meaning 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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the birth of the colourful noun ‘cackleberry’
USA, 1889—humorous, informal: a hen’s egg—composed of ‘cackle’, the raucous clucking cry given by a hen, especially after laying an egg, and of ‘berry’
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘blackboard jungle’
USA, 1955—the education system regarded as a place where the law of the jungle applies—from the title of a 1954 novel and of its 1955 adaptation
Read Moremeaning and origin of the British phrase ‘to be all mouth and (no) trousers’
1961—to be all talk and no action—originally without the negative determiner ‘no’—refers to verbal and sexual arrogance
Read Moremeaning and origin of the American-English phrase ‘(strictly) for the birds’
army slang, early 1940s—euphemistic shortening of ‘shit for the birds’—seems to allude to birds eating droppings from horses and cattle
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘there’s one, or a sucker, born every minute’
UK, 1806—expresses dismay or glee at the gullibility of people—originally used by those who were exploiting the credulity of others
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘dirty work at the crossroads’
UK, 1906—dishonest or illicit dealings—probably alludes to crossroads as settings for sinister actions, in particular to their former use as burial places for suicides
Read Moremeaning and origin of the British phrase ‘sitting by Nellie’
1956—learning a job by observing how an experienced worker does it—‘Nellie’ is simply a generic name for a trained worker.
Read MoreWhy ‘gerrymander’ was originally the name of a monstrous salamander.
the drawing of the ‘Gerry-mander’ and the accompanying text—as published in the Boston Gazette (Boston, Massachusetts) of 26 March 1812
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘plain Jane’
UK, 1898, in ‘plain Jane and no nonsense’—a dull or unattractive girl or woman—‘Jane’ chosen because it is common and rhymes with ‘plain’
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