“ad fontes!”
USA, 1906: a female attendant who shows people to their seats in a church—USA, 1907: a female usher at Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera House—from ‘usher’ and the suffix ‘-ette’, forming nouns denoting women or girls linked with, or carrying out a role indicated by, the first element
Read MoreIreland, 1832—particularly associated with Lord Robert Armstrong and the ‘Spycatcher’ trial (1986)—‘economy of truth’ was used in 1796 by Edmund Burke
Read MoreUK, 1942—a weekly hour of religious instruction provided by chaplains to British-Army units—‘padre’ (literally ‘father’) is colloquially used to designate and address a male chaplain in the armed forces
Read MoreUK, 1922—used in negative constructions with a following noun to mean ‘a single ——’, ‘any ——’; the nouns most commonly used in those constructions are ‘notice’ and ‘difference’
Read Morean apparent misfortune that works to the eventual good of the recipient—first half of the 18th century (from 1713 onwards) in the plural form ‘blessings in disguise’
Read Moreto court danger by behaving in an obviously risky manner that cannot be sustained for long—1841 in an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Read Morenotoriously used of the Beatles by John Lennon in an interview published in the Evening Standard (London, England) of 4 March 1966—but had been used earlier, for example in 1927 of Charlie Chaplin
Read MoreUK, 1803, as an adjective—UK, 1842, as a noun—in reference to the action or practice of attacking, or acting against, someone in a treacherous or underhand manner
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USA, 1969—the 1964 Lincoln Continental specially built and equipped for Pope Paul VI’s 1965 visit to the United States
Read Morehumorous variant of ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’—Australia, 1872—used in particular of the opposition between flesh-eating and fish-eating in relation to the religious observance of fasting
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