“ad fontes!”
to refuse to face up to unpleasant or awkward realities—refers to the practice traditionally attributed to the ostrich of thrusting its head into the sand when being overtaken by pursuers, supposedly through an incapacity to distinguish between seeing and being seen
Read More
a deliberate malapropism punning on ‘to cast aspersions on’—UK, 1902—nasturtiums are low plants with large round leaves and orange, red or yellow flowers
Read Morerefers to the fact that the winter cold is essential to plants and crops—UK, first recorded in the mid-17th century, but already proverbial
Read More
the drawing of the ‘Gerry-mander’ and the accompanying text—as published in the Boston Gazette (Boston, Massachusetts) of 26 March 1812
Read MoreUK, 1819—specifically invented to qualify the English poet and critic William Gifford with reference to the fact that he had been a shoemaker’s apprentice—alludes to the proverb ‘let the cobbler stick to his last’ from Pliny’s Natural History (AD 77)
Read MoreA diminutive of ‘pūpa’ (‘a girl’, in transferred use also ‘a doll’), the Latin feminine noun ‘pūpilla’ came to also denote ‘the pupil of the eye’ on account of one’s own reflection seen when looking into somebody’s eye—the same metaphor underlies ‘to look babies in somebody’s eyes’.
Read More‘Atlantic’ originally referred to Mount Atlas in North Africa, on which the heavens were fabled to rest; it was hence applied to the sea near the western shore of Africa, and afterwards extended to the whole ocean lying between Europe and Africa on the east and America on the west.
Read More
from Latin ‘mare Mediterraneum’, ‘the sea in the middle of the earth’—Latin ‘mediterrāneus’, from Greek ‘mesόgaios’, ‘situated in the middle of the land’
Read More
alludes to the calming effect of oil on the agitated surface of water; common knowledge since ancient times, first scientifically observed by Benjamin Franklin
Read More‘Let the cobbler stick to his last’ goes back to Pliny’s story of the Greek artist Apelles answering a cobbler who had criticised one of his paintings.
Read More
word histories 