“ad fontes!”
The 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 […]
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 words man and mouse have been used in alliterative association in: – neither man nor mouse, to mean not a living creature, great or small, – mouse and man, or mice and men, to mean every living thing. The first known user of neither man nor mouse was the poet and writing-master John Davies […]
Read MoreThe phrase from pillar to post means from one place to another in an unceremonious or fruitless manner. Its earliest recorded form is from post to pillar in The Assembly of Gods, an anonymous dream-vision allegory most likely written in the early fourth quarter of the 15th century (it was initially attributed to John Lydgate (1370-1449) […]
Read MoreMEANING a young man paid or financially supported by a woman, typically an older woman, to be her escort or lover ORIGIN In English, gigolo originally denoted a professional male dancing-partner. One of its first users was the American novelist, short story writer and playwright Edna Ferber (1885-1968) in Gigolo, which was published in […]
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MEANING The phrase back to the drawing board is used to indicate that an idea, scheme or proposal has been unsuccessful and that a new one must be devised. ORIGIN This phrase originated in a cartoon by the U.S. cartoonist Peter Arno (Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr – 1904-68), published in The New […]
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from Keeping Up With The Joneses (Cupples & Leon Company – New York, 1920) by ‘Pop’ Momand MEANING If you say that someone is keeping up with the Joneses, you mean that they are doing something in order to show that they have as much money as other people, rather than because […]
Read MoreIn ‘Indian summer’, ‘Indian’ merely denotes something other than that denoted in Europe by the simple noun ‘summer’—as in ‘Indian corn’ (‘maize’).
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word histories 