the Cantabrigian origin of ‘wooden spoon’
originally, at Cambridge University: oversized wooden spoon given to the candidate coming last in the mathematical tripos (BA-degree final honours examination)
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the Shakespearean origin of ‘sea change’
from ‘Full Fathom Five’, Ariel’s song to Ferdinand in ‘The Tempest’, by Shakespeare, where ‘sea change’ denotes a change brought about by the action of the sea
Read More‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark’: origin
from the observation made by the soldier Marcellus in ‘Hamlet’, by Shakespeare, when the eponymous character is following the ghost of his father
Read Morethe Shakespearean origin of ‘salad days’
‘salad days’: days of youthful inexperience—coined by Shakespeare in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’—alludes to the raw (green and cold) vegetables used in a salad
Read Moreorigin of the verb ‘bogart’ (to monopolise)
from ‘Don’t Bogart That Joint’ (1968), song by Fraternity of Man—alludes to the way Humphrey Bogart held a cigarette for long dialogues without smoking it
Read Moreorigin of the British phrase ‘to go for a burton’
to meet with disaster; to be ruined, destroyed or killed—UK, 1941, RAF slang: (of an airman) to be killed—perhaps from ‘to go for a drink (of Burton ale)’
Read Moreorigin of ‘cloud-cuckoo-land’
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
Read Moreorigin of ‘to take the cake’ and ‘to take the biscuit’
‘take the cake’ (US, 1839) alludes probably to cake as the prize in a contest, but maybe not to cakewalk—‘take the biscuit’ (US, 1879) used in British English
Read Moreorigin of the word ‘captcha’
early 21st century—acronym from ‘Completely Automatic Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’, with punning allusion to ‘capture’ and ‘gotcha’
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘j’accuse’
1899—public accusation in response to a perceived injustice—from the title of an open letter (1898) by Émile Zola, condemning the imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus
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