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“ad fontes!”

Tag: Thomas Chandler Haliburton

‘to drive pigs (to market)’: meaning and origin

30th Oct 2022.Reading time 9 minutes.

to snore—UK, 1828—this phrase likens a person’s snoring to the sound made by a herd of pigs

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‘(as) [adjective] as a meat-ax(e)’: meaning and origin

10th Jul 2022.Reading time 15 minutes.

USA, 1825—the phrases that are built on the pattern ‘(as) [adjective] as a meat-ax(e)’ intensify the meaning of the adjective—this adjective can be ‘savage’, ‘wicked’, or ‘mad’

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meaning and origin of the British-English phrase ‘beer and skittles’

31st Jul 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

UK, 1831—In ‘beer and skittles’, denoting unmixed enjoyment, the image is of a person drinking beer while playing skittles.

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an American phrase for a British trait: ‘a stiff upper lip’

6th May 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

‘a stiff upper lip’: a quality of uncomplaining stoicism—now understood as referring to what is believed to be a quintessentially British trait, the repression of emotion, but originated in fact in North America (USA, 1811)

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