meaning of ‘to wait for a dead man’s shoes’
mid-16th century—meaning: to wait for the death of a person with the expectancy of succeeding to his possessions or office; implies a futile wait
Read MoreTag: human body
‘to know one’s onions’ – ‘c’est mes oignons’
US, 1898: ‘to know one’s onion’ (in the singular), to be very knowledgeable about something — French, 1897: ‘c’est mes oignons’, it’s my own business
Read Morethe Romany origin of the British ‘chav’
UK, 1990s—either from Romany ‘čhavo’, an unmarried Romani male, a male Romani child, or from English or Anglo-Romany ‘chavvy’, a baby, a child
Read Moreorigin of ‘to take time by the forelock’
Opportunity was represented as woman completely bald except for a forelock: she can only be seized as she runs towards someone, not be caught thereafter.
Read Morethe origin of ‘spud’ (potato)
The noun ‘spud’, originally the name for the digging implement used to dig up potatoes, was applied to the latter in the 19th century.
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘to warm the cockles of one’s heart’
late 17th century—probably based on the resemblance between the shape of the heart and that of a cockleshell – or of the body the shell protects
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘an albatross around one’s neck’
In allusion to The Tale of the Ancyent Marinere (1798), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: the albatross killed by the mariner is hung around his neck as punishment.
Read Moreorigin of ‘to be born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth’
alludes to the gift of a spoon to a child at its christening—1762 as ‘one man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and another with a wooden ladle’
Read MoreEating in the Romance languages
In Latin, short words having complicated irregularities in their forms gave way to simpler words with regular patterns and longer phonetic individualities.
Read Moreorigin of ‘the land of Nod’
‘the land of Nod’: a state of sleep—punning allusion to the name of the region to which Cain went after he had killed his brother Abel (Genesis, 4:16)
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