literal meaning (1551): halfway across the sea—figurative meanings (1692): halfway towards a goal or destination, half through with a matter, halfway between one state and another—also (1699): half drunk
Read More
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 More
current use seems to allude to a speech by Winston Churchill in May 1940—but the metaphor goes back to the early 17th century
Read More
17th century—allusion to the Aeneid, by Virgil, in which the Sybil throws a drugged cake to Cerberus, the monstrous dog guarding the entrance to Hades
Read Morefrom the name of Mrs Malaprop, a character who confuses long words in The Rivals (1775), a comedy by the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan—character named after ‘malapropos’, from the French locution ‘mal à propos’, literally ‘ill to purpose’
Read More
‘flash in the pan’: originally referred to the priming gunpowder flaring up in the flash-pan without then exploding the main charge in the barrel of a firearm
Read More
‘blues’—from ‘blue’ (‘sorrowful’) and elliptically from ‘blue devils’ (‘depression’)—originally a metaphorical use of ‘blue’ (‘bruised’), as in ‘black and blue’
Read More
As qualifiers of nouns denoting bodily organs, ‘itchy’ and ‘itching’ denote a restless desire—‘itchy feet’, US, 1900s—‘itching palm’, Shakespeare, circa 1599
Read MoreIn his comédie-ballet Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (literally The Bourgeois Gentleman – 1670), the French playwright and actor Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin – 1622-73) invented the word Mamamouchi, an imaginary Turkish title that Monsieur Jourdain is gulled into thinking the son of the Grand Turk confers upon him. (Jourdain is a bourgeois whose aim is to be […]
Read More