origin of ‘neither fish nor fowl’
Origin: for purposes of fasting, food was divided into categories – ‘fish’, the flesh of fish, ‘flesh’, the flesh of land-animals, ‘fowl’, the flesh of birds.
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origin of ‘to cut a caper’
‘caper’: probably abbreviation of ‘cabriole’, from Italian ‘capriola’, literally ‘female roe deer’, from Latin ‘capreola’, ‘wild goat’, from ‘capra’, she-goat
Read Morebetwixt and between
‘betwixt and between’, late 18th century—not fully or properly either of two things, in an intermediate or middling position
Read Morecarrot and stick
early 20th century—refers to the method of tempting a donkey to move forward by dangling a carrot before it, and beating it with a stick if it refuses
Read Moreorigin of ‘to walk one’s chalks’
to go off—19th cent.—from a procedure consisting in making a person walk on a straight line drawn with chalk in order to establish whether they are inebriated
Read Moreorigin of ‘by a long chalk’
‘by a long chalk’: in a great degree, by far — 19th century, from the practice of using chalk to mark up the points scored in a game
Read More‘adultescent’ and its synonyms
blend of ‘adult’ and ‘adolescent’: adult who has retained the interests, behaviour or lifestyle of adolescence — origin USA, first attested in 1945
Read Moreorigin of ‘out of the blue’
from ‘a bolt out of the blue’, denoting a sudden and unexpected event, with reference to the unlikelihood of a thunderbolt coming from a clear blue sky
Read More‘beanfeast’, ‘beano’: meaning and origin
‘beano’, abbreviation of ‘beanfeast’: an enjoyable time; originally an annual dinner, given by employers to employees, or held by organisations or clubs
Read Moreto set the Thames on fire
from the image of an impossible task, ‘to set the Thames on fire’: to work wonders — typically used negatively in the ironic sense never to distinguish oneself
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