‘damsel in distress’: meaning and early occurrences
the clichéd literary topos of a young woman who is in trouble and needs a man’s help—1694, in a text by Joseph Addison
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‘gallows-humour’: meaning and origin
grim and ironical humour—UK, 1860, in reference to the practice of public executions—UK, 1870, as a loan translation from German ‘Galgenhumor’, in the context of the Franco-Prussian War
Read More‘candid camera’: meaning and origin
UK, 1929—a small camera for taking informal photographs of persons, usually without their knowledge—earlier occurrences (UK & USA, from 1907 to 1924) are often of unclear meaning
Read More‘to get a guernsey’: meanings and origin
Australia, 1918—to get selected for a task, to gain recognition or approval, to succeed—the image is of getting selected in a sporting team (‘guernsey’: a shirt worn by soccer or rugby players)
Read More‘shaggy-dog story’: meaning and early occurrences
USA, 1914—origin unknown—a long rambling joke ending in a deliberate anticlimax, such as an absurd or irrelevant punchline
Read Morethe noun ‘pig tracks’ in U.S. phrases
in the phrases ‘(as) regular as pig tracks’ (1853) and ‘(as) common as pig tracks’ (1854), the plural noun ‘pig tracks’ is an intensifier—Southern United States
Read More‘Quatorze Juillet’: meaning and origin
USA, 1882—the fourteenth of July, the national holiday of the French republic, commemorating the storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789—also shortened to ‘Quatorze’ (1898)
Read More‘Bastille Day’: meaning and origin
the fourteenth of July, the national holiday of the French republic, commemorating the storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789—coined in 1837 by Thomas Carlyle
Read More‘(here’s) mud in your eye’: meaning—and origin?
USA, 1911—a humorous drinking toast—origin unknown—the image is perhaps that mud in one’s eye blurs one’s vision like alcohol does
Read More‘council-house television’: meaning and origin
UK, 1993—derogatory—Sky Television Network, regarded as downmarket—alluded to the number of satellite dishes on council houses and council tower-blocks
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word histories 