Tag: cinema

meaning and origin of the phrase ‘excuse my French’

.Reading time 5 minutes.

MEANING   The phrase (if you’ll) excuse (or pardon) my French is used as an apology for swearing.   ORIGIN   The current sense seems to derive from an actual apology for speaking French. (It is therefore unnecessary to invoke the centuries-old adversarial relationship between the English and the French.) The form pardon my French is first attested in Randolph, a Novel (1823), by the American […]

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origin of ‘gigolo’

.Reading time 16 minutes.

MEANING   a young man paid or financially supported by a woman, typically an older woman, to be her escort or lover   ORIGIN   In English, gigolo originally denoted a professional male dancing-partner. One of its first users was the American novelist, short story writer and playwright Edna Ferber (1885-1968) in Gigolo, which was published in […]

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