“ad fontes!”
everyone is accountable for their own actions—17th century—may refer to herrings being hung when up for sale (that is to say: every piece of merchandise must sell on its own merits)
Read MoreThe proverbial phrase ‘if it should rain pottage, he would want his dish’, and its many variants, are used of a person who is characterised by bad luck or by an inability to be organised or prepared.
Read Moreto vomit, especially from drunkenness—slang, obsolete—1609 as ‘to jerk the cat’—perhaps alludes to the fact that cats are prone to vomit—cf. also the obsolete French verb ‘renarder’, to vomit, from the noun ‘renard’, denoting a fox
Read Moremeaning: ‘what is appropriate in one case is also appropriate in the other case in question’—earliest occurrence in A Collection of English Proverbs (1670), by John Ray
Read Moreany muddle-headed business—UK, 1813—the stupidity of the people of Coggeshall, a small town in Essex, England, has been proverbial since the mid-17th century
Read Moresaid to console a child choking over his or her food—UK, obsolete—first recorded in A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738), by Jonathan Swift
Read More‘anything for a quiet wife’ (1875)—jocular variant of ‘anything for a quiet life’ (ca. 1620), which expresses concession or resigned agreement, to ensure one is not disturbed
Read Moretwo people, especially lovers, should be left alone together—UK, 1829 as ‘two is company, three none’—but notion already proverbial in 1678
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16th century—exclamation of annoyance at the reappearance of someone or something—from bear-leaders’ regular visits or from story of Elisha and the bears
Read MoreUSA, 1926—only a person with a given personality, characteristic, etc., is able to identify that quality in someone else—particularly used of homosexuals
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word histories 