“ad fontes!”
The name ‘Quorn’ was first registered as a trademark—for certain edible products other than meat substitutes—by the Quorn Specialities Company of Leicester, England, in 1914. The meat substitute was subsequently developed by the successors of this company.
Read MoreThe phrase ‘boys in the backroom’, or ‘backroom boys’, appeared in the 1920s as a U.S. political term denoting persons exercising a surreptitious influence. The Oxford English Dictionary is therefore mistaken in saying that it originally denoted, in 1941, persons engaged in research.
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to meet with disaster; to be ruined, destroyed or killed—UK, 1941, RAF slang: (of an airman) to be killed—perhaps from ‘to go for a drink (of Burton ale)’
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The phrase ‘everything but the kitchen sink’, or ‘the kitchen stove’, and variants mean ‘practically everything imaginable’—origin: USA, early 20th century
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a game in which the player who has the role of Tom Tiddler defends his territory against the others, who try to steal his money—hence a source of easy money
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‘French kiss’—19th century: a kiss on both cheeks—early 20th century (USA): a kiss with contact between tongues
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Since WWI, ‘Franglais’ has been coined to denote: French spoken by an Anglophone, English spoken by a Francophone and French speech using English words.
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‘Grauniad’, the nickname for the Guardian, was reportedly given to this British newspaper by the magazine Private Eye because of its typesetting errors.
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‘Over the top’, which means ‘excessive’, originated as a WWI expression meaning ‘over the parapet of a trench and into battle’.
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The French word for the oyster-shaped piece of meat in the hollow of the pelvic bone of a fowl is ‘sot-l’y-laisse’, literally ‘(the) fool leaves it there’.
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