‘a bird cannot fly on one wing’: meaning and origin
USA, 1902—jocularly used to justify the necessity of taking another alcoholic drink—Irish variant (1947): ‘a bird never flew on one wing’
Read MoreTag: animals
the phrase ‘muscles like sparrows’ kneecaps’
UK, 1922—(self-)disparagingly used of somebody’s physical strength—sometimes as a parody of ‘The Village Blacksmith’ (1840), by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘Dickin Medal’
UK, 1943—a medal awarded to an animal in recognition of an act of bravery—named after M. E. Dickin, founder of the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals in 1917
Read Morethe birth of an American phrase: ‘Where’s the beef?’
January 1984—from a television advertisement for the hamburger chain Wendy’s, in which an elderly lady demands where the beef is in a huge hamburger bun
Read Morenotes on the earliest mention of a drink called ‘cocktail’
UK, 1798—‘cocktail’ explained as being “vulgarly called ginger”—perhaps from the use of ‘ginger’ to denote a cock with red plumage
Read Moremeanings and origin of ‘Judas sheep’ and ‘Judas goat’
USA, early 20th century—a sheep or a goat used to lead sheep to slaughter—hence any person or thing used as a decoy to lure people into being caught, arrested, etc.
Read Morenotes on various acceptations of the term ‘rat pack’
USA—derogatory appellation for a group of persons—1950 Los Angeles’s gangs of hoodlums—1955 self-designation of a group of Hollywood celebrities
Read Morehistory of the phrase ‘(but) some — are more equal than others’
USA—from 1848 onwards in contrast to ‘all men are equal’—now often alludes to ‘but some animals are more equal than others’ in Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945)
Read Morehistory of the phrase ‘a sheep in sheep’s clothing’
USA, 1884—a person whose lack of courage is as real as it appears to be—jocular variant of ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’—often misattributed to Winston Churchill
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘somebody is walking over my grave’
early 18th century, in Jonathan Swift’s ‘Polite Conversation’—from the folk belief that one shudders when somebody walks over the site of one’s future grave
Read More
word histories 