“ad fontes!”
18th century—origin unknown—perhaps originally imitative and comparable to, or derived from, ‘tantara’, denoting the sound of a trumpet, hence an uproar—or from obsolete French ‘trantran’, synonym of ‘tantara’
Read More‘queen’s’, or ‘king’s’, ‘cushion’: a seat made by two people who cross arms and hold each other’s hands to form a support for another person—Scotland and northern England, 19th century
Read More‘Welsh’: used disparagingly by the English to denote inferior things; ‘rabbit’: common dishes were humorously called by the names of superior ones
Read MoreFirst recorded in 1590, the term ‘lip service’ originally referred to prayer as a mere formal practice, as a sort of mechanical physical exercise.
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Several English and French words and phrases are ultimately derived the Latin noun ‘pullus’, meaning ‘young animal’, in particular ‘young fowl’.
Read Moreorigin: a rower who does not pull the oar with a force appropriate to his or her weight fails to make the contribution expected by the rest of the crew
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in full ‘Quasimodo Sunday’: the Sunday after Easter—from the opening words of the Latin introit for that day, ‘quasimodo geniti infantes’, ‘as newborn babies’
Read MoreUK, 1891—‘to take the mickey (or ‘the mike’) out of’: ‘to tease or ridicule’—probably after ‘Mickey (or ‘Mike’) Bliss’, rhyming slang for ‘piss’
Read More‘Butterfly kiss’ appeared in the second half of the 19th century to designate the act of lightly sweeping a person’s cheek with one’s eyelashes.
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USA—‘not part of a particular exclusive group’, 1955—‘out of one’s mind’, 1958—‘smashed out of one’s skull’ (= ‘drunk’, 1963)—‘bored out of one’s skull’, 1967
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word histories 