the curious case of the French word ‘oignon’
Decided by the Académie française, the erroneous spelling ‘oignon’ (= ‘onion’) has become a symbol of prejudiced people, ignorant of the history of their own language.
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history of the terms ‘whammy’ and ‘double whammy’
USA—‘whammy’ (baseball, 1927): evil influence or hex—‘double whammy’ (boxing, 1938): evil spell more potent than a whammy
Read Moreorigin and early instances of ‘honky-tonk’ (cheap entertainment venue)
USA—probably a reduplication based on ‘honk’—appeared in Texas as the name of a theatre (1889) and of a variety show (1890)
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘(and) the best of British luck’
UK, 1957—an expression of encouragement, but often used ironically with the opposite meaning—origin unclear
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘alarums and excursions’
confused activity and uproar—alludes to the frequent collocation of ‘alarum’ and ‘excursion’ in stage directions in Shakespearean drama
Read Moreorigin and sense development of Anglo-Irish ‘bejesus’
1825, Anglo-Irish alteration of ‘by Jesus’—1867 as one word—‘the bejesus out of’ (1931) intensifies the action conveyed by the preceding verb
Read Morelinguistic notes on the ‘one’ in ‘alone’ and ‘only’
Why is the element one in words such as alone and only not pronounced like the numeral one? Both the indefinite article an (a before consonant) and the numeral one are from Old English ān—which has survived in Scotland as ane, used both as indefinite article and as numeral. This Old-English word ān meant a/an, one, […]
Read More‘I should cocoa’: meaning and origin
UK slang, 1936—emphatic agreement, though often ironical—‘cocoa’ is said to be rhyming slang for ‘so’ in ‘I should say so’
Read Morenotes on the origin of ‘easy-peasy (lemon squeezy)’
Contrary to what is claimed, ‘easy-peasy’ doesn’t seem to be of British origin, nor to be connected with the British washing-up liquid Sqezy.
Read Moreorigin of the Scottish and Irish phrase ‘on the buroo’ (‘on the dole’)
Scotland, 1914: ‘buroo’, informal form of ‘bureau’ (generic sense)—later used specifically in the sense of Labour Bureau, hence of unemployment benefit (1921)
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word histories 