“ad fontes!”
1546—originally designated the period of time following a wedding, and arose from the comparison of the mutual affection of newly-married persons to the changing moon, which is no sooner full than it begins to wane
Read MoreUK, 1710—in ease and luxury—refers to the use of clover as fodder, as explained by Samuel Johnson in A Dictionary of the English Language (1755): “To live in Clover, is to live luxuriously; clover being extremely delicious and fattening to cattle.”
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said as a jest after the departure of a person or persons regarded as untrustworthy—apparently coined by the English lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
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UK, 18th and 19th centuries—‘trunkmaker’ was often employed with allusion to the use of the sheets of unsaleable books for trunk-linings
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The letter ‘s’ in both the nouns currently spelt ‘island’ and ‘aisle’ is due to folk-etymological association of those words with the unrelated noun ‘isle’.
Read MoreUK, 1930—‘as the bishop said to the actress’, ‘as the actress said to the bishop’: mischievously implies a sexual innuendo or ambiguity in a preceding innocent remark
Read Moreoriginally a kind of horse chase in which the second horse had to follow the course of the leader, like a flight of wild geese
Read MoreFrom the 17th century onwards, Grub Street, in Moorgate, London, was inhabited by literary hacks.
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The spelling ‘ache’ (erroneously derived from Greek ‘ákhos’) instead of ‘ake’ is largely due to Samuel Johnson in A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
Read Moremid-17th cent. in the sense ‘brand new’—from ‘spick and span new’, extension of ‘span new’, from Old Norse ‘spán-nýr’, ‘as new as a freshly cut wooden chip’
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