is remuer ciel et terre, literally, to move heaven and earth.) The image of turning every stone was already proverbial over 2000 years ago in […]
Read MoreThe sandwich (item of food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between them) is named after the British statesman John Montagu (1718-92), 4th Earl of Sandwich. It is generally said that the sandwich was invented because he once spent twenty-four hours at the gaming-table without other refreshment than some slices of beef […]
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word histories 