meaning and origin of ‘sentence first (and) verdict afterwards’
UK, 1869—used to denounce arbitrariness—alludes to a demand by the Queen of Hearts during the trial of the Knave of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
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the curious case of the French word ‘oignon’
Decided by the Académie française, the erroneous spelling ‘oignon’ (= ‘onion’) has become a symbol of prejudiced people, ignorant of the history of their own language.
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘Procrustean bed/Procrustean remedy’
a means of enforcing conformity—Greek mythology: Procrustes was a robber who made his victims fit a bed by either stretching them longer or cutting them shorter
Read Morethe long history of the phrase ‘blood, sweat, and tears’
current use seems to allude to a speech by Winston Churchill in May 1940—but the metaphor goes back to the early 17th century
Read Moreorigin of the catchphrase ‘Alas! my poor brother’
from an advertisement for the concentrated beef extract Bovril, showing a bullock lamenting over a jar of the product
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘alarums and excursions’
confused activity and uproar—alludes to the frequent collocation of ‘alarum’ and ‘excursion’ in stage directions in Shakespearean drama
Read Morelinguistic notes on the ‘one’ in ‘alone’ and ‘only’
Why is the element one in words such as alone and only not pronounced like the numeral one? Both the indefinite article an (a before consonant) and the numeral one are from Old English ān—which has survived in Scotland as ane, used both as indefinite article and as numeral. This Old-English word ān meant a/an, one, […]
Read Morethe curious case of ‘rob’/‘robe’ and of French ‘voler’ (‘to fly’/‘to steal’)
‘robe’ originally denoted something that has been robbed—French ‘voler’ (‘to fly’) has come to mean ‘to steal’ via falconry
Read Moremeaning and origin of the proverb ‘quot homines tot sententiæ’
from Phormio, by the Roman dramatist Terence—appeared in English in the 1539 translation of Erasmus’s adages
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker’
UK, 1848—people of various professions; people of all kinds—alludes to ‘Rub a dub dub’, a nursery rhyme of the late 18th century
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