“ad fontes!”
UK—‘a legend in your lifetime’ (1913): allegedly said by Benjamin Jowett to Florence Nightingale—‘a legend in his own lunchtime’ (1969): first recorded in a theatrical review by John Cunningham
Read MoreUSA, 1947—the leading comic in a burlesque entertainment—also ‘first banana’, in contrast to ‘second banana’ and ‘third banana’
Read Morea Latin-American country that is politically unstable because its economy, controlled by U.S. capital, wholly depends on the export of bananas
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UK, 1852—of a person or thing: irretrievably defunct or out of date—with reference to the extinct bird of Mauritius
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USA, 1940—alert and lively—originated in the conventional image of a healthy, spirited squirrel or other animal
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‘in this day and age’ (‘at the present time’)—USA, 1832—tautology, that is to say, ‘day’ and ‘age’ are synonymous, ‘day’ meaning ‘a period of time’
Read MoreUSA, 1951—used as a humorous way of recommending someone not to pursue something at which they are unlikely to be successful
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based on the notion of execution by beheading—popularised by a literal threat of executions made on 25th September 1930 by Adolf Hitler
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the problems with the “novel origin story for ‘Indian Summer’” put forward by Matthew R. Halley in Notes and Queries (September 2017)
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word histories 