“ad fontes!”
The phrase not a cat in hell’s chance means no chance at all—synonyms: a snowball’s chance (in hell) and a Chinaman’s chance. It is a shortening of the more explicit no more chance than a cat in hell without claws. The earliest instance of this phrase that I have found is from Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 29th September 1753: Poor […]
Read MoreThe phrase wouldn’t say boo to a goose is used to emphasise that someone is very timid. Here, boo is not an expression of disapproval but a later form of bo, an exclamation intended to frighten. In Notes and Queries of 10th September 1870, the English philologist Walter William Skeat (1835-1912) wrote: “Cry Bo to […]
Read More“I think we may say everything’s more or less oojah-cum-spiff. With one exception, Jeeves,” I said, a graver note coming into my voice as I gave Gus his second helping of kipper. “There remains a fly in the ointment, a familiar saying meaning—well, I don’t quite know what it does mean. It seems to […]
Read MoreMEANING to have no hesitation in stating, or dealing with, something, however unpleasant or awkward it is ORIGIN Always used in the negative, this phrase dates back to the 16th century, originally as to make no bones at or in. It also occurred without a complement, as in its first recorded use, in The first tome or […]
Read MoreThe adjective fed up means annoyed, unhappy or bored, especially with a situation that has existed for a long time. The original, literal meaning is simply sated with food, since to feed up an animal or a person is to supply them with rich and abundant food. For example, the author of Whether Love be a natural or fictitious Passion, published in Pope’s Bath Chronicle of 3rd May 1764, wrote: The […]
Read MoreIn the chapter Our lunatic contributor of Words and names (1933), the British philologist Ernest Weekley (1865-1954) wrote: The correspondence columns of our middlebrow weeklies and of our two Sunday papers are the happy hunting-ground of the amateur etymologist. A few years ago he published the discovery that ‘nap,’ ‘a short sleep,’ was derived from Napoleon’s power of sleeping […]
Read MoreMEANING to pay excessively, to be charged exorbitantly PROBABLE ORIGIN The expression to pay through the nose is first recorded in Piazza universale di proverbi Italiani, or, A common place of Italian proverbs and proverbial phrases digested in alphabetical order (1666), by Giovanni Torriano (floruit 1640): Oft-times Rich men engrossing commodities, will make one pay through the […]
Read MoreThe phrase the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing and variants express unawareness, or (deliberate) ignorance, of one’s own activities. This phrase is now mainly used to convey that there is a state of confusion within a group or organisation. But, in early use, it was an injunction to be discreet in […]
Read MoreOf American-English origin, the expression to have an axe to grind (American-English spelling ax) means to have a private reason for doing, or being involved in, something. It has often been attributed to Benjamin Franklin [note 1]. For example, the New English Dictionary (NED – 1888), as the Oxford English Dictionary was known, mentions “a […]
Read MoreThe phrase to take French leave means: to depart unnoticed or without permission.—Synonym: to take Dutch leave. The earliest (and most curious) occurrence of to take French leave that I have found is from the anonymous novel Benedicta (1741)—the heroine is about to get married: Mrs Butler, who on this extraordinary occasion, had taken French leave […]
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