How a murder popularised ‘sugar daddy’ in 1923.

19th April 2018.Reading time 7 minutes.

from ‘heavy-sugar daddy’ (USA, 1923), popularised by the murder of Anna Keenan (a.k.a. Dorothy King), who was a ‘heavy-sugar baby’, i.e., a woman ‘coated’ with ‘sugar’ (i.e., money) by a ‘daddy’ (i.e., an older man)

meaning and origin of ‘Dutch auction’

15th April 2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

UK, 1788—denotes an auction in which the price is lowered by stages until a buyer is found—said to have been invented by the Dutch specifically as the best solution to selling tulip bulbs

origin of ‘Dutch treat’ and ‘to go Dutch’

13th April 2018.Reading time 12 minutes.

USA—‘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

meaning and earliest instances of ‘bums on seats’

11th April 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

UK, 1967—chiefly British—‘bums on seats’: the members of an audience, at a theatre, cinema or other place of entertainment, especially when viewed as a source of income

the shadowy history of the word ‘silhouette’

30th March 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

1763 in French, 1798 in English—from the name of Étienne de Silhouette (1709-67), Controller-General of Finances in 1759—perhaps because he might have invented the portrait in profile obtained by tracing the outline of a head or figure by means of its shadow

origin of the Australian phrase ‘Sydney or the bush’

28th February 2018.Reading time 3 minutes.

‘Sydney or the bush’: all or nothing (1902)—based on the metaphorical opposition between an easy life in the city and a hard life working in the outback, this phrase was apparently originally used by people risking all on the toss of a coin.

origin of ‘pub crawl’: political propaganda

27th February 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

British 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

‘to plough one’s own furrow’ – ‘creuser son sillon’

25th February 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

‘to plough a lonely furrow’, or ‘one’s own furrow’ (UK, 1901): to carry on without help, support or companionship—French ‘creuser son sillon’ (‘to dig one’s own furrow’, first used by Voltaire): to carry out with courage and perseverance the task undertaken

Anglo-Indian origin of ‘loot’ (goods stolen in war)

16th February 2018.Reading time 7 minutes.

UK, early 19th century—private property taken from an enemy in war—originally an Anglo-Indian noun, from Hindi ‘lūṭ’, from Sanskrit ‘luṇṭh-‘, ‘to rob’—came to be also used as slang for ‘money’ and to also denote ‘wedding presents’

a U.S. political term of the 1920s: ‘backroom boys’

31st January 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

The phrase ‘boys in the backroom’, or ‘backroom boys’, appeared in the 1920s as a U.S. political term denoting persons exercising a surreptitious influence. The Oxford English Dictionary is therefore mistaken in saying that it originally denoted, in 1941, persons engaged in research.