meaning and origin of ‘Mrs Grundy’
from Speed the Plough (1798), by Thomas Morton; Dame Ashfield is constantly fearing to give occasion for the sneers of Mrs Grundy, her unseen neighbour
Read MoreTag: phrases
‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’: meaning, origin and variants
‘something new can only be judged to be good or bad after it has been tried or used’ (‘proof’ = ‘test’)—1623, in Remaines, concerning Britaine, by W. Camden
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘to a T’
‘with minute exactness’—UK, 1693—probably a shortening of synonymous ‘to a tittle’ (1607), ‘tittle’ meaning ‘a small mark used in writing or printing’
Read More‘jot’ and ‘tittle’ used in collocation
‘every tiny detail’—from Matthew, 5:18—‘jot’, from ‘iōta’, the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet—‘tittle’, a small mark used in writing or printing
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘to see a man about a dog’
UK, 1865—vague excuse for leaving to keep an undisclosed appointment, or, now frequently, to go to the toilet—perhaps originally with allusion to dogfighting
Read Moreorigin of ‘to don’ and ‘to doff’
coalesced forms of the obsolete phrasal verbs ‘to do on’ and ‘to do off’, meaning respectively ‘to put on’ and ‘to take off’ (an item of clothing)
Read Moreorigin of the word ‘ado’
from ‘at do’ (meaning ‘to do’)—construction ‘to have’ + pronominal object (e.g. ‘much’) + ‘at do’ led to ‘ado’ reinterpreted as a noun qualified by an adjective
Read Morethe legendary origin of ‘a Roland for an Oliver’
meaning: ‘tit for tat’—Oliver was a full match for his comrade Roland, the legendary nephew of Charlemagne in ‘La Chanson de Roland’ and other romances
Read Moreorigin of the British phrase ‘—— rule(s) OK’
UK, 1971, in graffiti—preceded by a proper or common noun in the singular or plural; used to assert the pre-eminence of a specified person or thing
Read Morethe origin of ‘Kilroy’?
Sgt Francis J. Kilroy’s surname, first written in 1943 by his friend Sgt James Maloney (source: Army Public Relations, in the Tucson Daily Citizen, 8 Nov. 1945)
Read More
word histories 