“ad fontes!”
British English: a drinking tour of a number of pubs or bars—but first appeared in 1909 with specific reference to an organised form of propaganda consisting in sending a person from pub to pub in order to promote the Conservative cause
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said to have originated in Oliver Cromwell’s instructions to the painter Peter Lely to represent him as he truly was, without concealing his blemishes
Read Moreearly 20th century—refers to the method of tempting a donkey to move forward by dangling a carrot before it, and beating it with a stick if it refuses
Read Morefrom ‘a bolt out of the blue’, denoting a sudden and unexpected event, with reference to the unlikelihood of a thunderbolt coming from a clear blue sky
Read MoreThe term fifth column, which translates Spanish quinta columna, denotes the enemy’s supporters in one’s own country, or a body of one’s supporters in an attacked or occupied foreign country, hence, more generally, any group of hostile or subversive infiltrators, any enemy in one’s midst—synonym: the enemy within. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) was the […]
Read MoreThe exclamation OMG expresses astonishment, excitement, embarrassment, etc. It is from the initial letters of oh my God (the final element may sometimes represent gosh or goodness). This initialism is older than the Internet or even the Usenet (an early computer network established in 1980), since it is first found in a letter that the […]
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