history of ‘money tree’ and ‘to shake the money tree’
‘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’
Read More‘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’
Read Moreto 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
Read Morea 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 drawing of the ‘Gerry-mander’ and the accompanying text—as published in the Boston Gazette (Boston, Massachusetts) of 26 March 1812
Read More17th 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)
Read More‘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
Read Morea 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
Read MoreOpportunity was represented as woman completely bald except for a forelock: she can only be seized as she runs towards someone, not be caught thereafter.
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