history of the phrase ‘are you there with your bears?’
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 MoreTag: John Ray
history of the phrase ‘(it) takes one to know one’
USA, 1926—only a person with a given personality, characteristic, etc., is able to identify that quality in someone else—particularly used of homosexuals
Read More‘to go to Peg Trantum’s’ (to go to one’s death)
First recorded in 1694, ‘Peg Tantrum’ was chiefly used in the phrase ‘to go to Peg Trantum’s’, meaning ‘to go to one’s death’. This word is perhaps from ‘Peg’, rhyming form of ‘Meg’, pet form of the female forenames ‘Margery’ and ‘Margaret’, and from ‘tantrum’.
Read Moreorigin of ‘don’t spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar’
from ‘to lose a sheep for a halfpennyworth of tar’—refers to the use of tar to protect sores and wounds on sheep from flies (‘sheep’ was pronounced ‘ship’)
Read Morea 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
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘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 Moremeaning and origin of ‘Hogs 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 Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘as 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 Moreorigin of ‘like 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 Moreorigin of ‘one 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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