meaning and origin of ‘something nasty in the woodshed’
UK, 1930s—from Cold Comfort Farm (1932), by Stella Gibbons, in which a character exploits a traumatic childhood experience to exert control over her family
Read MoreTag: German
meaning and origin of ‘Mother Carey’s chicken’
probably from Latin ‘Mater Cara’ or Italian ‘Madre Cara’, ‘dear mother’, i.e. the Virgin Mary, believed by sailors to send the petrel as a harbinger of storms
Read Moreto set the Thames on fire
from the image of an impossible task, ‘to set the Thames on fire’: to work wonders — typically used negatively in the ironic sense never to distinguish oneself
Read Moreto have a bee in one’s bonnet
This phrase is a transformation of ‘one’s head full of bees’, meaning scatter-brained, unable to think straight, as if bees are buzzing around in one’s head.
Read Moreslave – Slav – robot – ciao
The word ‘slave’ is from Medieval Latin ‘Sclavus’, ‘Slav’, because the Slavic peoples were frequently reduced to a servile condition by the Germanic conquest.
Read MoreKindertransport
Kindertransport (from German ‘Kinder’, children): operation from 1938 to 1940 to evacuate (mostly Jewish) children from Nazi-controlled areas of Europe to the UK
Read More‘Scouse’ (Liverpudlian)
The original sense of ‘Scouse’, denoting a person from Liverpool, is ‘a stew’. The word ‘scouse’ is in turn a shortening of ‘lobscouse’, of obscure origin.
Read Moreordeal
L’épreuve du feu (l’inquisition) by Devritz (painter) and Leroy (engraver) – date unknown source: BIU Santé The original meaning of the noun ordeal, from Old English ordāl, ordēl, is: an ancient test of guilt or innocence by subjection of the accused to severe pain, survival of which was taken as divine proof […]
Read Moreflea market
Marché aux puces à Montreuil – Agence Meurisse – 1928 source: gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque Nationale de France The term flea market is a calque of French marché aux puces. Both names denote a street market selling second-hand goods. In In Europe (Pusey Press, New York, 1922), the American author George Samuel Dougherty […]
Read Moreto play gooseberry
PLAYING “GOOSEBERRY.” Incredible though the statement may sound in these days, there still exist shy and diffident lovers of both sexes to whom, before they are quite, quite sure of themselves or each other, the presence of a “gooseberry” acts at once as support and fillip. Naturally the sensible girl will select as gooseberry a […]
Read More