meanings of the British phrase ‘blues and twos’
UK, 1985—the blue flashing lights and two-tone siren used on an emergency vehicle when responding to an incident; by extension, the emergency services
Read MoreTag: Ireland
meanings and origin of ‘bell, book, and candle’
14th century—a form of excommunication from the Catholic Church—by extension any process of condemnation carried out thoroughly
Read Moremeanings and early instances of ‘Freudian slip’
USA, 1927—a slip of the tongue by which the speaker reveals an unconscious thought—named after Austrian neurologist and psychotherapist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Read Moremeaning and history of the term ‘man flu’
1999—a cold as experienced by a man who is regarded as exaggerating the severity of the symptoms—popularised by British magazine Nuts in 2006
Read Moreorigin of ‘no-go area’: the Troubles in Northern Ireland
1969 as ‘No Go Land’, proper name of a Catholic ghetto in Belfast—1970 as ‘no-go area’, any Northern-Irish area to which entry was restricted or forbidden
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘somebody is walking over my grave’
early 18th century, in Jonathan Swift’s ‘Polite Conversation’—from the folk belief that one shudders when somebody walks over the site of one’s future grave
Read Moremeanings and origin of the British-English phrase ‘to go west’
to die; to be lost or destroyed; to meet with disaster—1914, Army slang—probably from the notion of the setting sun symbolising disappearance or finality
Read Moremeaning and origin of Scouse ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’
1968—Liverpool Roman Catholic cathedral—from the large number of Roman Catholics of Irish descent in Liverpool and the resemblance of the cathedral to a tepee
Read More‘cheese-eating/tea-drinking surrender monkeys’
‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’: the French people (USA, 1995) from The Simpsons—‘tea-drinking surrender monkeys’: the British people (Ireland, 2004)
Read Morethe long history of the phrase ‘blood, sweat, and tears’
current use seems to allude to a speech by Winston Churchill in May 1940—but the metaphor goes back to the early 17th century
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word histories 