“ad fontes!”
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’
Read MoreBritish, 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
Read MoreIn 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.
Read Morealso ‘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’
Read Morea gesture (made by a French person to deny responsibility, knowledge or agreement) consisting typically in shrugging one’s shoulders while upturning one’s hands
Read Moreto discuss an essentially private matter, especially a dispute or scandal, in public—UK, 1819—loan translation from French ‘laver son linge sale en public’, originated by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1814
Read Morean impressive facade or show designed to hide an embarrassing or shabby fact or condition—1843—from the sham villages said to have been built by Grigori Potemkin to deceive Catherine II
Read Morea box in which a young woman stores clothes and household articles in preparation for her marriage—Australia, 1902—perhaps related to the British ‘glory hole’, denoting a place for storing odds and ends
Read More
a chest or box in which a young woman collects articles towards a home of her own in the event of her marriage—USA, 1904
Read Morea young woman’s collection of clothes and household articles, kept in preparation for her marriage—UK, 1835?—refers to the (notional?) receptacle where those clothes and household articles are supposed to be kept
Read More
word histories 