‘like death warmed up’: meaning and origin

23rd Feb 2022.Reading time 7 minutes.

1922—‘like death warmed up’ (also ‘like death warmed over’): extended form of ‘like death’, attested in the mid-17th century and meaning ‘extremely ill’, or ‘exhausted’

‘cookie pusher’: meanings and origin

22nd Feb 2022.Reading time 16 minutes.

1922, slang of high-school and university students in Kansas City (Missouri) and in Kansas: a fashionable young man who enjoys socialising with women at tea parties or other social events—1924: a diplomat employed by the U.S. State Department, regarded as being excessively occupied with entertaining dignitaries and doing little meaningful work

‘what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’: meaning and early occurrences

21st Feb 2022.Reading time 19 minutes.

meaning: ‘what is appropriate in one case is also appropriate in the other case in question’—earliest occurrence in A Collection of English Proverbs (1670), by John Ray

‘curiouser and curiouser’: meaning and origin

20th Feb 2022.Reading time 7 minutes.

increasingly strange—alludes to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), by Lewis Carroll—first occurs from 1878 onwards in novels by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

‘witching hour’: meanings and origin

19th Feb 2022.Reading time 6 minutes.

1762: the time of night when it is said that witches are active and supernatural occurrences take place—alludes to ‘the witching time of night’ in Shakespeare’s Hamlet—also (1985): the last hour of trading each month when exchange-traded stock options expire

‘all roads lead to Rome’: meaning and origin

18th Feb 2022.Reading time 9 minutes.

1793—probably ultimately after post-classical Latin ‘mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam…’ (‘a thousand roads lead for ever to Rome the men…’)—the metaphor occurred in A Treatise on the Astrolabe (ca 1391), by Geoffrey Chaucer

‘roaring forties’: literal and figurative meanings

17th Feb 2022.Reading time 12 minutes.

(1836) stormy ocean tracts between latitudes 40° and 50° south—(1867) the fifth decade of life—(1888) the 1840s—(1913) the stretch of Broadway through Times Square, in New York City—(nautical slang) naval commanders aged between 40 and 50 who ‘roar’ commands

‘Jesus boots’: meanings and origin

14th Feb 2022.Reading time 7 minutes.

American English—1902: bare feet (used of Doukhobors, i.e., members of a Christian sect that originated in Russia, many members of which emigrated to Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries)—1965: open-toed leather sandals of a simple or functional style (used of young persons)

‘jerry-builder’: meaning and origin

13th Feb 2022.Reading time 26 minutes.

Liverpool (Lancashire, north-western England), 1833—a speculating builder who constructs cheap houses, flats, etc., with materials of poor quality, for a quick profit—the origin of the element ‘jerry’ is unknown

figurative uses of ‘hardy annual’

12th Feb 2022.Reading time 10 minutes.

The noun ‘hardy annual’ denotes a plant that can withstand freezing temperatures and which completes its life cycle within a year. In British English, this noun is used figuratively of a thing or a person that reappears continually or at regular intervals.