‘a fool at one end and a fire at the other’: meaning and history
a cigar or a cigarette—USA, 1841—probably patterned on phrases such as ‘a fool at one end and a maggot at the other’, describing a fishing rod
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meaning and origin of ‘up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire’
‘upstairs to bed’—UK, 1923: title of a song by Nixon Grey—‘Bedfordshire’ jocular extension of ‘bed’ (1665)—‘the wooden hill’ metaphor for ‘the stairs’ (1856)
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘somebody is walking over my grave’
early 18th century, in Jonathan Swift’s ‘Polite Conversation’—from the folk belief that one shudders when somebody walks over the site of one’s future grave
Read Morehistory of the phrase ‘tin Jesus’
USA, 1874, as ‘a little tin Jesus on wheels’—in reference to tin as a base metal, ‘tin’ is used figuratively in the senses ‘petty’, ‘worthless’, ‘counterfeit’
Read Morea word invented by Jonathan Swift: ‘yahoo’
‘yahoo’: rude, noisy or violent person—word invented by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) as the name of a race of brutish creatures resembling men in Gulliver’s Travels (1726)—came to be applied to the orang-utan
Read Moreorigin of ‘in petto’ (‘in the secret of the mind or heart’)
Italian translation of Latin ‘in pectore’ (‘in the breast’, ‘in the secret of the heart’)—when a pope announces that he has appointed a cardinal whom he reserves ‘in petto’, it means that he will reveal this cardinal’s name later
Read Moreoriginal sense of ‘chop and change’: ‘barter and exchange’
The phrase to chop and change means to change one’s opinions or behaviour repeatedly and abruptly. Here, chop originally meant to barter, and change meant to make an exchange with; in other words, this was an alliterative repetitive expression, the two verbs having roughly the same meaning (cf. also, for example, the alliterative phrase to be part and […]
Read MoreHow ‘Grub Street’ came to refer to hack work.
From the 17th century onwards, Grub Street, in Moorgate, London, was inhabited by literary hacks.
Read MoreWhy ‘ache’ ought to be written ‘ake’.
The spelling ‘ache’ (erroneously derived from Greek ‘ákhos’) instead of ‘ake’ is largely due to Samuel Johnson in A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘a little bird told me’
1711 in a letter by Jonathan Swift—perhaps from Ecclesiastes, 10:20: “a bird of the air shall carry the voice; and that which hath wings, shall tell the matter”
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