‘(as) thick as herrings’: meaning and origin
said of a great number of persons or things, especially when pressed against one another—UK, 1776—refers to herrings in a barrel
Read MoreTag: John Wolcot
early occurrences of the phrase ‘a nail in the coffin’
something that hastens, or contributes to, the end of the person or thing referred to—USA, 1805 in an open letter by the English political writer Thomas Paine
Read Moreorigin of ‘simon-pure’
1790—from the name of a Quaker who must prove his identity against an impostor’s claims in ‘A Bold Stroke for a Wife’ (1718), a comedy by Susanna Centlivre
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘to set the Thames on fire’
from the image of an impossible task, ‘to set the Thames on fire’: to work wonders — typically used negatively in the ironic sense never to distinguish oneself
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word histories 