‘brimstone and treacle’: meaning and origin
Britain, 1746—refers to old-fashioned medicinal remedies—notably used by Charles Dickens in ‘The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby’ (1838-39)
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‘without fear or favour’: meaning and origin
without pressure from, or partiality to, any person or other external influence—1638, as a translation of French ‘sans crainte et sans respect’ (‘without fear and without respect’)
Read More‘Job’s comforter’: meaning and origin
1673—a person who aggravates distress under the guise of administering comfort—alludes to Job’s reply to his friends in the Book of Job, 16:2
Read More‘Kleenex music’: meanings and origin
1962: a type of popular music that is rapidly discarded—also, 1967: Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, regarded as a lachrymose piece of music by Igor Stravinsky—‘Kleenex’: a proprietary name for a soft, disposable paper tissue
Read More‘that’s rich, coming from —’: meaning and origin
UK, 1836—that’s a surprisingly unfair criticism, considering that the person who has just made it has the same fault—here, ‘rich’ means ‘preposterous’, ‘outrageous’
Read More‘one might hear a pin drop’ | ‘one can hear a pin drop’
‘one might hear a pin drop’ (UK, 1739): the silence and sense of expectation are intense—‘one can hear a pin drop’ (UK, 1737): one has a keen sense of hearing
Read More‘usherette’: meanings and origin
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 More‘to be economical with the truth’: meaning and origin
Ireland, 1832—particularly associated with Lord Robert Armstrong and the ‘Spycatcher’ trial (1986)—‘economy of truth’ was used in 1796 by Edmund Burke
Read More‘padre’s hour’: meaning and origin
UK, 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 More‘a blind bit of ——’: meaning and origin
UK, 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’
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