‘Aqua Libra’: meaning and origin
proprietary name for a soft drink supposed to maintain or restore the body’s alkaline balance—Ireland & UK, 1986—from the Latin nouns ‘aqua’ (water) and ‘libra’ (a balance)
Read MoreTag: human body
‘to paint someone into a corner’: meanings and origin
USA, 1929: to force someone into a situation from which it is not easy to escape—the image is of someone who is painting a floor and ends up in a corner of the room with wet paint all around them (USA, 1913)
Read More‘to be packed like sardines’: meaning and origin
UK, 1841—to be crowded or confined tightly together, as sardines in a tin
Read More‘to have a béguin for’: meaning and origin
‘to have a fancy for’—UK, 1900—loan translation from French ‘avoir un béguin pour’—French ‘béguin’ is from ‘s’embéguiner de’, meaning ‘to put on a bonnet’, hence ‘to put a sudden capricious idea into one’s head’
Read More‘joined-up writing’: meaning and origin
UK, 1933—cursive handwriting as learnt in elementary school as a stage beyond printing individual letters separately—from the adjective ‘joined-up’, meaning ‘conjoined’
Read More‘corridor care’ and ‘corridor nursing’: meaning and origin
Ireland, 1989—treatment given to hospital patients in overcrowded and inappropriate spaces such as corridors and waiting rooms—had been used earlier (UK, 1980) of treatment given to schoolchildren
Read Morenotes on ‘Kleenex’ in similes
USA, 1945—‘Kleenex’ (a proprietary name for a soft, disposable paper tissue) is used in similes expressing, in particular, disposability, ephemerality, fragility, weakness
Read More‘bundle of nerves’: meaning and origin
someone who is extremely nervous, worried or tense—UK, 1832—originally (18th century) in physiology: a set of nervous fibres bound closely together
Read More‘a frog in one’s throat’: meaning and origin
USA, 1808—an irritation in the throat suggestive of an obstruction, producing a temporary croakiness or hoarseness—occasionally associated with the French, probably because ‘frog’ is derogatorily applied to them
Read More‘to do a vanishing act’: meanings and origin
late 19th century—to disappear suddenly without leaving information about one’s whereabouts—from conjuring, in which ‘vanishing act’ designates an act of making a person or thing disappear as if by magic, and an act of disappearing in this manner
Read More
word histories 