meaning and early occurrences of ‘kiss my arse’
very rude way of expressing profound contempt—first recorded in The Killing of Abel, one of the 15th-century mystery plays known as the Wakefield, or Towneley, plays
Read MoreTag: Daniel Defoe
the cultural background to the plebeian ‘trunkmaker’
UK, 18th and 19th centuries—‘trunkmaker’ was often employed with allusion to the use of the sheets of unsaleable books for trunk-linings
Read Morethe military origin of the adjective ‘last-ditch’
UK, 1845: made as a last desperate attempt—from the 18th-century phrase ‘to die in the last ditch’, ‘ditch’ denoting a defensive entrenchment
Read Morehistory of the terms ‘man Friday’ and ‘girl Friday’
USA—‘man Friday’ 1802: alludes to the name of Robinson Crusoe’s servant in Daniel Defoe’s novel—‘girl Friday’ 1929: coined on the pattern of ‘man Friday’
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘to bow (down) in the house of Rimmon’
1718—to sacrifice one’s principles for the sake of conformity—from 2 Kings, where Naaman seeks permission from Elisha to worship the Aramaean god Rimmon
Read Morethe American-English origin of the phrase ‘like greased lightning’
denotes extreme quickness of movement—the use of ‘greased’ likens lightning to a machine that a mechanic has lubricated in order to minimise the friction and make it run easily
Read Morethe origin of the word ‘bully’?
noun (late 17th cent.), perhaps from ‘bull’ (= bovine)—possibly distinct from ‘bully’ (mid-16th cent.), ‘darling’, probably from Middle Dutch ‘boele’, ‘lover’
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘to come the old soldier over someone’
British, 1810—to use one’s greater age or experience to deceive someone or to shirk a duty—from ‘old soldier’ meaning ‘a person much experienced in something’
Read Moreorigin of ‘helpmate’: ‘help meet’, i.e. help suitable
The word helpmate means a helpful companion or partner, especially one’s husband or wife. This noun was originally helpmeet, about which the New English Dictionary (i.e. the Oxford English Dictionary – 1901 edition) explained the following: A compound absurdly formed by taking the two words help meet in Genesis, ii, 18, 20 (‘an help meet […]
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