‘here’s looking at you’ (used as a toast in drinking)

21st Mar 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

USA, 1871—The phrase ‘here’s looking at you’ is used as a toast in drinking. It is now widely associated with the American film Casablanca (1942), in which Humphrey Bogart addresses Ingrid Bergman with the words “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

origin of ‘lock, stock and barrel’ (i.e., ‘completely’)

18th Mar 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

USA, 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

meaning and origin of ‘to raise Cain’

15th Mar 2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

to create trouble or a commotion—USA, 1840—a euphemism for synonymous phrases such as ‘to raise the Devil’ and ‘to raise hell’—from the name of the eldest son of Adam and Eve and murderer of his brother Abel

‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’

14th Mar 2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

first recorded in a speech by Rev. George W. Bethune, transcribed in ‘Brief abstract of the fourth annual report of board of Managers of the New-York city Colonization Society’, published in ‘The American Christian Instructor’ of April 1836

the American-English phrase ‘hot under the collar’

11th Mar 2018.Reading time 3 minutes.

Of American-English origin, the colloquial phrase ‘hot under (or ‘in’) the collar’ means ‘extremely exasperated or angry’. The earliest instance that I have found is from The Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) of 8th July 1869.

How a life jacket came to be named after Mae West.

9th Mar 2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

From the name of the American film actress Mae West, renowned for her generous bust, the informal noun ‘Mae West’, attested in 1940, denotes an inflatable life jacket, originally as issued to Royal Air Force aviators during World War II.

‘all behind, like a cow’s tail’ (left behind, late)

4th Mar 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

The phrase ‘all behind, like a cow’s tail’ and its variants mean ‘left behind’ and ‘late in accomplishing a task’. They appeared in print in the mid-19th century in the USA, Australia and Britain.

‘take the Fifth’: decline to reveal one’s own secrets

1st Mar 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

‘to take the Fifth’: to decline to reveal one’s own secrets—from ‘to take the Fifth Amendment’: to appeal to Article V of the original amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which states that “No person […] shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

A dunce was originally a follower of John Duns Scotus.

24th Feb 2018.Reading time 10 minutes.

‘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

original meaning of ‘bulldozer’: a racist bully

19th Feb 2018.Reading time 15 minutes.

U.S., 1876—‘bulldozers’: members or supporters of the Democratic Party who used threats and acts of violence in order to prevent Afro-Americans from voting for Republican candidates

word histories

Tag: USA