‘Coggeshall job’: meaning and origin

19th Jun 2020.Reading time 13 minutes.

any muddle-headed business—UK, 1813—the stupidity of the people of Coggeshall, a small town in Essex, England, has been proverbial since the mid-17th century

a male-chauvinistic phrase: ‘barefoot(ed) and pregnant’

12th Jun 2020.Reading time 10 minutes.

USA, 1938—male-chauvinistic phrase meaning that the place of women is in the home and that their role is to bear children—also ‘pregnant and barefoot(ed)’

‘home, James (and don’t spare the horses)’: meaning and early occurrences

8th Jun 2020.Reading time 12 minutes.

used as a humorous exhortation to a driver (‘James’: generic posh Christian name)—USA—shorter form: late 19th century—extended form: 1911

‘to tap the Admiral’: meaning and early occurrences

1st Jun 2020.Reading time 11 minutes.

applied to someone who will drink anything—UK, 1790—from the tale of the sailor(s) who stole spirits from the cask in which a dead Admiral was being preserved for interment in England

history of the acronym ‘ACAB’

16th May 2020.Reading time 7 minutes.

1970—British and Irish English—acronym from the phrase ‘all coppers are bastards’—customarily written (tattooed in particular) rather than spoken

the ‘Apaches’ of Paris: meaning and origin

4th May 2020.Reading time 22 minutes.

circa 1900: by association with the reputed ferocity of the North-American Indian people, ‘Apache’ came to designate a violent street ruffian in Paris