‘flash mob’: meaning and origin

21st Jun 2023.Reading time 14 minutes.

USA, 2003—a group of people organised by means of the internet, mobile phones or other wireless devices, who assemble in public to perform a prearranged action together and then quickly disperse

‘ball and chain’ (literal and figurative uses)

20th Jun 2023.Reading time 17 minutes.

USA 1813—a heavy metal ball secured by a chain to a person’s leg to prevent escape or as a punishment—figuratively, mid-19th century: anything seen as a heavy restraint, especially the matrimonial bonds

‘to hang someone out to dry’: meaning and origin

19th Jun 2023.Reading time 18 minutes.

to put someone in a difficult, vulnerable or compromising situation, especially by exposing them to blame—USA, 1945, sports—the image is of suspending wet washing in the open so that it can dry

‘bob-a-job’: meaning and origin

14th Jun 2023.Reading time 9 minutes.

UK, 1944—the slogan of the Boy Scout Association’s effort to raise money for funds by doing jobs, originally at a shilling a time

‘Workington Man’: meaning and origin

13th Jun 2023.Reading time 8 minutes.

UK, 2019—an older, white, working-class, Brexiteer, Northern-English man—coined by thinktank Onward to designate the Conservative Party’s target voter in the 2019 general election—refers to Workington, in Cumbria

‘sod this for a game of soldiers’: meaning and early occurrences

12th Jun 2023.Reading time 10 minutes.

UK slang—expresses exasperation at a situation or course of action—military, 1941—what ‘game of soldiers’ refers to is unclear

‘Butskellism’: meanings and origin

11th Jun 2023.Reading time 8 minutes.

UK, 1954—the economic policy of Rab Butler, Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer (1951-5), regarded as largely indistinguishable from that of Hugh Gaitskell, Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer (1950-1)—blend of ‘Butler’ and ‘Gaitskell’ plus suffix ‘-ism’

‘gardening leave’: meaning and origin

9th Jun 2023.Reading time 13 minutes.

British, colloquial: a period during which an employee who is about to leave a company continues to receive a salary and in return agrees not to work for anyone else—origin, British Army: a paid leave between the end of one posting and the beginning of another

Why the French language is intrinsically sexist.

4th Jun 2023.Reading time 6 minutes.

In French, the concept of dependency underlies the semantic distribution of some basic lexical items: the female is strictly defined in her relation of dependency to the male, as a daughter or as a spouse.

‘to drop one’s aitches’: meaning and early occurrences

11th May 2023.Reading time 24 minutes.

also ‘to drop one’s h’s’—not to pronounce the letter h at the beginning of words in which it is pronounced in standard English—1855—1847 as ‘not to sound one’s h’s’