‘Taffia’: meaning and origin
UK, 1974—applied jocularly to any supposed network of prominent or influential Welsh people, especially one which is strongly nationalistic—a blend of ‘Taffy’, denoting a Welshman, and ‘Mafia’
Read More“ad fontes!”
UK, 1974—applied jocularly to any supposed network of prominent or influential Welsh people, especially one which is strongly nationalistic—a blend of ‘Taffy’, denoting a Welshman, and ‘Mafia’
Read More1955—originated in stage plays purporting to depict life in northern England, particularly in Lancashire—‘mill’: a factory
Read Morewith allusion to food served up on a slice of toast—1877 ‘to have someone on toast’: to have someone at one’s mercy—1886 ‘to be had on toast’: to be cheated
Read More2019—used to mean ‘Anglo-Welsh’—from ‘Gavin & Stacey’, a sitcom about the relationship between an Englishman and a Welsh woman
Read More1893—to allow someone to get on with their task—originated in Wales with reference to fair-mindedness in sports
Read MoreTip-Cat in A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy, and Pretty Miss Polly (1787 edition) The phrase to see which way the cat jumps means to see what direction events are taking before committing oneself. One of its earliest instances is from The Berkshire Chronicle […]
Read MoreThe phrase to miss the bus, or the boat, etc., means to be too slow to take advantage of an opportunity. In A Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1993), B. A. Phythian explained: This expression is said to originate in an Oxford story of the 1840s about John Henry Newman, fellow of Oriel College, […]
Read MoreBriton settlements in the 6th century – settlements of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in Britain, circa 600 In the following, Briton will refer to the Celtic Brittonic-speaking peoples who inhabited Britain south of the Firth of Forth, and who, following the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century, gradually retreated until the […]
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