“ad fontes!”
USA, 1871—The phrase ‘here’s looking at you’ is used as a toast in drinking. It is now widely associated with the American film Casablanca (1942), in which Humphrey Bogart addresses Ingrid Bergman with the words “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
Read Morefirst 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
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From the name of the American film actress Mae West, renowned for her generous bust, the informal noun ‘Mae West’, attested in 1940, denotes an inflatable life jacket, originally as issued to Royal Air Force aviators during World War II.
Read MoreBing Crosby popularised ‘pennies from heaven’ in the 1936 film and song of the same name, but the phrase already existed; and Abraham Burstein, rabbi and author, had used ‘pennies falling from heaven’ in The Ghetto Messenger in 1928.
Read Morefrom ‘Don’t Bogart That Joint’ (1968), song by Fraternity of Man—alludes to the way Humphrey Bogart held a cigarette for long dialogues without smoking it
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In cinematography, ‘to cut to the chase’ is to cut to a chase scene, hence to cut to an interesting or fast-paced part of a film, deleting less exciting scenes.
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UK—1903: ‘the man on the Clapham omnibus’, the average or typical person—1844: ‘the Clapham Sect’, a group of social reformers based at Clapham, London
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1942—In US Air Force’s slang, ‘eager beaver’ denoted an alert and efficient student cadet, with allusion to the animal’s industriousness.
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19th century, northern England—apparently a variant of ‘geck’, of Germanic origin, meaning ‘a fool’, ‘a dupe’, ‘an oaf’
Read More‘to season’, from Old French ‘saisonner’: ‘to do something during the proper season’, hence ‘to make appropriate to the circumstances’, ‘to flavour (a dish)’
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