“ad fontes!”
MEANING a woman who dresses or behaves in a way that is considered tasteless and sexually provocative ORIGIN John Camden Hotten defined this word in Dictionary of modern slang, cant, and vulgar words (1864 edition): a term of approval applied by the London lower orders to a young woman for whom some […]
Read MoreThe phrase ‘a pretty kettle of fish’ originally referred to a net full of fish, which, when drawn up with its contents, is suggestive of confusion, flurry and disorder—‘kettle’ being a form of ‘kiddle’, a noun denoting a dam or other barrier in a river, with an opening fitted with nets to catch fish.
Read More
Old York: the Shambles – illustration by Charles G. Harper for his book The Great North Road: The Old Mail Road to Scotland: York to Edinburgh (1901) (The pavements are raised either side of the cobbled street to form a channel where the butchers would wash away the offal and blood.) MEANING […]
Read MoreMEANING The Northern Daily Mail and South Durham Herald (Hartlepool, County Durham, England) of 14th July 1894 published an article titled Naval Slang. How Jack Re-christens Things, which contains the following: The preserved meat served out to him is known as “Fanny Adams” or “Harriet Lane.” But the term Harriet Lane was also […]
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘strawberry preacher’
Read MoreIn ‘Indian summer’, ‘Indian’ merely denotes something other than that denoted in Europe by the simple noun ‘summer’—as in ‘Indian corn’ (‘maize’).
Read More
word histories 