“ad fontes!”
a term of abuse or disparagement, especially for a man’s wife or female relative—1616 in Epicœne, or The Silent Woman, by Ben Jonson—perhaps in reference to an encumbrance, like a clog (i.e., a heavy piece of wood) tied to a dog
Read More‘cross I win (and) pile you lose’ (1673)—‘heads I win (and) tails you lose’ (1728)—meaning: ‘I win whatever happens’—with reference to the practice of tossing a coin to determine a winner or to make a decision
Read More
‘flash in the pan’: originally referred to the priming gunpowder flaring up in the flash-pan without then exploding the main charge in the barrel of a firearm
Read More
noun (late 17th cent.), perhaps from ‘bull’ (= bovine)—possibly distinct from ‘bully’ (mid-16th cent.), ‘darling’, probably from Middle Dutch ‘boele’, ‘lover’
Read More
The Excommunication of Robert the Pious (1875), by the French artist Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921)—image: Wikimedia Commons The officiants have just excommunicated Robert by bell, book, and candle [note 1], and left the quenched candle behind. Robert II (972-1031), known as the Pious, the son of Hugues Capet, was excommunicated for incest by Pope Gregory V […]
Read More
In The English Struwwelpeter and the Birth of International Copyright (The Library, journal of the Bibliographical Society, 2013), Jane Brown and Gregory Jones explain that the ancient free city of Frankfurt am Main saw in 1845 the first appearance of Dr Heinrich Hoffmann¹’s Lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder², a German children’s Christmas picture book. […]
Read More
word histories 