the story of ‘John Lennon spectacles’
USA, 1967—metal-framed spectacles with small, round lenses—worn and popularised by the English singer, musician and songwriter John Lennon (1940-80)
Read MoreTag: eponyms
origin of ‘bread-and-butter letter’ and of its synonym ‘Collins’
letter of thanks for hospitality: ‘bread-and-butter letter’ (USA, late 19th century) – ‘Collins’ (UK, early 20th century, from the name of William Collins in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice)
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘Uncle Tom Cobley and all’
meaning: everybody imaginable—UK, 1898 in extended form, 1899 in current form—alludes to the names listed in the Devon ballad ‘Widdecombe Fair’
Read Moreorigin of ‘Stepford’ (robotically conformist or obedient)
robotically conformist or obedient—from The Stepford Wives (1972 novel by Ira Levin and 1975 film adaptation by Bryan Forbes), in which Stepford is the name of a superficially idyllic suburb where the men have replaced their wives with obedient robots
Read More‘maelstrom’ (a whirlpool off the west coast of Norway)
late 16th century—from early modern Dutch ‘maelstrom’ (now ‘maalstroom’)—originally a proper name designating a powerful whirlpool in the Arctic Ocean, off the west coast of Norway, which was formerly supposed to suck in and destroy all vessels within a wide radius
Read Morethe shadowy history of the word ‘silhouette’
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
Read Morethe history of ‘burnsides’, ‘sideburns’ and ‘sideboards’
After Ambrose Burnside, Union general in the U.S. Civil War, ‘burnsides’ (1866) denotes thick side whiskers worn with a moustache and clean-shaven chin; on the pattern of ‘side whiskers’, it was altered to ‘sideburns’ (1875), itself altered to ‘sideboards’ (1882).
Read Moreorigin of ‘bobby’ and ‘peeler’ (‘police officer’)
UK, 1844—‘bobby’: a policeman—from ‘Bobby’, pet form of ‘Robert’, in allusion to Robert Peel, who, as Home Secretary, established the Metropolitan Police in 1829—cf. ‘peeler’ (1816), originally a member of the Peace Preservation Force in Ireland established in 1814 by Robert Peel
Read MoreHow a life jacket came to be named after Mae West.
From the name of the American film actress Mae West, renowned for her generous bust, the informal noun ‘Mae West’, attested in 1940, denotes an inflatable life jacket, originally as issued to Royal Air Force aviators during World War II.
Read More“the very pineapple of politeness” and other malapropisms
from the name of Mrs Malaprop, a character who confuses long words in The Rivals (1775), a comedy by the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan—character named after ‘malapropos’, from the French locution ‘mal à propos’, literally ‘ill to purpose’
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