a phrase based on prejudice: ‘Dutch courage’

12th April 2018.Reading time 7 minutes.

UK, 1797—strength or confidence gained from drinking alcohol—alludes to the drinking habits ascribed to the Dutch—one of the phrases in which ‘Dutch’ is used derogatorily, largely because of the enmity between the English and the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries

original meaning of ‘bulldozer’: a racist bully

19th February 2018.Reading time 16 minutes.

U.S., 1876—‘bulldozers’: members or supporters of the Democratic Party who used threats and acts of violence in order to prevent Afro-Americans from voting for Republican candidates

origin of ‘Wasp’ (‘white Anglo-Saxon Protestant’)

2nd February 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

USA, 1956—acronym from ‘white Anglo-Saxon Protestant’—‘Wasp’, or ‘WASP’: a person who belongs to, or is thought of, as being part of a white, upper middle-class, northern European, Protestant group that dominates economic, political and cultural activity in the USA

‘bag lady’ (whose worldly wealth is in shopping bags)

27th January 2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

Of American-English origin, ‘bag lady’, or ‘shopping-bag lady’, denotes a homeless woman, often elderly, who carries her possessions in shopping bags. The earliest instance that I have found is from The Pocono Record (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania) of 19th June 1971.

British, U.S. and French soldiers’ slang during WWI

2nd January 2018.Reading time 12 minutes.

some characteristic slang creations of the British, U.S. and French soldiers during World War One, as recorded in ‘Trench Talk’, published in Everybody’s Magazine (New York) of January 1918

How ‘Grub Street’ came to refer to hack work.

23rd December 2017.Reading time 8 minutes.

From the 17th century onwards, Grub Street, in Moorgate, London, was inhabited by literary hacks.

origin of ‘to sit below the salt’

20th December 2017.Reading time 9 minutes.

The phrase ‘below the salt’ originated in the social differentiations materialised by the former custom of placing a large saltcellar in the middle of a dining table.

the cultural background to ‘Welsh rabbit’

19th December 2017.Reading time 10 minutes.

‘Welsh’: used disparagingly by the English to denote inferior things; ‘rabbit’: common dishes were humorously called by the names of superior ones

the Cantabrigian origin of ‘wooden spoon’

9th December 2017.Reading time 7 minutes.

originally, at Cambridge University: oversized wooden spoon given to the candidate coming last in the mathematical tripos (BA-degree final honours examination)

meaning and origin of ‘Mrs Grundy’

13th November 2017.Reading time 16 minutes.

from Speed the Plough (1798), by Thomas Morton; Dame Ashfield is constantly fearing to give occasion for the sneers of Mrs Grundy, her unseen neighbour