17th century—contrasts what the mind remembers with what it forgets (with reference to the opposition between the coarser particles, which are retained by a sieve, and the finer ones, which pass through it)—denotes an extremely poor memory (with reference to the fact that a sieve does not hold all its contents)
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‘money tree’ (UK, 1749): a source of easily obtained or unlimited money—‘to shake the money tree’ (UK, 1851)—related to proverb ‘money does not grow on trees’
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to die; to be lost or destroyed; to meet with disaster—1914, Army slang—probably from the notion of the setting sun symbolising disappearance or finality
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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
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the drawing of the ‘Gerry-mander’ and the accompanying text—as published in the Boston Gazette (Boston, Massachusetts) of 26 March 1812
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17th century—allusion to the Aeneid, by Virgil, in which the Sybil throws a drugged cake to Cerberus, the monstrous dog guarding the entrance to Hades
Read MoreUK, 1819—specifically invented to qualify the English poet and critic William Gifford with reference to the fact that he had been a shoemaker’s apprentice—alludes to the proverb ‘let the cobbler stick to his last’ from Pliny’s Natural History (AD 77)
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‘Atlantic’ originally referred to Mount Atlas in North Africa, on which the heavens were fabled to rest; it was hence applied to the sea near the western shore of Africa, and afterwards extended to the whole ocean lying between Europe and Africa on the east and America on the west.
Read Morefirst recorded in ‘As You Like It’, by Shakespeare—from the former practice of hanging a branch or bunch of ivy as a vintner’s sign in front of a tavern
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a realm of fantasy, dreams or impractical notions—1856 as ‘cuckoo-cloud-land’—from the name of the city built by the birds in ‘The Birds’, by Aristophanes
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