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Tag: folk etymology

history of ‘money tree’ and ‘to shake the money tree’

23rd Dec 2019.Reading time 12 minutes.

‘money tree’ (UK, 1749): a source of easily obtained or unlimited money—‘to shake the money tree’ (UK, 1851)—related to proverb ‘money does not grow on trees’

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history of the phrase ‘close your eyes and think of England’

27th Nov 2019.Reading time 15 minutes.

France, 1954: purported advice given to English brides-to-be on how to cope with unwanted but inevitable sexual intercourse—but this occurs in a humoristic book

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meaning and origin of ‘back to square one’

23rd Nov 2019.Reading time 10 minutes.

UK, 1952—back to where one started, with no progress having been made—refers to the game of snakes and ladders

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meaning and origin of the phrase ‘to come to Hecuba’

20th Nov 2019.Reading time 9 minutes.

to come to the point—in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, the title role urges an actor to go straight to Hecuba’s reaction to her husband’s killing

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‘Charlie’s dead’ (your petticoat is showing)

18th Nov 2019.Reading time 12 minutes.

UK, 1950s—used among schoolgirls when one’s petticoat was showing (origin unknown)—synonyms: ‘it’s snowing again’, ‘you’re showing next week’s washing’

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meaning and origin of ‘does your mother know you’re out?’

23rd Sep 2019.Reading time 21 minutes.

Irish English, 1836—mocking or condescending question addressed to a person whose behaviour is regarded as puerile or inappropriate

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history of the phrase ‘a sheep in sheep’s clothing’

4th Aug 2019.Reading time 15 minutes.

USA, 1884—a person whose lack of courage is as real as it appears to be—jocular variant of ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’—often misattributed to Winston Churchill

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Why ‘island’ and ‘aisle’ ought to be spelt ‘iland’ and ‘aile’.

2nd Aug 2019.Reading time 9 minutes.

The letter ‘s’ in both the nouns currently spelt ‘island’ and ‘aisle’ is due to folk-etymological association of those words with the unrelated noun ‘isle’.

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meanings and origin of the British-English phrase ‘to go west’

26th May 2019.Reading time 18 minutes.

to die; to be lost or destroyed; to meet with disaster—1914, Army slang—probably from the notion of the setting sun symbolising disappearance or finality

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‘over a barrel’: meaning, early instances and probable origin

5th May 2019.Reading time 11 minutes.

USA, 1890—at someone’s mercy—probably alludes to the practice of binding a person over an overturned barrel in order to beat them

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