“ad fontes!”
The term thinking cap denotes an imaginary cap humorously said to be worn in order to facilitate thinking. The earliest instance that I have found is from the Western Carolinian (Salisbury, North Carolina) of 16th October 1821: We advise the editor to put his thinking-cap on, before he hazards another such assertion. The term also […]
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three red tops: the Daily Mirror, The Sun, the Daily Star In the following, the noun tabloid has the sense of a newspaper having pages half the size of those of the average broadsheet, aimed at the mass market, with relatively little serious political or economic content but considerable amounts of sport, celebrity gossip, scandal and trivial […]
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Huntsmen still use stirrup cup to designate an alcoholic drink offered to riders either as they are about to depart or when they return. Mr. Barry Puilan, Master of the East Antrim Hounds, hands a stirrup cup to huntsman Jack Taylor during the meet at Trench Hill, Ballyeaston, yesterday. from The Northern Whig and Belfast […]
Read MoreThe expression to amputate one’s mahogany is a jocular elaboration on to cut one’s stick, which means to take one’s departure. The following definition is from A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words (2nd edition – 1860), by the English publisher and author John Camden Hotten (1832-1873): Cut one’s stick, to be off […]
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‘blarney’: originally an allusion to the lies told by those who, having not reached the Blarney stone (in a castle near Cork), explained how they did reach it
Read MoreThe adjective teetotal in the sense of choosing, or characterised by, total abstinence from all alcohol seems to have first been used about September 1833 by Richard Turner, a worker from Preston, Lancashire, in a speech advocating total abstinence from intoxicating liquors, in preference to abstinence from ardent spirits only (as practised by some early […]
Read More‘To fight like Kilkenny cats’ means ‘to engage in a mutually destructive struggle’.—from the tale of two cats fighting until only their tails remained (early 19th century), which was originally meant to be nothing but amusing nonsense.
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A New Song, sung by Mr. Champness in Harlequin’s Invasion from The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure – March 1760 The phrase heart of oak denotes a person with a strong, courageous nature, especially a brave and loyal soldier or sailor, and a courageous or valorous spirit. Its literal meaning is the heartwood of the oak. The heartwood […]
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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 […]
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The proverb every cloud has a silver lining means that every difficult or sad situation has a comforting or more hopeful aspect, even though this may not be immediately apparent—cf. also the pessimistic reversal every silver lining has a cloud. In 1840, the Irish novelist known as Mrs S. C. Hall (Mrs Samuel Carter Hall, […]
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word histories 