“ad fontes!”
The phrase ‘to turn up one’s toes’, meaning ‘to die’, might have originated in the Irish-English phrase ‘to turn up one’s toes to the roots of the daisies’, first found in the passive form ‘with one’s toes turned up to the roots of the daisies’, meaning ‘lying dead’.
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some characteristic slang creations of the British, U.S. and French soldiers during World War One, as recorded in ‘Trench Talk’, published in Everybody’s Magazine (New York) of January 1918
Read MoreThe English noun ‘pound’ is from Latin ‘pondō’, short for ‘lībra pondō’, literally ‘a pound’ (= ‘lībra’) ‘by weight’ (= ‘pondō’)—Latin ‘lībra’ meant ‘the Roman pound of twelve ounces’, and ‘pondō’ was a form of ‘pondus’, meaning ‘weight’.
Read MoreEtymologically, ‘Shrovetide’ denotes the period during which it was customary to attend confession in preparation for Lent—but this period was also marked by feasting before the Lenten fast.
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UK, ‘greengrocer’s apostrophe’ – ‘apostrofly’: the mistaken use of an apostrophe, especially its insertion before the final ‘s’ of an ordinary plural form
Read More‘salad days’: days of youthful inexperience—coined by Shakespeare in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’—alludes to the raw (green and cold) vegetables used in a salad
Read Morefirst recorded in ‘As You Like It’, by Shakespeare—from the former practice of hanging a branch or bunch of ivy as a vintner’s sign in front of a tavern
Read MoreUK (early form: 1763): a fanciful bet wagering the wealth that is available in Lombard Street—a centre of London banking—against something of trifling value
Read MoreUS, 1898: ‘to know one’s onion’ (in the singular), to be very knowledgeable about something — French, 1897: ‘c’est mes oignons’, it’s my own business
Read MoreThe noun ‘spud’, originally the name for the digging implement used to dig up potatoes, was applied to the latter in the 19th century.
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word histories 