“ad fontes!”
The noun red tape, meaning excessive bureaucracy or adherence to official rules and formalities, refers to the use of woven red tape to tie up bundles of legal documents and official papers; the literal meaning is first recorded in 1658, the figurative meaning in 1736.
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‘Hobby’, diminutive of ‘Hob’, pet form of ‘Robert’, was used to denote a small horse, hence a child’s toy with a horse’s head, hence a favourite occupation—cf. French ‘dada’, child’s word for horse, used to denote a favourite pastime
Read MoreUSA, 1948—espresso coffee mixed with steamed milk—borrowed from Italian ‘cappuccino’, literally ‘Capuchin’, because the colour of this type of coffee resembles that of a Capuchin’s habit—cf. French ‘capucin’ (= ‘Capuchin’), a name for the hare, from the colour of the animal’s fur
Read More‘baloney’ or ‘boloney’: ‘humbug’ and ‘nonsense’—USA, 1922—American-English alteration of ‘bologna (sausage)’, a large smoked sausage made of seasoned mixed meats, from the name of Bologna, a city in northern Italy, where these sausages were first made
Read MoreEtymologically, ‘Shrovetide’ denotes the period during which it was customary to attend confession in preparation for Lent—but this period was also marked by feasting before the Lenten fast.
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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 Morefirst recorded in ‘As You Like It’, by Shakespeare—from the former practice of hanging a branch or bunch of ivy as a vintner’s sign in front of a tavern
Read MoreSince antiquity, European languages have variously named the butterfly, in particular by using sound reduplications expressive of its fluttering.
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UK, 1707—‘to take the (King’s/Queen’s) shilling’: to sign up as a soldier, from the former practice of giving a shilling to a recruit when he enlisted
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1571—probably from obsolete French ‘de pointe en blanc’, used of firing into empty space for the purpose of seeing how far a piece of artillery would carry
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