“ad fontes!”
MEANING of payments: without delay ORIGIN This expression refers to the fingernail and might originally have alluded to drinking fair and square. A clue might be provided by the French phrase payer rubis sur l’ongle (literally to pay ruby on the fingernail), which means to pay exactly what is due. (A variant, used by prostitutes, was rubis sur pieu, […]
Read MoreThe phrasal verb shell out means to pay a specified amount of money, especially one regarded as excessive. It is first recorded in Moral tales for young people (1801), by the Anglo-Irish novelist and educationist Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849): “One of you, it’s plain, must shell out your corianders.” (The word coriander (or coliander), short for coriander-seed (or coliander-seed), was slang for coin, money. The form coliander-seed, […]
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The phrase (as) happy (or jolly) as a sandboy means extremely happy or carefree—cf. also happy as a clam and happy as Larry. A sandboy was a boy hawking sand for sale. It seems that the earliest use of the word is The Rider and Sand-boy: a Tale, the title of a poem written by a certain Mr Meyler and published in Harvest-Home in 1805: […]
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“HUNS KILL WOMEN AND CHILDREN!” “TELL THAT TO THE MARINES!” First-World-War US recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg image: Disappearing Idioms This poster, which attracted a great deal of attention, portrays an angry-looking young man in the act of pulling off his coat as though he were anxious to get into a fight. The […]
Read MoreThe noun fly-by-night, or fly-by-nighter, denotes an unreliable or untrustworthy person. As an adjective, fly-by-night means unreliable or untrustworthy, especially in business or financial matters. However, the term seems to go back to the idea of witches flying on their broomsticks by night. At least, its first recorded instance is as a term of contempt […]
Read MoreThe term Richard Snary is an alteration, with humorous substitution of Richard for the pet-form Dick, of Dick Snary, itself a humorous remodelling of dictionary. These terms are first recorded in Apollo shrouing composed for the schollars of the free-schoole of Hadleigh in Suffolke. And acted by them on Shrouetuesday, being the sixt of February, 1626, by William Hawkins (died 1637): – I […]
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the Rotten-row in Glasgow, circa 1570 image: The Glasgow Story The street name Rotten Row occurs in many different towns. For example, The Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh) of 10th December 1728 published the following advertisement: There is just come to Leith, a Parcel of fine Figs both in Casks and Frails [= baskets], […]
Read MoreUSA, 1881—seems to have originated in the image of a torchlit procession or/and of a firework display that illuminate(s) a town
Read MoreThe word pedigree appeared in the early 15th century in the Latin form pedicru and in English forms such as pe-de-grew and pedegru, from Anglo-Norman French pé de grue and variants (pied de grue in Modern French), meaning literally foot of crane. The Anglo-Norman French word is first recorded during the second Michaelmas term (i.e. during the second session, beginning soon after Michaelmas, of the […]
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This cartoon by Bert Thomas (1883-1966) for the British Ministry of Information during World War II illustrates the folk etymology of the phrase. MEANING stop talking! ORIGIN The earliest known mention of this phrase is in a letter published by the London literary magazine The Athenæum of 8th August 1919: Sir, The […]
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