‘(as) snug as [animal name] (in —)’: meaning and early occurrences

27th Feb 2022.Reading time 25 minutes.

1607, as ‘as snug as pigs in pease-straw’—especially in ‘(as) snug as a bug in a rug’, phrases built on the pattern ‘(as) snug as [animal name] (in —)’ mean ‘in an extremely comfortable position or situation’

‘capsize’: meaning, early occurrences and origin

26th Feb 2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

to upset, to overturn—1777—origin unknown—perhaps based on Spanish ‘capuzar’, meaning ‘to sink (a ship) by the head’—or perhaps based on a Provençal compound of ‘cap’, meaning ‘head’

‘to come a gutser’: meanings and origin

24th Feb 2022.Reading time 15 minutes.

Australian soldiers’ slang, 1917—literally: to fall heavily; figuratively: to suffer a failure or defeat—‘gutser’ (Scotland, 1901): originally denoted a belly flop—derived from ‘gut’ in the sense of the belly

‘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