origin of ‘double Dutch’ and ‘High Dutch’ (‘gibberish’)

14th April 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

‘double Dutch’, 19th century—from ‘Dutch’ in the sense of a language that few people can speak, and ‘double’ as a mere intensifier—‘High Dutch’, 17th century—loan translation from French ‘haut allemand’ (= ‘High German’), used in the sense of gibberish

meaning and earliest instances of ‘bums on seats’

11th April 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

UK, 1967—chiefly British—‘bums on seats’: the members of an audience, at a theatre, cinema or other place of entertainment, especially when viewed as a source of income

‘urbi et orbi’ (‘to the city (of Rome) and to the world’)

1st April 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

from classical Latin ‘urbī’, dative of ‘urbs’ (city), and ‘orbī’, dative of ‘orbis’ (orb, circle)—in classical Latin, ‘orbis terrarum’, ‘orbis terrae’, the orb, or circle, of the earth, meant by extension the world, since the ancients regarded the earth as a circular plane or disk

‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’

14th March 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

first recorded in a speech by Rev. George W. Bethune, transcribed in ‘Brief abstract of the fourth annual report of board of Managers of the New-York city Colonization Society’, published in ‘The American Christian Instructor’ of April 1836

‘preposterous’, or ‘having first what should be coming after’

10th March 2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

16th century—from the Latin adjective ‘praeposterus’, composed of the adverb ‘prae’ (‘in front’, ‘before’) and the adjective ‘posterus’ (‘coming after’, ‘following’, ‘next’), so that its literal sense is ‘next (placed) first’, ‘having first what should be coming after’.

origin of ‘in petto’ (‘in the secret of the mind or heart’)

17th February 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

Italian translation of Latin ‘in pectore’ (‘in the breast’, ‘in the secret of the heart’)—when a pope announces that he has appointed a cardinal whom he reserves ‘in petto’, it means that he will reveal this cardinal’s name later

‘deliver a baby’: a consumerist approach to childbirth?

15th February 2018.Reading time 7 minutes.

Originally, the mother was the object of ‘deliver’, the image was of delivering (freeing) her from the burden of pregnancy. Nowadays, the healthcare provider or the mother is the subject, the image is of delivering (handing over) the baby, as if it were a package.

Werewolves were originally in the service of Satan.

6th February 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

Old English ‘werewulf’ (first element identified with Old English ‘wer’, ‘man’) first used for ‘wolf’ to denote a person serving Satan (cf. Gospel of Matthew “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves”)

origin of ‘Wasp’ (‘white Anglo-Saxon Protestant’)

2nd February 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

USA, 1956—acronym from ‘white Anglo-Saxon Protestant’—‘Wasp’, or ‘WASP’: a person who belongs to, or is thought of, as being part of a white, upper middle-class, northern European, Protestant group that dominates economic, political and cultural activity in the USA

a U.S. political term of the 1920s: ‘backroom boys’

31st January 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

The 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.