a curious case of misunderstanding in the Oxford English Dictionary
‘Wash the milk off your liver’: refers to the digestibility of milk, but misunderstood by the Oxford English Dictionary as referring to cowardice
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to have a bee in one’s bonnet
This phrase is a transformation of ‘one’s head full of bees’, meaning scatter-brained, unable to think straight, as if bees are buzzing around in one’s head.
Read MoreHogs Norton
Light Programme 12.0, Family Favourites; 1.30, Mr. Gillie Potter, Sage of Hogsnorton from B.B.C. Sunday – The Derry Journal (Ireland) – 28th March 1952 The name Hogs Norton, also Hog’s Norton and Hogsnorton, denotes a fictional town renowned for its uncultured and boorish inhabitants. It has often been used in depreciative phrases suggesting that […]
Read Moreas cold as charity
The phrase (as) cold as charity refers to the perfunctory, unfeeling manner in which acts of charity are often done, and public charities administered. It originally alluded to the gospel of Matthew, 24:12, which is as follows in the Early Version (around 1382) of the Wycliffe Bible (wexe is the verb wax and […]
Read Morelike a cat on hot bricks/on a hot tin roof
poster for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), an American film directed by Richard Brooks, based on the play by Tennessee Williams The phrase like a cat on hot bricks and its American-English equivalent like a cat on a hot tin roof mean very agitated or anxious. An earlier form of the […]
Read Moreone swallow does not make a summer
photograph: Wikimedia Commons/Thermos MEANING a single fortunate event doesn’t mean that what follows will also be good ORIGIN The annual migration of swallows to Europe from southern climes at the end of winter was the subject of a proverb in Ancient Greece: μία χελιδὼν ἔαρ οὐ ποιεῖ, in which […]
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