“ad fontes!”
UK, 1888—a person who interrupts at an inconvenient moment—alludes to a visitor from Porlock, in Somerset, England, who, according to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), interrupted him during the composition of ‘Kubla Kahn’
Read More‘parlour patriot’ (1797)—the earliest of the phrases in which ‘parlour’ is a depreciative attributive modifier used of a person claiming to be committed to a cause but not actually involved in the achievement of that cause—‘parlour’ is also used of the claimed commitment to a cause without actual involvement in the achievement of that cause
Read More1979—nickname given, in particular, to singer Olivia Newton-John—alludes to the type of popular music that (like a milkshake) is discarded as soon as it has been consumed
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a means of enforcing conformity—Greek mythology: Procrustes was a robber who made his victims fit a bed by either stretching them longer or cutting them shorter
Read More‘salad days’: days of youthful inexperience—coined by Shakespeare in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’—alludes to the raw (green and cold) vegetables used in a salad
Read MoreIn allusion to The Tale of the Ancyent Marinere (1798), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: the albatross killed by the mariner is hung around his neck as punishment.
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USA, early 19th century—‘small potatoes’: person or thing considered petty, unimportant, insignificant or worthless
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second half of the 18th century—a mere fanciful extension of ‘all my eye’—maintained in a sort of artificial life by persistent conjectures about its origin
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, […]
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