“ad fontes!”
‘to have a fancy for’—UK, 1900—loan translation from French ‘avoir un béguin pour’—French ‘béguin’ is from ‘s’embéguiner de’, meaning ‘to put on a bonnet’, hence ‘to put a sudden capricious idea into one’s head’
Read MoreUK, 1821—‘muslin’: women regarded collectively as objects of sexual desire—‘a bit of muslin’: a woman regarded as an object of sexual desire
Read MoreUSA, 1900: to get a stage act ready—Canada, 1961: to organise oneself to undertake or achieve something—from ‘to get together’ (i.e., to organise, put in order, harmonise)
Read Moreof, or relating to, or characteristic of, or resembling, Jeeves—UK, 1934—refers to Jeeves, the perfect valet in stories by P. G. Wodehouse
Read MoreCanada, 1928—resembling Jeeves, the perfect valet in stories by the English author Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975); this fictional character first appeared in 1915
Read Morean impressive person or thing, viewed as being difficult to rival or surpass—USA, 1912, in reference to the difficulty faced by an entertainer coming on stage immediately after a popular or successful act
Read Morelate 19th century—to disappear suddenly without leaving information about one’s whereabouts—from conjuring, in which ‘vanishing act’ designates an act of making a person or thing disappear as if by magic, and an act of disappearing in this manner
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UK, 1981—a pair of spectacles with an oversized frame of a style that was fashionable in the 1980s—refers to the spectacles worn by Deirdre Barlow, a fictional character in the soap opera Coronation Street
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France—1883: Viennese-style baked goods—1887: a bakery that makes and sells this type of baked goods—those baked goods were introduced into France in 1839 by the Austrian entrepreneur August Zang
Read MoreUSA, 1871: a person who frequently uses or coins slang words and phrases—USA, 1926: a person who studies the use and historical development of slang—blend of the nouns ‘slang’ and ‘linguist’
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word histories 