“ad fontes!”
New York City, 1896—a lawyer who seeks accident victims as clients and encourages them to sue for damages—refers to lawyers, or their agents, following ambulances taking accident victims to hospital, in order to gain access to those victims
Read Moreto be utterly defeated—alludes to the defeat of Napoléon I at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815—UK, 1832, as ‘to meet with a Waterloo’—USA, 1838, as ‘to meet one’s Waterloo’
Read Moreto court danger by behaving in an obviously risky manner that cannot be sustained for long—1841 in an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Read Morechiefly UK politics—a culture characterised by influential networks of close friends—from ‘chum’ (a close friend) and ‘‑ocracy’ (forming nouns designating forms of government or groups who exercise political or social power)
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(literally) to formally agree to something by signing an official document—(figuratively) to make a firm commitment about something—USA, 1900s, in reference to life-insurance contracts
Read Morehighly convincing circumstantial evidence—USA, 1862—ascribed to Henry David Thoreau—refers to the practice of surreptitiously diluting milk with stream-water
Read MoreUSA, 1930—a rhetorical question calling attention to a non-sequitur or irrelevant statement or suggestion made by another person—one of the phrases built on the pattern ‘what has that got to do with the price of ——?’
Read MoreUK, 1813, as ‘to blot the landscape’, meaning, of an ugly feature, to spoil the appearance of a place—also used figuratively of anything unsightly or unappealing that spoils an otherwise pleasant scene
Read MoreAustralia, 1976—used by Aborigines to depreciatively designate unemployment or welfare benefits—‘sit-down’ means: performed or obtained while sitting down, with the implication that no or few efforts are required
Read MoreAustralia, 1932: to attract unwelcome attention or criticism—originally, WWI slang: to draw artillery fire from the enemy, in reference to crab shells, used with punning allusion to artillery shells
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word histories 