“ad fontes!”
from Keeping Up With The Joneses (Cupples & Leon Company – New York, 1920) by ‘Pop’ Momand MEANING If you say that someone is keeping up with the Joneses, you mean that they are doing something in order to show that they have as much money as other people, rather than because […]
Read Morean alternative explanation of the phrase “it is raining cats and dogs”
Read MoreFirst recorded circa 1629 as ‘to rain dogs and cats’, this phrase is based on a cat-and-dog fight as a metaphor for a storm or hard rain; the theory that Jonathan Swift coined the phrase is ludicrous.
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘strawberry preacher’
Read MoreIn the phrase ‘in Dicky’s meadow’, which means ‘in trouble’, the first element is an alteration of ‘dicky’, meaning ‘hazardous’, ‘critical’.
Read MoreSexual puns in 17th-century English theatre explain several meanings of ‘P’s and Q’s’.
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