‘town and gown’: meaning and origin
1750—the non-academic inhabitants (‘town’) of a university city and the resident members of the university (‘gown’, denoting the distinctive costume of a member of a university)
Read More“ad fontes!”
1750—the non-academic inhabitants (‘town’) of a university city and the resident members of the university (‘gown’, denoting the distinctive costume of a member of a university)
Read Morealludes to the belief that such a hat or cap protects the wearer from mind control, surveillance or similar types of threat—USA, 1972 as ‘tinfoil-lined hat’
Read Morein French contexts: a young person, especially a young man, belonging to a youth subculture of the 1950s and 1960s—UK, 1959—from the noun ‘blouson’ (a short jacket) and the adjective ‘noir’ (black)
Read Moreto abandon or betray someone in order to protect or advance one’s own interests—originally (British politics, 1971) ‘to push someone under a bus’—derived from ‘to walk under a bus’ (British politics, 1966)
Read Morescarce; infrequent; difficult to find or to come by—one early use in 1668—but popularised by the Irish author Thomas Campbell in The Pleasures of Hope (1799)
Read Moresmartly dressed—from the verb ‘fig out/up’, meaning ‘to smarten up’—this verb is probably an alteration of the verb ‘feague’, of uncertain origin, meaning ‘to make (a horse) lively’
Read Moreto rain very heavily—UK, 1820—sometimes appended to the phrase ‘to rain cats and dogs’
Read Moreto embark enthusiastically on a course of action that most sensible people would avoid—coined as ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread’ by the English poet Alexander Pope in An Essay on Criticism (1711)
Read Moreto be glad of minor benefits, especially in an otherwise unpleasant or troublesome situation—first recorded in The Heart of Midlothian (1818), by Walter Scott
Read Morea bias whereby people who have little ability in, or knowledge of, a particular task or subject tend to overestimate their capabilities—USA, 2008—refers to David Dunning and Justin Kruger, who described this bias in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1999
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