the biblical name ‘Moab’ in public-school slang
In Psalms, the subjugated nation of Moab is compared to a vessel used for washing the feet—hence in school slang ‘Moab’: humorous for ‘washroom’, ‘tub’, ‘sink’
Read MoreTag: dictionaries
meaning and origin of the word ‘pogue’
Via Irish ‘póg’, Irish-English ‘pogue’ (a kiss) is from ecclesiastical Latin ‘pacem’ (kiss of peace)—the name of the band is from ‘pogue mahone’ (kiss my arse).
Read Moremeaning and origin of the word ‘incunabula’
Latin ‘incunabula’: ‘swaddling clothes’, hence ‘beginning’—denotes the early printed books (from the 1450s to the end of the 15th century)
Read MoreEating in the Romance languages
In Latin, short words having complicated irregularities in their forms gave way to simpler words with regular patterns and longer phonetic individualities.
Read Morea Northern-English word: ‘mardy’
‘mardy’: ‘sulky’, ‘moody’—from ‘mard’, dialectal alteration of ‘marred’, meaning, of a child, ‘spoilt’, and the suffix ‘-y’, meaning ‘having the qualities of’
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘everything but the kitchen sink’
The phrase ‘everything but the kitchen sink’, or ‘the kitchen stove’, and variants mean ‘practically everything imaginable’—origin: USA, early 20th century
Read Morea curious case of misunderstanding in the Oxford English Dictionary
‘Wash the milk off your liver’: refers to the digestibility of milk, but misunderstood by the Oxford English Dictionary as referring to cowardice
Read Morethe colonial origin of the word ‘kidnap’
original meaning of ‘kidnap’, late 17th century—to steal or carry off children or others in order to provide servants or labourers for the American plantations
Read Morethe various meanings of ‘to fly a kite’
to get credit or money by using a fraudulent financial instrument; to send an illicit or secret note; to find out in what direction affairs are tending
Read Moreorigin of the word ‘geek’
19th century, northern England—apparently a variant of ‘geck’, of Germanic origin, meaning ‘a fool’, ‘a dupe’, ‘an oaf’
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word histories 