“ad fontes!”
MEANING to smell a rat: to detect something suspicious ORIGIN The first known use of this phrase is in The Image of Ipocrysy, an anonymous poem written around 1540, denouncing “the cruell clergy”: (published in 1843) Suche be owr [= our] primates, Our bisshopps and prelates, Our parsons and curates, With other […]
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MEANING The phrase back to the drawing board is used to indicate that an idea, scheme or proposal has been unsuccessful and that a new one must be devised. ORIGIN This phrase originated in a cartoon by the U.S. cartoonist Peter Arno (Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr – 1904-68), published in The New […]
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MEANING Brexit: the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union ORIGIN A blend of British, or Britain, and exit, this term dates back to 2012. The form Brixit appeared in Bagehot’s notebook on British politics, in The Economist of 21st June: A Brixit looms MY PRINT column this week […]
Read MoreThe word teetotum, which dates back to the 18th century, denotes a small four-sided disk or die having an initial letter inscribed on each of its sides, and a spindle passing down through it by which it could be twirled or spun with the fingers like a small top, the letter which lay uppermost, when […]
Read MoreThe phrase to sleep like a top means to sleep very soundly. In A Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1993), B. A. Phythian explains that, unlikely as it may seem, the top referred to here is the child’s toy which seems not to be moving when it is spinning, though it wobbles when being […]
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from Keeping Up With The Joneses (Cupples & Leon Company – New York, 1920) by ‘Pop’ Momand MEANING If you say that someone is keeping up with the Joneses, you mean that they are doing something in order to show that they have as much money as other people, rather than because […]
Read Morean alternative explanation of the phrase “it is raining cats and dogs”
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘strawberry preacher’
Read MoreIn the phrase ‘in Dicky’s meadow’, which means ‘in trouble’, the first element is an alteration of ‘dicky’, meaning ‘hazardous’, ‘critical’.
Read MoreSexual puns in 17th-century English theatre explain several meanings of ‘P’s and Q’s’.
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