‘to swear like a trooper’: meaning and origin

to use a lot of swearwords—first used in 1713 by Joseph Addison—alludes to the fact that troopers (i.e., soldiers of low rank in the cavalry) had a reputation for coarse language and behaviour

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‘even a stopped clock is right twice a day’

UK, 1711—means that anyone can be right occasionally, if only by chance—often used specifically to suggest that one holding a fixed belief regardless of changing circumstances will occasionally, if rarely, be correct

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