“ad fontes!”
early 20th century—‘Zeppelins in a cloud’ and variants mean ‘sausage and mash’—during World War One, the phrase was used as a manner of disregarding the fear caused by the bombing raids carried out by Zeppelin airships
Read MoreAn expression of indifference to, or resigned acceptance of, a state of affairs, ‘san fairy ann’ jocularly represents the French phrase ‘ça ne fait rien’, meaning ‘that doesn’t matter’. It originated in army use on the Western Front during the First World War.
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Greek ‘δορυϕόρος’ (‘doruphόros’) meant ‘spearman’; in French, ‘doryphore’ denotes the Colorado beetle and the German occupying forces during WWII; in English, it denotes a pedantic and annoyingly persistent critic.
Read MoreThe various phrases containing the word ‘mustard’ are based on the image of something which adds heat or pungency.
Read Moresupposedly an allusion to the preparation of fabric to be worked on: once the shapes have been cut out, the tailor still has a lot of sewing to do
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Several English and French words and phrases are ultimately derived the Latin noun ‘pullus’, meaning ‘young animal’, in particular ‘young fowl’.
Read MoreUK, 1919—possibly a mere euphemism for having too much to drink, regardless of the actual number of drinks that have been consumed (‘eight’ probably arbitrary)
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refers to the rarity of white elephants and to the story that the king of Pegu waged war on the king of Siam, who had refused to sell him one
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from the observation made by the soldier Marcellus in ‘Hamlet’, by Shakespeare, when the eponymous character is following the ghost of his father
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‘flash in the pan’: originally referred to the priming gunpowder flaring up in the flash-pan without then exploding the main charge in the barrel of a firearm
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word histories 