“ad fontes!”
The noun cruse denotes a small earthenware vessel for liquids. It is of Germanic origin and related to words such as Dutch kroes and Swedish krus, of same meaning. The expression widow’s cruse signifies an apparently small supply that proves inexhaustible. It is an allusion to the First Book of Kings, 17. The prophet Elijah has been fed by ravens and has drunk from a […]
Read MoreThe phrase (as) cold as charity refers to the perfunctory, unfeeling manner in which acts of charity are often done, and public charities administered. It originally alluded to the gospel of Matthew, 24:12, which is as follows in the Early Version (around 1382) of the Wycliffe Bible (wexe is the verb wax and means become, […]
Read MoreThe expression cold comfort means inadequate consolation for a misfortune. The adjective cold has long been used to mean felt as cold by the receiver, chilling, damping, discouraging. For example, the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1342-1400) wrote, in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale: (interlinear translation – Harvard College) Wommennes conseils been ful ofte colde; Women’s counsels […]
Read More
Tip-Cat in A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy, and Pretty Miss Polly (1787 edition) The phrase to see which way the cat jumps means to see what direction events are taking before committing oneself. One of its earliest instances is from The Berkshire Chronicle […]
Read MoreIt is often said that the abbreviated form Xmas “takes the Christ out of Christmas”, but this is not the case. For example, a certain Reverend Thomas Eyre wrote to a Doctor Poynter on 25th January 1807: My Lord,—Your much esteemed favour of the 5th of December I received the day after Xmas. The noun Christ is from the Latin Christus, […]
Read MoreThe phrase like a cat on hot bricks and its American-English equivalent like a cat on a hot tin roof mean very agitated or anxious. An earlier form of the phrase was recorded by the English naturalist and theologian John Ray (1627–1705) in A Collection of English Proverbs (2nd edition – 1678): To go like […]
Read MoreThe Italian noun gianduia (improperly gianduja) appeared in the 19th century to denote a soft confection made with chocolate and ground hazelnuts, first produced in Turin, the capital of Piedmont, a region in north-western Italy, in the foothills of the Alps. (The Italian name is Piemonte, from piede, foot, and monte, mount.) This confection was […]
Read MoreThe phrase wouldn’t say boo to a goose is used to emphasise that someone is very timid. Here, boo is not an expression of disapproval but a later form of bo, an exclamation intended to frighten. In Notes and Queries of 10th September 1870, the English philologist Walter William Skeat (1835-1912) wrote: “Cry Bo to […]
Read More“I think we may say everything’s more or less oojah-cum-spiff. With one exception, Jeeves,” I said, a graver note coming into my voice as I gave Gus his second helping of kipper. “There remains a fly in the ointment, a familiar saying meaning—well, I don’t quite know what it does mean. It seems to […]
Read MoreMEANING to have no hesitation in stating, or dealing with, something, however unpleasant or awkward it is ORIGIN Always used in the negative, this phrase dates back to the 16th century, originally as to make no bones at or in. It also occurred without a complement, as in its first recorded use, in The first tome or […]
Read More
word histories 