“ad fontes!”
The phrase from pillar to post means from one place to another in an unceremonious or fruitless manner. Its earliest recorded form is from post to pillar in The Assembly of Gods, an anonymous dream-vision allegory most likely written in the early fourth quarter of the 15th century (it was initially attributed to John Lydgate (1370-1449) […]
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The verb to frog-march (somebody) means to force (somebody) to walk forward by holding and pinning their arms from behind. This sense is milder than the original, as the frog’s march was a police metaphor denoting a method of moving a resistant person such as a prisoner, in which he or she is lifted by […]
Read MoreIn early use, apple was a general term for all kinds of fruits other than berries, including even nuts. In fact, apple and berry are the only Anglo-Saxon fruit names, the rest being of Latin or ‘exotic’ origin. This is why apple was commonly used in describing foreign fruits, which explains for example the word […]
Read MoreThe phrase ‘a pretty kettle of fish’ originally referred to a net full of fish, which, when drawn up with its contents, is suggestive of confusion, flurry and disorder—‘kettle’ being a form of ‘kiddle’, a noun denoting a dam or other barrier in a river, with an opening fitted with nets to catch fish.
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“Go by Shanks’ pony – Walk short distances and leave room for those who have longer journeys” – a Second World War poster by Lewitt-Him for the Ministry of War Transport – image: Imperial War Museums The phrase Shanks’(s) pony, or mare, etc, means one’s own legs as a means of conveyance. It is […]
Read MoreMEANING The phrase to beggar belief (or description) means to be too extraordinary to be believed (or described). ORIGIN The literal meaning of the verb to beggar is to make a beggar of, exhaust the means of, reduce to beggary. It came to be used figuratively to mean to exhaust the resources […]
Read MoreThe phrase to carry coals to Newcastle means to supply something to a place where it is already plentiful; hence, figuratively, to do something wholly superfluous or unnecessary—cf. also to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos and to sell sand in the Sahara. This phrase (in which coals is an obsolete plural) refers to Newcastle upon Tyne, in […]
Read MoreIt was only from the mere accident of his bearing the name that he did that the phrase ‘Hobson’s choice’ was applied to Thomas Hobson (1544-1631), an English liveryman who supposedly gave his customers no choice but to take the horse closest to the stable door or none at all. MEANING The […]
Read MoreMEANING The phrase donkey’s years means a very long time. ORIGIN This expression is inseparable from donkey’s ears. In fact, these two expressions were originally a single one, donkey’s years being simply a dialectal pronunciation of donkey’s ears—or the other way around. And donkey’s ears/years (also donkeys’ ears/years) was part of a […]
Read MoreBuggins’ turn, or Buggins’s turn, is the principle of assigning an appointment to persons in rotation rather than according to merit. The earliest recorded use of this expression is in a letter written on 13th January 1901 by the British admiral Lord John Arbuthnot Fisher (1841-1920): Favouritism was the secret of our efficiency in the […]
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