‘mugshot’: meaning and origin
U.S. slang, 1935—a photograph of a person’s face, especially in police or other official records—from ‘mug’ (a person’s face) and ‘shot’ (a single photographic exposure)
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‘get-out-of-jail-free card’: meaning and origin
something that enables a person to evade punishment, adverse consequences or an undesirable situation—refers to a card in the game of Monopoly which allows a player to leave the jail square
Read More‘dead-cat strategy’: meaning and origin
the strategy consisting in deliberately making a shocking announcement in order to divert attention from a difficulty in which one is embroiled—from the image of throwing a dead cat on the table—first defined in 2013 by Boris Johnson
Read More‘bothsideism’ | ‘bothsidesism’: meanings and early occurrences
USA, 1974—the news media’s practice of giving credence to the other side of an opinion or action in order to seem fair, even though that other side is objectionable
Read More‘inoperative statement’: meaning and origin
USA, 1973—a euphemism for a lie—coined on 17th June 1973, during the Watergate scandal, by Ronald Lewis Ziegler, President Richard Nixon’s Press Secretary
Read Morethe emergence of the political term ‘whataboutism’ in 1978
The Guardian, UK, 23 May 1978—used by one Lionel Bloch to designate—and denounce—the rhetoric employed by the advocates of the communist regimes
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘King Charles’s head’
obsession—from Dickens’s ‘David Copperfield’, in which Mr. Dick is unable to write his memoirs because of the intrusive image of King Charles the First’s head
Read Morea linguistic investigation into ‘trumpery’
MEANINGS – attractive articles of little value or use – practices or beliefs that are superficially or visually appealing but have little real value or worth ORIGIN The noun trumpery, first recorded in the mid-15th century, is from the French noun tromperie, which means deception, trickery. This was one of the original meanings in […]
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word histories 