the 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 MoreTag: dictionaries
origin of the word ‘ado’
from ‘at do’ (meaning ‘to do’)—construction ‘to have’ + pronominal object (e.g. ‘much’) + ‘at do’ led to ‘ado’ reinterpreted as a noun qualified by an adjective
Read MoreHow hornbooks are at the origin of ‘criss-cross’.
phonetic reduction of ‘Christ’s cross’; first element phonetically reduced as in ‘Christmas’; hence ‘criss-cross’ treated as a reduplication of ‘cross’
Read Moreorigin of ‘blanket’ and of phrases containing ‘blanket’
‘blanket’: from Old-Northern-French and Anglo-Norman forms such as ‘blankete’ (white woollen material), composed of ‘blanc’ (white) and the diminutive suffix ‘-ette’
Read MoreWhy ‘ache’ ought to be written ‘ake’.
The spelling ‘ache’ (erroneously derived from Greek ‘ákhos’) instead of ‘ake’ is largely due to Samuel Johnson in A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘Paul Pry’
UK, 1826—from the eponymous character played by John Liston in a comedy by John Poole, which premiered at the Haymarket Theatre, London, on 13th September 1825
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘for the duration’
UK, 1917—originally used of the First World War, from the term of enlistment ‘for three’, or ‘four’, ‘years or for the duration of the war’
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘spick and span’
mid-17th cent. in the sense ‘brand new’—from ‘spick and span new’, extension of ‘span new’, from Old Norse ‘spán-nýr’, ‘as new as a freshly cut wooden chip’
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘shipshape and Bristol fashion’
UK, early 19th cent.—‘shipshape’: arranged properly as things on board ship should be; ‘Bristol fashion’: Bristol was then the major west-coast port of Britain
Read Moreorigin of the word ‘point-blank’
1571—probably from obsolete French ‘de pointe en blanc’, used of firing into empty space for the purpose of seeing how far a piece of artillery would carry
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word histories 