“ad fontes!”
three meanings: 1/ in outdoor pageants: a man dressed in greenery, representing a wild man of the woods—2/ in inn names and signs: a forester—3/ in medieval English churches: a representation of a man’s face composed of, surrounded by, or sprouting foliage or branches
Read MoreUSA, Boston Morning Post, 26 May 1834—‘Dutch uncle’: a person giving firm but benevolent advice—unknown origin—perhaps an allusion to Calvinistic sternness
Read MoreUSA, 1930—‘to crawl, or to come, out of the woodwork’: of an unpleasant or unwelcome person or thing, to come out of hiding, to emerge from obscurity; the image is of vermin or insects crawling out of crevices or other hidden places in a building
Read MoreUSA—‘to go Dutch’ (1907): to have every participant pay their own expenses, or share expenses equally—via ‘to go Dutch treat’ (1887), from ‘Dutch treat’ (1873): a meal, etc., at which each participant pays their share of the expenses—from a German practice
Read MoreUK, 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
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USA, 1871—The phrase ‘here’s looking at you’ is used as a toast in drinking. It is now widely associated with the American film Casablanca (1942), in which Humphrey Bogart addresses Ingrid Bergman with the words “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
Read MoreOf American-English origin, the colloquial phrase ‘hot under (or ‘in’) the collar’ means ‘extremely exasperated or angry’. The earliest instance that I have found is from The Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) of 8th July 1869.
Read Morefrom the 16th-century phrase ‘to set cock a hoop’, ‘to set (the) cock on (the) hoop’, apparently meaning ‘to put the cock (= spigot) on a barrel hoop and let the liquor flow prior to a drinking bout’—‘cock’ later equated with the fowl and ‘hoop’ with French ‘huppe’ (tufted crest)
Read MoreBritish English: a drinking tour of a number of pubs or bars—but first appeared in 1909 with specific reference to an organised form of propaganda consisting in sending a person from pub to pub in order to promote the Conservative cause
Read Moredenotes a situation in which the alternatives are considered equivalent—first recorded, as ‘six of the one and half a dozen of the other’, on 24th April 1790 in the journal of Ralph Clark, a British naval officer—synonym: ‘(as) broad as long’
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