a curious case of misunderstanding in the Oxford English Dictionary
‘Wash the milk off your liver’: refers to the digestibility of milk, but misunderstood by the Oxford English Dictionary as referring to cowardice
Read MoreTag: phrases
the various meanings of ‘to fly a kite’
to get credit or money by using a fraudulent financial instrument; to send an illicit or secret note; to find out in what direction affairs are tending
Read MoreWhy does ‘season’ mean both ‘a division of the year’ and ‘to flavour’?
‘to season’, from Old French ‘saisonner’: ‘to do something during the proper season’, hence ‘to make appropriate to the circumstances’, ‘to flavour (a dish)’
Read Morea Shakespearean phrase: ‘this mortal coil’
the troubles and activities of the world—literary or humorous, from Hamlet’s speech “to be or not be”—‘coil’: probably from Middle French ‘acueil’, encounter
Read Moreorigin of ‘a millstone round someone’s neck’
from the gospel of Matthew, 18:6: If someone causes a child to sin, it would be better for them to have a millstone hung around their neck and be drowned in the sea.
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘King Charles’s head’
obsession—from Dickens’s ‘David Copperfield’, in which Mr. Dick is unable to write his memoirs because of the intrusive image of King Charles the First’s head
Read Morea Lancashire phrase: ‘the full monty’
something in its entirety—UK, 2nd half of 20th cent.—the sense of striptease performance involving full nudity was popularised by the 1997 film The Full Monty.
Read Moreorigin of ‘up the river’ (to prison)
US, 19th cent.—‘to send up the river’ (to send to prison)—originally referred to Sing Sing prison, situated up the Hudson River from the city of New York
Read More‘To sell down the river’ originated in the history of American slavery.
This phrase originated in the history of American slavery: the river was the Mississippi and down implied the transfer of slaves from north to south.
Read Moremeaning and origin of ‘shiver my timbers’
British, 18th century—a mock oath attributed to sailors, meaning ‘may my ship’s beams be broken into pieces’—early variants used by Tobias Smollett
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