Tag: Voltaire

‘to plough one’s own furrow’ – ‘creuser son sillon’

.Reading time 6 minutes.

‘to plough a lonely furrow’, or ‘one’s own furrow’ (UK, 1901): to carry on without help, support or companionship—French ‘creuser son sillon’ (‘to dig one’s own furrow’, first used by Voltaire): to carry out with courage and perseverance the task undertaken

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meaning and origin of the phrase ‘to run the gauntlet’

.Reading time 8 minutes.

                                           SOLDAT PASSE PAR LES BAGUETTES. Un des chatiments du soldat dans un camp c’est de le depouiller nud jusqu’a la ceinture sa chemise pendante sur ses chausses et le faire passer entre deux Rengées […]

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How Horace Walpole coined ‘serendipity’.

.Reading time 13 minutes.

    The noun serendipity denotes the faculty of making by accident discoveries that are both fortunate and unexpected. (It has been borrowed into Spanish as serendipia, into Italian as serendipità, and into French as sérendipité.) It was coined by the English writer and politician Horace Walpole (1717-97). In a letter that he wrote to his friend Horace Mann […]

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