‘in Dicky’s meadow’: meaning and origin
In the phrase ‘in Dicky’s meadow’, which means ‘in trouble’, the first element is an alteration of ‘dicky’, meaning ‘hazardous’, ‘critical’.
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origin of ‘Indian summer’ and French ‘l’été sauvage’
In ‘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 