“ad fontes!”
In French, the concept of dependency underlies the semantic distribution of some basic lexical items: the female is strictly defined in her relation of dependency to the male, as a daughter or as a spouse.
Read Morealso ‘to drop one’s h’s’—not to pronounce the letter h at the beginning of words in which it is pronounced in standard English—1855—1847 as ‘not to sound one’s h’s’
Read More1750—the non-academic inhabitants (‘town’) of a university city and the resident members of the university (‘gown’, denoting the distinctive costume of a member of a university)
Read Morewomen collectively, regarded as inferior to men—first occurred in ‘Don Juan’ (1821), by George Gordon Byron
Read Morethe political, military or economical threat regarded as being posed by certain peoples of South-East and East Asia, especially the Chinese and the Japanese—UK, 1895—loan translation from French ‘péril jaune’
Read MoreUSA, 2019, derogatory—people (regarded as elitist and pretentious) who are alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice—a blend of the adjective ‘woke’ and of the noun ‘literati’
Read Moreused as an interjection to assert truthfulness, honour or sincerity—USA, 1851, as ‘honest Indian’—perhaps alludes to the fact that, in their past interactions with Europeans, Native Americans had to give assurance of their good faith
Read Moreto have qualities other than mere attractiveness, especially intelligence—UK, 1955—paradoxically, in early use, often employed in a sexist manner
Read Morea woman who had no qualities other than attractiveness, with connotations of low intelligence, or of flightiness, or of low social status and poverty—second half of the 19th century, chiefly in stories by women writers
Read MoreAustralia, 1981—very dry—alludes to the alleged poor personal hygiene of the British—here, the Australian noun ‘Pommy’ designates a British person
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word histories 