“ad fontes!”
The phrase ‘a far cry’ means ‘something very different’. Its literal signification (first recorded in A Legend of Montrose (1819), by Walter Scott) is ‘a long way’, ‘a great distance’. Here, the noun ‘cry’ denotes ‘a calling distance’, as in ‘within cry of’, meaning ‘within calling distance of’.
Read MoreUSA, 1811—based on the three principal components that make up a flintlock gun: ‘lock’ denotes the firing mechanism, ‘stock’ the handle or wooden shoulder-piece to which it is attached, and ‘barrel’ the tube down which the bullet is fired
Read More‘dunce’: originally a follower of John Duns Scotus (circa 1265-1308), scholastic theologian; in the 16th century, Scotus’s system was attacked with ridicule by the humanists and the reformers as a farrago of needless entities and useless distinctions
Read More‘Glamour’ was originally a Scottish alteration of ‘grammar’: this article explains how it came to denote an attractive or exciting quality that makes certain people or things seem appealing. Classical Greek γραμματική (= grammatikḗ) and classical Latin grammătĭca denoted the methodical study of literature, that is to say, philology in the widest modern sense, including textual […]
Read More‘queen’s’, or ‘king’s’, ‘cushion’: a seat made by two people who cross arms and hold each other’s hands to form a support for another person—Scotland and northern England, 19th century
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UK, 1707—‘to take the (King’s/Queen’s) shilling’: to sign up as a soldier, from the former practice of giving a shilling to a recruit when he enlisted
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mid-16th century—meaning: to wait for the death of a person with the expectancy of succeeding to his possessions or office; implies a futile wait
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probably British English, 1880s—to make an effort to improve or reform, ‘to pull oneself together’—based on the image of sprucing oneself up
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from Medieval Latin ‘paraphernalia’, short for ‘paraphernalia bona’, ‘married woman’s property’, i.e. the goods which a bride brings over and above her dowry
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In the name of the farmhouse, ‘wuthering’ is a “provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather.”
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word histories 