“ad fontes!”
‘butterfingered’, adjective, 1615: having a tendency to let things fall or slip from one’s hands—also (English, regional) unable or unwilling to handle hot items with one’s bare hands—‘butterfingers’, noun, 1835: a butterfingered person, a person with a tendency to let things fall or slip from his or her hands
Read More1914—the colloquial British-English phrase ‘to pop one’s clogs’ means ‘to die’—while ‘clog’ designates a shoe with a thick wooden sole, the acceptation of the verb ‘to pop’ is obscure
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The Times: nicknamed Thunderer—the Morning Advertiser: Gin-and-Gospel Gazette, Tap-tub—The Morning Post: Jeames—The Morning Herald and The Standard: respectively Mrs Harris and Mrs Gamp
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UK, 1851—is or jokingly denotes a threat made by a member of the public to write to the London newspaper The Times to express outrage about a particular issue
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UK, 1869—used to denounce arbitrariness—alludes to a demand by the Queen of Hearts during the trial of the Knave of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
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USA, 1878—to misunderstand—alludes to an accidental connexion between telephone or telegraph wires of different lines or circuits
Read MoreUK, 1831—In ‘beer and skittles’, denoting unmixed enjoyment, the image is of a person drinking beer while playing skittles.
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UK, 1852—of a person or thing: irretrievably defunct or out of date—with reference to the extinct bird of Mauritius
Read MoreThe noun red tape, meaning excessive bureaucracy or adherence to official rules and formalities, refers to the use of woven red tape to tie up bundles of legal documents and official papers; the literal meaning is first recorded in 1658, the figurative meaning in 1736.
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possibly from ‘cloak and sword’, from Spanish ‘(comedia) de capa y espada’, a type of dramas in which the main characters wore cloaks and swords or daggers
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word histories 