‘to go to Peg Trantum’s’ (to go to one’s death)

8th February 2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

First recorded in 1694, ‘Peg Tantrum’ was chiefly used in the phrase ‘to go to Peg Trantum’s’, meaning ‘to go to one’s death’. This word is perhaps from ‘Peg’, rhyming form of ‘Meg’, pet form of the female forenames ‘Margery’ and ‘Margaret’, and from ‘tantrum’.

meaning and origin of the phrase ‘let’s return to our muttons’

6th August 2017.Reading time 7 minutes.

to return to the matter in hand—from French ‘revenons à nos moutons’ (‘let’s return to our sheep’), allusion to ‘La Farce de Maistre Pierre Pathelin’ (ca 1457)

origin and meanings of ‘jingo’

5th June 2017.Reading time 17 minutes.

The current sense of ‘jingo’ originated in a 1877 patriotic song adopted by the bellicose factions within the Conservative Party during the Russo-Turkish war.

meaning and origin of the phrase ‘to lick into shape’

30th May 2017.Reading time 13 minutes.

This phrase originated in the belief that bear cubs were born formless and had to be licked into shape by their mother.

origin of the phrase ‘as poor as a church mouse’

15th February 2017.Reading time 3 minutes.

woodwork in Easingwold Parish Church – Diocese of York Robert Thompson, the Kilburn craftsman, invariably carved a little mouse on his work. photograph: Visit Easingwold The phrase as poor as a church mouse means extremely poor. It is first recorded in The royalist a comedy (1682), by the English author Thomas D’Urfey (1653-1723): ’Gad […]

the macabre history of ‘field bishop’

7th October 2016.Reading time 4 minutes.

Pantagrueline prognostication (1535) – image: Anthropologie en ligne The term field bishop denotes a person who is hanged and imagined as grotesquely giving a benediction with his jerking legs. It is first recorded in A mysterye of inyquyte contayned within the heretycall genealogye of Ponce Pantolabus (1545), by John Bale (1495-1563), Bishop […]

origin of ‘dandelion’ and of its French equivalent ‘pissenlit’

21st July 2016.Reading time 10 minutes.

the 1905 edition of Le Petit Larousse illustré, a French-language encyclopaedic dictionary published by the Éditions Larousse In 1890, Eugène Grasset (1845-1917) designed the image of la Semeuse (the Sower) blowing dandelion seeds, which accompanies the motto of the Éditions Larousse, Je sème à tout vent (I sow to the four winds). The word […]