“ad fontes!”
to abandon or betray someone in order to protect or advance one’s own interests—originally (British politics, 1971) ‘to push someone under a bus’—derived from ‘to walk under a bus’ (British politics, 1966)
Read Morethe exploitation and intimidation of tenants by unscrupulous landlords—UK, 1963—refers to Peter Rachman, a London landlord whose unscrupulous practices became notorious in the early 1960s
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UK and Canada, from 1903 onwards—punningly alludes to ‘Rule Britannia’ (1740), the title of a popular patriotic song
Read MoreBritish origin—popularised by Harold Wilson in 1956, but first recorded in The Observer (London) of 30 October 1955
Read Moreto exact the maximum payment which a person can afford—coined in 1918 by Eric Geddes with reference to the reparations exacted from Germany following WWI
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In ‘hung parliament’, ‘hung’ means ‘in which no political party has an overall majority’ – cf. the US expression ‘hung jury’, where ‘hung’ means ‘unable to decide’.
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