“ad fontes!”
In the USA, cocked hat denoted a game similar to ninepins, except that only three pins were set up, in triangular position. It took its name from cocked hat in the sense of a hat with the brim permanently turned up (i.e. cocked), especially the three-cornered hat of this shape worn at the end […]
Read More
Sir John Herschel The announcement last Friday of the death, at the age of 81, of the Rev. Sir John Herschel, Bart., which occurred at Observatory House, Slough, revives a host of memories of 18th century Bath. Sir John Herschel was the great-grandson of Sir William Herschel, the famous astronomer, who discovered from his scientific […]
Read More
photograph: Google+ Communities The noun philtrum denotes the vertical groove between the base of the nose and the border of the upper lip. The literal and obsolete signification of this word, which appeared in the early 17th century, is love potion, from classical Latin philtrum, of same meaning. In post-classical Latin, philtrum came to also denote the dimple in the upper lip. It […]
Read More
the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-health) Act, 1913 – image: http://www.parliament.uk The Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-health) Act, 1913 was rushed through Parliament by Herbert Henry Asquith’s Liberal government in order to deal with the problem of hunger-striking suffragettes, who were force-fed, which led to a public outcry. The Act allowed for the […]
Read More
The phrase the cold shoulder denotes a show of intentional and marked coldness or of studied indifference. Because the two earliest instances of this phrase recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition – 1989) are from the Scottish novelist and poet Walter Scott (1771-1832) and do not refer to food, Robert Allen writes in Dictionary of English Phrases (2008) that […]
Read More
In the Etymologies (Etymologiarum sive Originum libri viginti), compiled between around 615 and the early 630s in the form of an encyclopaedia arranged by subject matter, St Isidore (circa 560–636), bishop of Seville and Doctor of the Church, wrote the following about the names of the fingers (the original Latin words are […]
Read MoreThe phrase the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing and variants express unawareness, or (deliberate) ignorance, of one’s own activities. This phrase is now mainly used to convey that there is a state of confusion within a group or organisation. But, in early use, it was an injunction to be discreet in […]
Read MoreMEANING The phrase (if you’ll) excuse (or pardon) my French is used as an apology for swearing. ORIGIN The current sense seems to derive from an actual apology for speaking French. (It is therefore unnecessary to invoke the centuries-old adversarial relationship between the English and the French.) The form pardon my French is first attested in Randolph, a Novel (1823), by the American […]
Read MoreThe proverb you can’t have your cake and eat it (too) means you can’t enjoy both of two desirable but mutually exclusive alternatives. It made more sense in its early formulations, when the positions of have and eat had not been reversed. It is first recorded in A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of […]
Read MoreThe word kidney, which is attested around 1325, is of unclear origin. The second element of the Middle-English form kidenei, plural kideneiren, is apparently ey, plural eyren, meaning egg (cf. German Eier, literally eggs, used to mean testicles). The first element remains uncertain; it is perhaps identical with cud. The Anglo-Saxon name for kidney was […]
Read More
word histories 