“ad fontes!”
a moment of sudden discovery, inspiration or insight—1918—from the reputed exclamation of Archimedes when he realised that the volume of a solid could be calculated by measuring the water displaced when it was immersed
Read MoreUSA, 1820—with reference to cursive writing: to pay attention to every detail, especially when finishing off a task or undertaking; to be accurate and precise
Read MoreIn French, the concept of dependency underlies the semantic distribution of some basic lexical items: the female is strictly defined in her relation of dependency to the male, as a daughter or as a spouse.
Read Morealso ‘to drop one’s h’s’—not to pronounce the letter h at the beginning of words in which it is pronounced in standard English—1855—1847 as ‘not to sound one’s h’s’
Read Moreused as an interjection to assert truthfulness, honour or sincerity—USA, 1851, as ‘honest Indian’—perhaps alludes to the fact that, in their past interactions with Europeans, Native Americans had to give assurance of their good faith
Read Morealso ‘no joy without annoy’—meaning: there is a trace of trouble or difficulty in every pleasure—was already a common proverb in the late sixteenth century
Read MoreAustralia, 1927—alteration of ‘blanc’ in French ‘vin blanc’ (‘white wine’)—via rhyming slang forms such as ‘plinketty-plonk’, from phrases such as ‘vin blank’ in the slang of soldiers stationed in France during WWI
Read Moremeaning: ‘extremely tired’—origin (Lancashire, England, 1859): from the noun ‘pow’, variant of ‘poll’, denoting ‘a person’s head’, and the adjective ‘fagged’, meaning ‘extremely tired’
Read Moredesignates an Englishman—originated among the French, from the fact that they regarded the exclamation ‘God damn’ as characteristic of the English—the Middle-French synonym ‘godon’ may be etymologically unrelated
Read Morea word with two opposite or contradictory meanings—coined by Jack Herring in 1962—Joseph T. Shipley had developed the same notion in Playing With Words (1960); he called it ‘autantonym’
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