Z A Phrase A Week

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-02-25 22:31:26

  Stool pigeon Meaning A decoy bird, or a police informer, or criminal's look-out or decoy. Origin Most reference sources say that this expression derives from the hunting practice of fixing a dead or replica pigeon on to a stool to act as a decoy to attract other birds. What the stool in question was isn't entirely clear. It certainly wasn't the three-legged piece of furniture we now know, but one of the many other meanings of the word. In the 16th century a 'stoale' was the base of a tree - what we would now call a stump, just the place for a decoy bird to sit. It is also possible that 'stool' is derived from 'estale', which is an early French word applied to a pigeon used to entice a hawk into a net. It isn't far from 'estale pigeon' to 'stool pigeon'. All of that seems quite straightforward, except for the fact that the term 'stool pigeon', or 'stoolie', doesn't appear in print until the 19th century and in a completely different context. It is first used in American publications and referred to criminals who lured others into crime rather than to decoy birds. The earliest example I can find of the expression is from May 1816 when it was used in the Gettysburg paper The Adams Centinel, in a story about fraudulent paper-makers, i.e. counterfeiters. Unfortunately, the print quality of the paper make it difficult to read the full context, but it does describe someone involved in encouraging the passing of counterfeit banknotes as a 'procuror or stool pigeon'. There are examples of decoy ducks being described as 'stools' from 1825 onwards, but the term 'stool pigeon' isn't used with that meaning until 1871, when M. Schele De Vere listed it in Americanisms; the English of the New World: Stool-Pigeon... it means the pigeon, with its eyes stitched up, fastened on a stool, which can be moved up and down by the hidden fowler. It could be that decoy ducks have been called 'stool (or estale) pigeons' since the 1500s but no one wrote the terms down, although that seems rather unlikely. What we do know is that the current meaning of informer came into being in the USA around the middle of the 19th century. The Sheboygan Mercury printed a piece in August 1851 about the prevailing political situation in Italy: "Everyone fears that his confederate may prove a traitor... and avoided as a Police stool-pigeon and spy." The most likely explanation of the phrase's origin is that it was coined to describe those police informers who hung around bars (on stools no doubt) in order to pick up underworld gossip but that the name was influenced by the earlier, but as then unamed, hunting decoys.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-02-25 22:31:46

  　Cold shoulder 　　 　　Meaning 　　 　　A display of coldness or indifference, intended to wound. 　　 　　Origin 　　 　　The origin of this expression which is often repeated is that visitors to a house who were welcome were given a hot meal but those who weren't were offered only ' cold shoulder of mutton'. This is repeated in several etymological texts, including Hendrickson's usually reliable 'Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins'. There's no evidence to support this view though and it appears to be an example of folk etymology. 　　 　　The first reference to the phrase in print is in Sir Walter Scott's 'The Antiquary', 1816: 　　 　　"The Countess抯 dislike didna gang farther at first than just showing o?the cauld shouther". 　　 　　'Cauld' is Scottish dialect for 'cold'. Should you doubt that 'shouther' means 'shoulder', Scott goes on the use the word in other contexts which make the meaning clear. For example, "They were stout hearts the race of Glenallan, ... they stood shouther to shouther". 　　 　　Note that the shoulder is shown, not eaten - there's no reference to food here. Likewise, in a slightly later work of Scott's - St. Ronan's Well, 1824: 　　 　　"I must tip him the cold shoulder, or he will be pestering me eternally." 　　 　　Scott coined several phrases, e.g. 'lock, stock and barrel'. The fact that the two earliest known citations of'cold shoulder' come from his writing would suggest he coined this too. 　　 　　The phrase began appearing in print frequently after the 1820s and Dickens used it in 1840 in The Old Curiosity Shop. By that time it had migrated across the Atlantic and appears there in a 'letter to the editor' in the New England newspaper The Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, June 1839: 　　 　　'... eminent individuals and his cabinet advisers turned "the cold shoulder" to their ambassador, for his independent act upon this occasion.' 　　 　　Again, there's no connection here to food and the presence of quotation marks indicate that the phrase is being used allusively. 　　 　　All in all, there is little reason to explain the derivation of 'cold shoulder' as anything other than a description of aloofness and disdain, and the source of it as Sir Walter Scott. 　　

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-03-04 07:53:05

  Spruce-up Meaning To make smart and trim. Origin Spruce-up is just a little phrase, but it has taken quite a journey to get to us in its present state. The state it started from was Prussia. The 14th century word spruce is a variant of Pruce, which was itself a shortened version of Prussia. Originally, things that were spruce were those items brought from Prussia. For example, spruce fir trees and, more to the point for this phrase, spruce leather. From the end of the 16th century, spruce was used as a verb meaning 'to make trim and neat'. In The terrors of the night, or, a discourse of apparitions, 1594, Thomas Nashe equates 'sprucing' with 'cleaning': [You shall] spend a whole twelue month in spunging & sprucing. A jerkin made from the expensive imported spruce leather was the fashion accessory of choice for Tudor and Stuart noblemen. Robert Greene, in A Quip for an Upstart Courtier - a quaint dispute between Cloth-breeches and Velvet-breeches, 1592, paints a picture of the dandy of the day: "A fellow briskly apparelled, in a blacke taffata doublet, and a spruce leather jerkin with christall buttons." The first mention of 'sprucing-up' comes in Sir George Etherege's Restoration drama The Man of Mode, 1676: "I took particular notice of one that is alwaies spruc'd up..." There's no doubt that in the 16th century 'spruce' meant 'trim and neat', nor is there doubt that spruce jerkins were considered smart apparel. The link between the two, although not absolutely proven, seems clear enough. So, to really spruce yourself up you need a leather jacket.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-03-13 13:05:50

  Short shrift Meaning To make short work of - to give little consideration to. Origin Shrift? Not a word you hear every day. In fact, apart from in this expression, it is now so rarely used that it's hard to think of a shrift that isn't short. A shrift is a penance (a prescribed penalty) imposed by a priest in a confession in order to provide absolution, often when the confessor was near to death. In the 17th century, criminals were sent to the scaffold immediately after sentencing and only had time for a 'short shrift' before being hanged. Shakespeare was the first to write it down, in Richard III, 1594. RATCLIFF: Dispatch, my lord; the duke would be at dinner: Make a short shrift; he longs to see your head. It doesn't appear again in print until 1814, Scott's Lord of the Isles: "Short were his shrift in that debate. If Lorn encounter'd Bruce!" That seems an uncommonly long time to wait for a phrase that is in regular use. We can assume that, given the gap, the phrase wasn't part of the language in Shakespeare's day, or for some time afterwards, and that he coined it himself. Some sources cite it as '14th century', but neglect to offer any evidence to support that. It didn't migrate across the Atlantic quickly either. The first citation there is from the Adams Sentinel, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, August 1841: "The negroes were to be tried on Wednesday, and it was believed that a short shrift and a speedy doom would be awarded to the guilty." See other phrases and sayings from Shakespeare.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-03-16 20:09:19

  Spitting image Meaning The exact likeness. Origin One of the very first questions that was asked at the Phrasefinder bulletin board was about 'spitting image'. There have been numerous such queries there since and some ask if the term was originally 'splitting image', i.e. deriving from the two matching parts of a split plank of wood. That's a plausible idea. The mirror image matching of the grain of split wood has long been used in furniture and musical instruments for decorative effect. The technique is known as book-matching and the resulting pattern is called fiddleback - for obvious reasons. The theory has its adherents and dates back to at least 1939, when Dorothy Hartley included it in her book Made in England: "Evenness and symmetry are got by pairing the two split halves of the same tree, or branch. (Hence the country saying: he's the 憇plitting image?- an exact likeness.)" As so often though, plausibility isn't the end of the story. The numerous forms of the term 'spitting image' - spit and image, spitten image, the dead spit of etc., appear not to derive from 'split' but from 'spit'. Some commentators have suggested that 'spit' may be a corruption of 'spirit', but that appears to be fanciful and isn't backed up by any early examples of 'spirit and image'. The allusion is more likely to be to someone who is so similar to another as to appear to have been spat out of his mouth. That idea, if not the exact phrase, was in circulation by the end of the 17th century, when George Farquhar used it in his comic play Love and a bottle, 1689: "Poor child! he's as like his own dadda as if he were spit out of his mouth." No version of the phrase is especially old. The earliest reference is in Andrew Knapp and W. Baldwin's The Newgate Calendar, 1824?6: "A daughter, ... the very spit of the old captain." This pre-dates any 'splitting image' citation by a good hundred years, which tends to rule out the latter as the source. 'Spit' or 'dead spit', with the meaning of likeness, appears in print several times in the 19th century. Here 'dead' means precise or exact, as in dead ringer. Toward the end of the 19th century we find 'spit and image'. In 1895, an author called E. Castle published Lt. of Searthey, containing the line: "She's like the poor lady that's dead and gone, the spit an' image she is." Finally, we get to the first known use of 'spitting image' - in A. H. Rice's Mrs. Wiggs, 1901: "He's jes' like his pa - the very spittin' image of him!"

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-03-23 21:10:16

  True blue Meaning Loyal and unwavering in one's opinions or support for a cause. Origin 'True blue' is supposed to derive from the blue cloth that was made at Coventry, England in the late middle ages. The town's dyers had a reputation for producing material that didn't fade with washing, i.e. it remained 'fast' or 'true'. The phrase 'as true as Coventry blue' originated then and is still used (in Coventry at least). The town's standing was recorded in 1670 by John Ray in the first edition of A Compleat Collection of English Proverbs: "Coventry had formerly the reputation for dying of blues; insomuch that true blue became a Proverb to signifie one that was always the same and like himself." There are other theories as to the origin of 'true blue'. For example, the representation in paintings of the Virgin Mary in blue clothing, the purity of lineage of the Spanish nobility (see also blue blood), or the blue aprons worn by butchers. These derivations are unlikely as they aren't supported by documentary evidence that link them to 'true blue'. The Coventry story also has the added credence of closely matching the 'steadfast, unwavering' meaning of the phrase. The change from the literal 'fast' coloured cloth to the allusory 'steadfast' loyal supporters came around the time that Ray was writing his book of proverbs. The Covenanters were a group of 17th century Scottish Presbyterians who swore to uphold the National Covenant and oppose the rule of James I of Scotland. They wore blue as their badge and those who unequivocally supported the cause were called 'true blue'. Samuel Butler referred to this denomination in the satirical poem Hudibras, 1663: For his Religion it was Fit To match his learning and wit; 'Twas Presbyterian true blue The Covenanters are no longer active but conservative politics still maintains an association with the phrase. Blue was later adopted as the colour of the Tory Party in England (later called the Conservative Party). Staunch Conservative supporters, those whom Margaret Thatcher would have called 'one of us', are known as 'true blue' Tories.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-03-30 20:38:45

  Tell it to the marines Meaning A scornful response to a tall and unbelieved story. Origin The US Marine Corps are probably the best-known marines these days and this American-sounding phrase is often thought to refer to them. This isn't an American phrase though and, although it has been known there since the 1830s, it originated in the UK and the marines in question were the Royal Marines. Most of the early citations give a fuller version of the phrase - "You may tell that to the marines, but the sailors will not believe it." The shorter version we use now didn't appear until 1864, in Anthony Trollope's novel A Small House at Allington: "Is that a story to tell to such a man as me! You may tell it to the marines!" The first marines were The Duke of York and Albany's Maritime Regiment of Foot, formed in 1664, in the reign of Charles II. They were soldiers who had been enlisted and trained to serve on board ships. The recruits were considered green and not on a par with hardened sailors, hence the implication that marines were naive enough to believe ridiculous tales, but that sailors weren't. Such a tall tale is often quoted as the source of this phrase. It is said King Charles II made a remark to Samuel Pepys in which he mocked the marines' credulity in their belief in flying fishes. That's a nice story, but it has been shown to be a hoax that was perpetrated in the 1900s by the novelist W. P. Drury - a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the Royal Marines. The phrase actually originated in John Davis's The Post-Captain, or, The wooden walls well manned comprehending a view of naval society and manners, 1804: "He may tell that to the marines, but the sailors will not believe him."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-04-09 19:10:54

  Tuckered out Meaning Exhausted. Origin It will come as no surprise that 'tuckered out' is an American phrase. No 'B-feature' western from the 1930s and 1940s was complete without Gabby Hayes being 'plumb tuckered out'. Hayes' contribution to the genre was celebrated by Mel Brooks in the 1974 film Blazing Saddles. In that, a look-alike actor played the part of Gabby Johnson, spouting 'authentic frontier gibberish' - "dad gum it, I am gonna die here an' no sidewindin bushwackin, hornswaglin, cracker croaker is gonna rouin me biscuit cutter". 'Plumb' is just an intensifier. 'Tuckered out' is rarely seen alone. People are 'plumb', 'clear', 'well-nigh' or, as in the earliest example that I've found, 'prodigiously', 'tuckered out'. That example is from the Wisconsin Enquirer, April 1839: "I reckoned to have got to the tavern by sundown, but I haven't - as I'm prodigiously tuckered out." 'Plumb tuckered out' is somewhat later and the first example I have of that is from the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, February 1989: "They'll get plumb tuckered out waitin." 'Tuckered out' is often applied to children. There doesn't however seem to be a link to 'Tommy Tucker', that member of the 'little' club of nursery rhyme characters - 'Little Bo-Peep', 'Little Boy Blue', 'Little Jack Horner' and 'Little Miss Muffet'. 'Little Tommy Tucker' may not have been very big and he sang for his supper, but there's no mention of him being especially tired. The actual derivation of this phrase is quite prosaic. 'Tucker' is a colloquial New England verb, coined in the early 19th century, meaning 'tired or weary'. 'Tuckered out' is just a straightforward use of that.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-04-14 17:28:11

  A sledgehammer to crack a nut Meaning 'Using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut' is using disproportionate force or expense to overcome a minor problem. Origin Sledge-hammers are large iron hammers which were first used in England in the 15th century. These weren't tools to hammer sledges - the little ice trolleys with runners that the young Citizen Kane was so fond of. 'Sledge' was the original name of that form of hammer; so 'sledgehammer' is somewhat of a tautology. 'Sledging' has recently reappeared as a verb form in the previously refined and gentle world of cricket, where it means the browbeating and harassment of the batsman by the fielders. 'Sledges' were an English invention but this phrase wasn't - it first saw the light of day in 1850s America. 'A sledgehammer to crack a nut' is one of the many versions of the phrase, the others having faded into disuse. The spelling of 'sledgehammer' hasn't yet settled down and is still making the usual progression of hyphenated words pairs, i.e. from 'sledge hammer', to 'sledge-hammer' and eventually, 'sledgehammer'. The OED prefers the hyphen, but 'sledgehammer' is now the more common spelling. Pretty well anything which is small and easy to squash has come verbally under the hammer; typified by nuts or insects. These have included peanuts, walnuts or just nuts; also gnats, flies, mosquitoes etc. The first to fall victim was the humble fly, as in this piece from The Gettysburg Compiler, June 1878: "Don't worry over little ills of life. It is like taking a sledge hammer to kill a fly." Nuts came into the picture a little later, specifically peanuts. For example, this from The Reno Weekly Gazette And Stockman, May 1893: "We know some men who are always looking for a sledge hammer to crack a peanut." Insects and nuts seem to have become combined in the later 'sledgehammer to kill a gnat' version. For example, Grosvenor B. Clarkson's Industrial America in The World War, 1923: "The Board never used a sledgehammer to kill a gnat." Oddly, although the common form is now 'a sledgehammer to crack a nut', the first examples of that in print date from as late the 1960s.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-04-20 15:44:24

  Blue-plate special 　　 　　Meaning 　　 　　A set meal provided at a reduced price. 　　 　　Origin 　　 　　The phrase 'blue plate special' isn't widely known here in the UK. In fact, until questions were asked about it at our bulletin board, I'd not come across it before. It is American and originated there around the start of the 20th century. 　　 　　Considering that the expression has been in common use in the USA for a century or so, the usual US reference sources have little to say about it. A useful first port of call when researching American colloquial expressions is Lighter's Historical Dictionary of American Slang, but the term isn't listed there. Webster's Dictionary does help out by defining 'blue plate' as: 　　 　　1. A restaurant dinner plate divided into compartments for serving several kinds of food as a single order. 　　2. A main course (as of meat and vegetable) served as a single menu item. 　　 　　Webster's doesn't cite an origin but there seems little reason to look further than the colour for the derivation of the phrase - blue plate specials were served on blue plates, usually divided into sections for meat, potatoes etc. Nor does there seem to have been anything especially significant about the colour. Cobalt-blue has been commonly used as a pigment for crockery since the Chinese developed the Willow Pattern design in the 17th century. The number of pieces of blue and white pottery that gardeners find is evidence of its past popularity in both the UK and USA. 　　 　　Blue plate specials don't invoke images of what gourmets call 'fine dining'; we are more in the region here of the establishments that Singer and Zaret wrote about in the song 'One Meat Ball', with its sad lyric 'you get no bread with one meat ball'. 　　 　　The earliest citation of the phrase that I've found is in this advert for the Young Women's Christian Association, printed in the Illinois newspaper The Decatur Daily Review, September 1924. 　　 　　The food writer Daniel Rogov claims that blue-plate special was first used on 22 October 1892, on a menu of a Fred Harvey restaurant on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. I've not seen a copy of that menu and so can't confirm Rogov's assertion, although the use of so specific a date would seem odd if it weren't taken from an actual menu.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-05-02 22:46:38

  Wild goose chase Meaning A hopeless quest. Origin This phrase is old and appears to be one of the many phrases introduced to the language by Shakespeare. The first recorded citation is from Romeo and Juliet, 1592: Romeo: Switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or I'll cry a match. Mercutio: Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five. Our current use of the phrase alludes to an undertaking which will probably prove to be fruitless - clearly wild geese are difficult to catch. Our understanding of the term differs from that in use in Shakespeare's day. The earlier meaning related not to hunting but to horse racing. A 'wild goose chase' was a chase in which horses followed a lead horse at a set distance, mimicking wild geese flying in formation. The equine connection was referred to in another early citation, just ten years after Shakespeare - Nicholas Breton's The Mother's Blessing, 1602: "Esteeme a horse, according to his pace, But loose no wagers on a wilde goose chase." That meaning had been lost by the 19th century. In Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1811, he defines the term much the way we do today: "A tedious uncertain pursuit, like the following a flock of wild geese, who are remarkably shy." The 1978 film 'The Wild Geese' alluded to the phrase in its title. The plot of the film involved a group of mercenaries embarking on a near-impossible mission. Of course, the near-impossible is no problem for action heroes and they caught their prey.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-05-11 09:17:34

  Aid and abet Meaning To help and encourage, usually in the commission of a crime or anti-social act. Origin 'Aid and abet' is a common enough expression but, whilst 'aid' is well-known, what does 'abet' mean exactly? The word derives from the French 'abeter' - to hound, which itself derives from the Norse 'beita' - to cause to bite. The phrase 'aid and abet' was coined in the late 18th century, by which time the term 'abet' had lost its original 'cause to bite' meaning. An early example of its use dates from 1798, when George Washington included it in a letter, first published in Writings, 1893. He didn't appear to have any better opinion of the French than that of the present US administration concerning the Gallic reluctance to aid and abet the war in Iraq: "My mind is not a little agitated by the outrageous conduct of France towards the United States, and at the inimitable conduct of its partisans, who aid and abet their measures." Bear baiting, or as it was first called 'bear abetting', was a popular entertainment in England between the 16th and 19th centuries. It took place in pits in 'bear gardens', in which tethered bears were torn to pieces by trained bulldogs. Such pits were commonplace and some still exist - for example the Bear Pit in Sheffield Botanical Gardens. The 'sport' wasn't viewed with the distaste we now have for animal cruelty - Queen Elizabeth condoned the practice by attending baitings, one of which resulted in 13 dead bears. The Elizabethan writer Robert Laneham described the scene: "It was a sport very pleasant to see, to see the bear, with his pink eyes, tearing after his enemies approach... and when he was loose to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and the slaver hanging about his physiognomy." So, if you plan to help someone, aid them by all means, but no biting please.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-05-20 16:55:45

  In the doldrums Meaning In low spirits; feeling dull and drowsy. Origin The Doldrums is the region of calm winds, centered slightly north of the equator and between the two belts of trade winds, which meet there and neutralize each other. It is widely assumed that the phrase 'in the doldrums' is derived from the name of this region. Actually, it's the other way about. In the 19th century, 'doldrum' was a word meaning 'dullard; a dull or sluggish fellow' and this probably derived from 'dol', meaning 'dull' with its form taken from 'tantrum'. That is, as a tantrum was a fit of petulance and passion, a doldrum was a fit of sloth and dullness, or one who indulged in such. The term was used to mean 'a general state of low spirits' in the early 19th century. For example, this piece from The Morning Herald, April 1811: "I am now in the doldrums; but when I get better, I will send [for] you." In 1824, Lord Byron used the phrase in a nautical context in the verse tale The Island: "From the bluff head where I watch'd to-day, I saw her in the doldrums; for the wind Was light and baffling." [Note: baffling winds are those which are shifting and variable, making progress under sail impossible.] 'In the doldrums' came to refer specifically to sailing ships that were becalmed and unable to progress. The region now called the 'The Doldrums' wasn't named until the mid 19th century and the naming came about as the result of a misapprehension. When reports of ships that were becalmed in that equatorial region described them as being 'in the doldrums', it was mistakenly thought that the reports were describing their location rather than their state. The earliest known reference to the region's name in print is Matthew Maury's The physical geography of the sea, 1855: "The 'equatorial doldrums' is another of these calm places. Besides being a region of calms and baffling winds, it is a region noted for its rains."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-05-26 02:36:50

  By and large Meaning On the whole; generally speaking; all things considered. Origin Many phrases are wrongly ascribed a nautical origin just because they sound like mariner's lingo. This one really is and, like many such nautical phrases, it originated in the days of sail. To get a sense of the original meaning of the phrase we need to understand the nautical terms 'by' and 'large'. 'Large' is easier, so we'll start there. When the wind is blowing from some compass point behind a ship's direction of travel then it is said to be 'large'. Sailors have used this term for centuries. For example, this piece from Richard Hakluyt's The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1591: "When the wind came larger we waied anchor and set saile." When the wind is in that favourable large direction the largest square sails may be set and the ship is able to travel in whatever downwind direction the captain sees fit. 'By' is a rather more difficult concept for landlubbers like me. In simplified terms it means 'in the general direction of'. Sailors would say to be 'by the wind' is to face into the wind or within six compass points of it. The earliest known reference to 'by and large' in print is from Samuel Sturmy, in The Mariners Magazine, 1669: "Thus you see the ship handled in fair weather and foul, by and learge." To sail 'by and large' required the ability to sail not only as earlier square-rigged ships could do, i.e. downwind, but also against the wind. At first sight, and for many non-sailors I'm sure second and third sight too, it seems impossible that a sailing ship could progress against the wind. They can though. The physics behind this is better left to others. Suffice it to say that it involves the use of triangular sails which act like aeroplane wings and provide a force which drags the ship sideways against the wind. By the use of this and by careful angling of the rudder the ship can be steered slightly into the wind. The 19th century windjammers like Cutty Sark were able to maintain progress 'by and large' even in bad wind conditions by the use of many such aerodynamic triangular sails and large crews of able seamen.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-06-03 20:29:27

  Start from scratch Meaning Begin (again) from the beginning, embark on something without any preparation or advantage. Origin 'Start from scratch' is an expression which has altered slightly in meaning since it was first coined. It is now usually used to mean 'start again from the beginning' - where an initial attempt has failed and a new attempt is made with nothing of value carried forward from the first attempt (as opposed to 'made from scratch' which means 'made from basic ingredients'). In the late 1800s, when 'start from scratch' began to be used it simply meant 'start with no advantage'. 'Scratch' has been used since the 18th century as a sporting term for a boundary or starting point which was scratched on the ground. The first such scratch was the crease which is a boundary line for batsmen in cricket. John Nyren's Young Cricketer's Tutor, 1833 records this line from a 1778 work by Cotton: "Ye strikers... Stand firm to your scratch, let your bat be upright." It is the world of boxing that has given us the concept of 'starting from scratch'. The scratched line there specified the positions of boxers who faced each other at the beginning of a bout. This is also the source of 'up to scratch', i.e. meet the required standard, as pugilists would have had to do when offering themselves for a match. Scratch later came to be used as the name of any starting point for a race. The term came to be used in 'handicap' races where weaker entrants were given a head start. For example, in cycling those who were given no advantage had the handicap of 'starting from scratch', while others started ahead of the line. Other sports, notably golf, have taken up the figurative use of scratch as the term for 'with no advantage - starting from nothing'. The Fort Wayne Gazette, April 1887, contains the earliest reference to 'starting from scratch' that I can find, in a report of a 'no-handicap' cycling race: "It was no handicap. Every man was qualified to and did start from scratch."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-06-11 18:06:05

  Skid row Meaning A squalid district inhabited by the impoverished and destitute. Origin This American expression came into being in the Great Depression. Residence on Skid Row evokes imagery of someone who was slipping down in society - 'on the skids'. These skids weren't just figurative though, they did exist. In the late 19th century there was an expansion of the logging industry in the USA, especially in the north-west states, and millions of trees were felled to supply the building trade. Large tree-trunks were hauled, either to sawmills or to the nearest road, river or railway, along tracks made of greased timbers. These were known to loggers as 'skid roads'. The 1880 Topographical Survey of the Adirondack Region refers to these: "... lumbermen had cut 'skid-roads' on which logs were drawn [etc.]." How these forest tracks came to be associated with the down-market locale of people who were living on the breadline, or where the first such Skid Road was, is uncertain. It could well be that, due to the unreliability of employment in the timber-felling trade, loggers hung around on the skid roads hoping for work. This, combined with the 'sliding down' imagery and the fact that skid roads leading to town sawmills or railways were built 'on the wrong side of the tracks' is surely enough to link skid roads with the bottom end of society. The alteration from 'skid road' to 'skid row' came later and was well-established by the 1930s. The lexicographer Godfrey Irwin defined it in American tramp and underworld slang, 1931: "Skid row, the district where workers congregate when in town or away from their job."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-06-15 19:06:48

  On the wagon Meaning 'On the wagon' - abstaining from alcohol. 'Off the wagon' - returned to drinking after an attempt to give it up. Origin Suggested explanations of the origin of 'on the wagon' focus on actual wagons that were used to transport people; for example, condemned prisoners who had taken their last drink in this life and were transported to the gallows by wagon. Another story has it that Evangeline Booth, the US Salvation Army National Commander, toured the Bowery slums in a wagon picking up drunks and delivering them to sobriety. The phrase predates Booth's work in New York, so that can't be the origin. It isn't far from the truth though, but, as we'll see below, no actual wagon rides were involved. 'On the wagon' was coined in the USA around the turn of the 20th century. The phrase began as 'on the water-cart', migrated to 'on the water-wagon' and finally to 'on the wagon'. The late 19th century saw the emergence of several temperance organisations, notably The Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893 and The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874. These followed on from the work of The Abstinence Society which had encouraged millions of men to 'take the pledge'. The Pledge wasn't just a vague intention to avoid drink; it was a specific and absolute promise never to drink again and was taken very seriously: "I promise to abstain from all intoxicating drinks except used medicinally and by order of a medical man, and to discountenance the cause and practice of intemperance. Water wagons were a commonplace sight in US cities at the time. They didn't carry drinking water but were used to damp down dusty streets during dry weather. Those who had vowed to give up drink and were tempted to lapse said that they would drink from the water-cart rather than take strong drink. The first reference to it that I've found in print is from Alice Caldwell Hegan's comic novel Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, 1901: I wanted to git him some whisky, but he shuck his head. "I'm on the water-cart." 'Water-wagon' was soon used as an alternative and the distinction between the figurative phrase 'on the wagon' and real water-wagons was made clear in this piece from The Davenport Daily Leader, March 1904: "Peter Solle took a bad fall from the water wagon this morning. The water wagon was not that imaginary, visionary affair that is sometimes applied to he who signs the pledge, but was the real thing, all there and big as life."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-06-24 15:03:57

  Play ducks and drakes Meaning To behave recklessly; to idly squander one's wealth. Origin Ducks and drakes is the old English name for the pastime of skimming flat stones on the surface of water to make them bounce as many times as possible. There are various names for the game, for example, stone skipping in the USA and stone skimming in the UK; in fact most countries have their own name for it. I doubt that there's a child anywhere in the world who hasn't tried to establish his or her own record. Most people manage seven or eight bounces. In researching this phrase I was surprised to find that the world record, as endorsed by the Guinness Book of Records, stands at 40. That hardly seems possible, but there is video evidence of Kurt Steiner setting that record in 2002. The pastime surely pre-dates written records. The first known reference to it in print is in The nomenclator, or remembrancer of Adrianus Junius, translated by John Higgins in 1585: "A kind of sport or play with an oister shell or stone throwne into the water, and making circles yer it sinke, etc. It is called a ducke and a drake, and a halfe-penie cake." Why that name was chosen isn't clear. Most early citations give the phrase as 'make ducks and drakes' rather than 'play ducks and drakes', so it may be that the circular ripples that are formed evoked images of splashing waterfowl. For example, from the play Dick of Devon, circa 1626: "The poorest ship-boy Might on the Thames make duckes and drakes with pieces Of eight fetchd out of Spayne." Around the same time, the use of 'ducks and drakes' to refer to idly throwing something away or squandering resources came into use. That usage was recorded in James Cooke's Tu Quoque, 1614: "This royal Caesar doth regard no cash; Has thrown away as much in ducks and drakes As would have bought some 50,000 capons." The adoption of 'play ducks and drakes' meaning to throw away money seems to have come directly from the throwing of stones in the waterside game. The meaning now seems to have wandered closer toward the 'unreliable and reckless' and away from the original 'idly squandering'. This may be a simple migration of meaning over time, or it may be due to a confusion between 'playing ducks and drakes' and 'playing fast and loose'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-06-24 15:17:08

  stone skipping stone skimming ducke drake a halfe-penie cake 'make ducks and drakes' rather than 'play ducks and drakes' ripple: [ 'ripl ] n. 涟波,涟漪,波纹 v. 使...起涟漪,起微波,起潺潺声 词形变化: 副词:rip-plingly 名词:rippler 动词过去式:rippled 过去分词:rippled 现在分词:rippling 第三人称单数:ripples 例句与用法: 1. The wheat rippled in the breeze. 小麦在微风中起伏波动。 2. The breeze rippled the quiet water. 微风吹皱了平静的水面。 3. She threw a stone into the pond and watched the ripples spread. 她把一块石头扔进池塘里, 看著水的波纹扩散开. 4. A ripple, as on the surface of water. （水面上的等）细浪，涟漪 waterfowl water bird waterbird evoked images of splashing waterfowl squander: [ 'skwɔndə ] v. 浪费,使...散开 词形变化: 副词:squanderingly 名词:squanderer 动词过去式:squandered 过去分词:squandered 现在分词:squandering 第三人称单数:squanders 例句与用法: 1. He has squandered all his savings on drink. 他把存的钱全买酒喝了。 2. Don't squander your affection on him, he'll never love you. 不要把感情浪费在他身上，他是永远不会爱你的。 3. He's squandered all his savings on drink. 他把存的钱全买酒喝了. 4. It's a crime to squander our country's natural resources. 浪费我们国家的自然资源是一种罪恶 capon: [ 'keipən ] n. 去势的 castrate: [ kæs'treit ] v. 阉割,删除,去掉...最重要的部分 词形变化: 名词:castrater 动词过去式:castrated 过去分词:castrated 现在分词:castrating 第三人称单数:castrates 例句与用法: 1. A bullock is a castrated bull. 阉牛是去势的公牛. waterside game play ducks and drakes play fast and loose unreliable and reckless idly squandering meaning wandered closer towards a simple migration of meaning

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-06-29 10:41:18

  Get underway Meaning Begin a journey or a project. Origin We are familiar with this little expression but, like other idioms that we absorb when learning the language, it doesn't make much literal sense. Why 'under'? Why 'way'? It turns out that a confusing of several seafaring words had a bearing on the coining of this nautical phrase. 'Way' doesn't mean here road or route but has the specifically nautical meaning of 'the forward progress of a ship though the water', or the wake that the ship leaves behind. Way has been used like that since at least the 17th century. For example, this piece from Samuel Sturmy's Mariners Magazine, 1669: "If you sail against a Current, if it be swifter than the Ship's way, you fall a Stern." This usage continued into the 20th century and was also used in aviation as well as shipping. In 1911, The Times reported: "He shut off his engine and by so doing took the 'way' off the biplane." The term 'under sail' and 'underway' appear at first sight to be quite similar. The former seems easy to interpret, as sailing ships are literally under the sails when in motion, but what are we under in 'underway'? That is easier to understand when we know that this 'under' was originally 'on the'. Knowing that, 'on the way' makes sense. 'On the way' migrated to 'underway', probably due to the influence of the Dutch word 'onderweg', which translates into English as 'underway' but to 17th century sailors must have sounded more like 'on the way'. More confusion enters with doubts over the phrase's spelling. The term 'weigh anchor', and the fact that when ships are loaded with cargo and ready to sail they are weighed down, has lead to the phrase being written as 'under weigh'. This a common enough misspelling to have become almost standardised; so much so that, in his 1846 Nautical Dictionary, Arthur Young wrongly suggested that under weigh was in fact the correct original spelling: "Under way, this expression, often used instead of under weigh, seems to be a convenient one for denoting that a ship or boat is making progress through the water, whether by sails or other motive power." There seems little to justify it, but Young must have had some success in promoting that view as many prominent 19th century authors, including Thackeray, Herman Melville and Charles Dickens, all spelled the term that way - or should that be that weigh? The word 'way' is now flourishing as the converse of 'no way', but as 'a ship's progress' it is all but defunct. The loss of the association with shipping has removed the incentive to spell the phrase 'under weigh' and 'underway' is now universally used.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-07-08 13:12:33

  Curiosity killed the cat Meaning Inquisitiveness can lead one into dangerous situations. Origin Everyone knows that, despite its supposed nine lives, curiosity killed the cat. Well, not quite. The 'killed the cat' proverb originated as 'care killed the cat'. By 'care' the coiner of the expression meant 'worry/sorrow' rather than our more usual contemporary 'look after/provide for' meaning. That form of the expression is first recorded in the English playwright Ben Jonson's play Every Man in His Humour, 1598: "Helter skelter, hang sorrow, care'll kill a Cat, up-tails all, and a Louse for the Hangman." The play was one of the Tudor humours comedies, in which each major character is assigned a particular 'humour' or trait. The play is thought to have been performed in 1598 by The Lord Chamberlain's Men, a troupe of actors including William Shakespeare and William Kempe. Shakespeare was no slouch when it came to appropriating a memorable line and it crops up the following year in Much Ado About Nothing: "What, courage man! what though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care." The proverbial expression 'curiosity killed the cat', which is usually used when attempting to stop someone asking unwanted questions, is much more recent. The earlier form was still in use in 1898, when it was defined in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: "Care killed the Cat. It is said that a cat has nine lives, but care would wear them all out." Curiosity hasn't received a good press over the centuries. Saint Augustine wrote in Confessions, AD 397, that, in the eons before creating heaven and earth, God "fashioned hell for the inquisitive". John Clarke, in Paroemiologia, 1639 suggested that "He that pryeth into every cloud may be struck with a thunderbolt". In Don Juan, Lord Byron called curiosity "that low vice". That bad opinion, and the fact that cats are notoriously inquisitive, lead to the source of their demise being changed from 'care' to 'curiosity'. The earliest known printed reference that uses the 'curiosity' form is O. Henry's Schools and Schools, 1909: "Curiosity can do more things than kill a cat; and if emotions, well recognized as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealousy would soon leave the whole world catless." The earliest version that I have found of the precise current form of the proverb in print is from The Portsmouth Daily Times, March 1915, in a piece headed The Height of Curiosity: Mother - "Don't ask so many questions, child. Curiosity killed the cat." Willie - "What did the cat want to know, Mom?"

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-07-16 13:36:16

  Take umbrage Meaning To be displeased or offended by the actions of others. Origin There doesn't seem to much we can do with umbrage other than to take it, i.e. become displeased - the word is no longer used in any other context. What is umbrage exactly? It sounds like some form of distasteful patent medicine. Step back to the 15th century and umbrage didn't mean displeasure. The word was inherited into English from the Latin 'umbra', meaning shade. Umbrage came to be used in English to mean shade or shadow, or the foliage of trees which cause shadows. For example, this piece from John Lydgate's 1426 translation of De Guileville's Pilgrimage of the life of man: ...my vysage whiche is clowded with vmbrage, 'Taking umbrage', i.e. sitting under a shady tree, had then no negative associations, as is made clear in Sir Thomas Elyot's The image of gouernance, 1540: The sayd trees gaue a commodyous and plesant vmbrage. Over time, the figurative use of umbrage to mean displeasure evolved, probably from the simple association of darkness with gloomy thoughts. In that meaning, umbrage was first said to be given rather than taken, as this example from Sir Nathaniel Brent's 1620 translation of the Historie of the council of Trent shows: He... therefore besought them to take away all those words that might give him any Vmbrage. The shade/disfavour metaphor is made explicit in this piece from Sir Robert Naunton's Fragmenta regalia, 1635: On the fall of the Duke he stood some yeers in umbrage, and without imployment. The first record of anyone taking umbrage is in Lord Fountainhall's [Chronological Notes on] The decisions of the Lords of Council and Session, 1680: The Bishop... took umbrage at his freedom of speech in the pulpit anent [side by side with] the government.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-07-21 23:47:24

  Rack and ruin Meaning Complete destruction. Origin It might be thought that the rack in this phrase refers to the mediaeval torture device, as in the phrase rack one's brains. This rack is however a variant of the now defunct word wrack, more usually known to us now as wreck. The rather tautological use of the two similar words 'rack' and 'ruin' is for the sake of emphasis. In that respect the phrase follows the pattern of beck and call, chop and change, fair and square etc. The term 'going to wreck' was the forerunner of 'rack and ruin' and was used as early as 1548, in a sermon by Ephraim Udall: "The flocke goeth to wrecke and vtterly perisheth." Henry Bull moved the phrase on to 'wrack and ruin' in his translation of Luther's Commentarie upon the fiftene psalmes, 1577: "Whiles all things seeme to fall to wracke and ruine." We finally get to the contemporary 'rack and ruin' in 1599, when the Oxford historian Thomas Fowler published The history of Corpus Christi College: "In the mean season the College shall goe to rack and ruin." Judging from the accompanying picture the college seems to have survived the following 400 years quite well, and Fowler need not have worried.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-07-27 20:21:06

  Coin a phrase Meaning Create a new phrase. Origin 'To coin a phrase' is now rarely used with its original 'invent a new phrase' meaning but is almost always used ironically to introduce a banal or clichéd sentiment. This usage began in the mid 20th century. For example, in Francis Brett Young's novel Mr. Lucton's Freedom, 1940: "It takes all sorts to make a world, to coin a phrase." Coining, in the sense of creating, derives from the coining of money by stamping metal with a die. Coins - also variously spelled coynes, coigns, coignes or quoins - were the blank, usually circular, disks from which money was minted. This usage derived from an earlier 14th century meaning of coin, which meant wedge. The wedge-shaped dies which were used to stamp the blanks were called coins and the metal blanks and the subsequent 'coined' money took their name from them. Coining later began to be associated with inventiveness in language. In the 16th century the 'coining' of words and phrases was often referred to. By that time the monetary coinage was often debased or counterfeit and the coining of words was often associated with spurious linguistic inventions. For example, in George Puttenham's The arte of English poesie, 1589: "Young schollers not halfe well studied... will seeme to coigne fine wordes out of the Latin." Shakespeare, the greatest coiner of them all, also referred to the coining of language in Coriolanus, 1607: "So shall my Lungs Coine words till their decay." Quoin has been retained as the name of the wedge-shaped keystones or corner blocks of buildings. Printers also use the term as the name for the expandable wedges that are used to hold lines of type in place in a press. This has provoked some to suggest that 'coin a phrase' derives from the process of quoining (wedging) phrases in a printing press. That is not so. 'Quoin a phrase' is recorded nowhere and 'coining' meant 'creating' from before the invention of printing in 1440. Co-incidentally, printing does provide us with a genuine derivation that links printing with linguistic banality - cliché. This derives from the French cliquer, from the clicking sound of the stamp used to make metal typefaces. 'Coin a phrase' itself arises much later than the invention of printing - the 19th century in fact. The earliest use of the term that I have found is in the Wisconsin newspaper The Southport American, July 1848: "Had we to find... a name which should at once convey the enthusiasm of our feelings towards her, we would coin a phrase combining the extreme of admiration and horror and term her the Angel of Assassination."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-08-03 18:59:56

  To a T Meaning Exactly; properly. Often used in the phrase 'suits to a T'. Origin 'To a T', which is sometimes written 'to a tee', is an old phrase and is first recorded in James Wright's satire The Humours and conversations of the town, 1693: "All the under Villages and Towns-men come to him for Redress; which he does to a T." It is difficult to determine the origin of this phrase. It would be helpful to know the correct spelling; 'T' or 'tee'. The proposed derivations that assume the latter are: The phrase derives from the sports of golf or curling, which have a tee as the starting or ending point respectively. The curling usage would seem to match the meaning better as the tee is the precise centre of the circle in which players aim to stop their stones. However, neither sport is referred to in any of the early citations of the phrase and there's really no evidence to support either derivation apart from use of the word 'tee'. The 'to a tee' version isn't recorded at all until 1771 when J. Giles used it in his Poems: "I'll tell you where You may be suited to a tee." John Jamieson, in the etymological dictionary Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1867, records 'to a tee' as 'to a tittle'. If even a 19th century Scots lexicographer doesn't support the Scottish sports origin they would seem to lack credibility. Given Wright's earliest 'to a T' usage and the lack of evidence to support the 'tee' version, it is safe to assume the proper spelling is 'to a T'. So, what T was meant? Again, there are alternatives; 'T-shirt', or 'T-square', or some abbreviation of a word starting with T. 'T-shirt' is clearly as least 300 years too late, has no connection with the meaning of the phrase and can't be taken as a serious contender. 'T-square' has more going for it, in that a T-square is a precise drawing instrument, but also lacks any other evidence to link it to the phrase. The first letter of a word. If this is the derivation then the word in question is very likely to be 'tittle'. A tittle is a small stroke or point in writing or printing and is now best remembered via the term jot or tittle. The best reason for believing that this is the source of the 'T' is that the phrase 'to a tittle' existed in English more than a century before 'to a T', with the same meaning. For example, in Edward Hall's Chronicles, circa 1548, we find: "I then... began to dispute with my selfe, little considerynge that thus my earnest was turned euen to a tittyl not so good as, estamen." When there isn't a definitive origin and there are several proposed derivations, the wisest course is to list the possibilities and leave it at that. In this case, although there is no smoking gun, the 'to a tittle' derivation would probably stand up in court as 'beyond reasonable doubt'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-08-10 18:50:29

  Curry favour Meaning To attempt to gain favour or ingratiate oneself, by officious courtesy or flattery. Origin The BBC is currently (August 2007) running a series of programmes to mark the 60th anniversary of the Partition of India. Given the popularity of Indian food in the UK they have included several cookery programmes and I have now heard the 'curry flavour' pun three times - and counting. On looking into the source of the originating 'curry favour' phrase (curry source? - now they've got me at it) it appears that it isn't original at all, but is itself a mishearing of another phrase. To disentangle 'curry favour', or as the Americans prefer it spelled 'curry favor', we need to look at 'curry' and 'favour' separately. The word curry denoting the spicy food comes from the Indian words 'kari' or 'karil' and was known in the English-speaking world by the late 16th century. A translation of Van Linschoten's His Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies, 1598, records that: "Most of their fish is eaten with rice, which they seeth in broth, which they put upon the rice, and is somewhat soure... but it tasteth well, and is called Carriel." To no great surprise, the curry of 'curry favour' has nothing to do with Indian food. It comes instead from an Old French verb conraier - 'to prepare', 'to put in order'. This is the same source as the name for the rubbing down and dressing of horses - curry-combing. The mishearing that gives us 'curry favour' is of the second word. This was originally not 'favour' but 'favel'. John Palsgrave's Lesclarcissement de la langue fran鏾yse [The clarification of the French language], 1530, records a curryfavell as 'a flatterar'. Favel comes from the 1310 poem by the French royal clerk Gervais du Bus - Roman de Fauvel [The Romance of Fauvel]. That morality tale relates the story of Fauvel, an ambitious and vain donkey, who deceives and corrupts the greedy leaders of church and state. The name Fauvel or Favvel, which is formed from 'fau-vel' (in English 'veiled lie'), is an acrostic made from the initial letters of a version of the seven deadly sins: flaterie (flattery/pride), avarice (greed/gluttony), vilanie (wrath), vari閠?(inconstancy), envie (envy), and lachet?(cowardice). In the poem, the rich and powerful humiliate themselves by bowing down and stroking the coat of the false leader, i.e. by 'currying Fauvel'. The first citation of 'curry favour' rather than 'curry Fauvel' comes in Alexander Barclay's, The mirrour of good manners, circa 1510: "Flatter not as do some, With none curry fauour."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-08-21 14:54:08

  A flash in the pan Meaning Something which disappoints by failing to deliver anything of value, despite a showy beginning. Origin There's reason to believe that this phrase derives from the Californian Gold Rush of the mid 19th century. Prospectors who panned for gold supposedly became excited when they saw something glint in the pan, only to have their hopes dashed when it proved not to be gold but a mere 'flash in the pan'. This is an attractive and plausible notion, in part because it ties in with another phrase related to disappointment - 'it didn't pan out'. 'Panning out' can be traced to US prospectors and was used in that context by the early 20th century. For example, Paul Haworth's Trailmakers of the Northwest, 1921: "The Colonel had told them that a cubic foot of gravel would pan out twenty dollars in gold." Nevertheless, gold prospecting isn't the origin of 'a flash in the pan'. The phrase did have a literal meaning, i.e. it derives from a real flash in a real pan, but not a prospector's pan. Flintlock muskets used to have small pans to hold charges of gunpowder. An attempt to fire the musket in which the gunpowder flared up without a bullet being fired was a 'flash in the pan'. The term has been known since the late 17th century. Elkanah Settle, in Reflections on several of Mr. Dryden's plays 1687, had this to say: "If Cannons were so well bred in his Metaphor as only to flash in the Pan, I dare lay an even wager that Mr. Dryden durst venture to Sea." See also - lock, stock and barrel.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-08-24 19:05:03

  Run the gauntlet Meaning To go through a series of criticisms or harsh treatments at the hands of one's detractors. Origin Gauntlets are familiar to us today as the stout leather gloves used for gardening and the like. Mediaeval gauntlets were made of even sterner stuff. They were gloves that formed part of a suit of armour. Gauntlets, or gantlettes, gauntelotes etc., were usually covered with plates of steel and were as useful for attack as for defence. When a dispute arose involving a member of the English nobility who was wealthy enough to own his own armour then he (it was always a he) would literally 'throw down the gauntlet' as a challenge. That phrase is first recorded in Hall's Chronicles of Richard III, 1548: "Makynge a proclamacion, that whosoeuer would saie that kynge Richard was not lawefully kynge, he woulde fighte with hym at the vtteraunce, and threwe downe his gauntlet." Another ancient custom of British fighting men was a form of punishment in which the culprit was made to run stripped to the waist between two rows of men who whipped and beat him as he passed by. These beatings were extremely severe and the victims often died as a result - and many of those that didn't may well have wished they had, as survivors were sometimes executed afterwards. This punishment is the source of the term 'running the gauntlet' and was used by both the British army and navy. It would be natural to assume that gauntlets were used in the beatings and that 'running the gauntlet' derived from that. In fact, that's not the case and neither the punishment nor the phrase have anything to do with gauntlets, either military or horticultural. The name of the brutal punishment was originally 'running the gantelope'. Gantlope is an Anglicised form of the Swedish word 'gatlop', or 'gatu-lop', which refers to the gate of soldiers that the victim had to pass through. The Ist Earl of Shaftsbury recorded the phrase in his Diary, 1646: "Three were condemned to die, two to run the gantelope." It didn't take long for gantlope to migrate into ganlet, or gauntlet - possibly as a result of a simple muddle over the similar-sounding words or possibly because of the association with the use of gauntlets as weapons and with the antagonism implicit in 'throwing down the gauntlet'. The earliest known record of the gantlet form of the phrase is in Joseph Glanvill's The vanity of dogmatizing, or confidence in opinions etc., 1661: "To print, is to run the gantlet, and to expose ones self to the tongues strapado." The first use of the currently used 'gauntlet' spelling comes from the intriguingly named Increase Mather, in The history of King Philip's war, 1676: "They stripped them naked, and caused them to run the Gauntlet." Some writers, recognising that 'gauntlet' was used in error, continued to use the 'gantelope' version into the 18th and 19th centuries - well after the word was archaic and otherwise unused. For example, Henry Fielding in The History of Tom Jones, a foundling , 1749: "Some said he ought to be tied neck and heels; others that he deserved to run the gantlope." Any such attempts are now long abandoned and we are left with a 'gauntlet' phrase that has nothing to do with gauntlets.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-09-02 08:45:46

  Caught red-handed Meaning To be caught in the act of committing a misdemeanour, with the evidence there for all to see. Origin The Red Hand has long been a heraldic and cultural symbol of the northern Irish province of Ulster. One of the many myths as to its origin is the tale of how, in a boat race in which the first to touch the shore of Ulster was to become the province's ruler, one contestant guaranteed his win by cutting off his hand and throwing it to the shore ahead of his rivals. The potency of the symbol remains and is used in the Ulster flag, and as recently as the 1970s a group of Ulster loyalist paramilitaries named themselves the Red Hand Commandos. Red-handed doesn't have a mythical origin however - it is a straightforward allusion to having blood on one's hands after the execution of a murder or a poaching session. The term originates, not from Northern Ireland, but from a country not far from there, i.e. Scotland. An earlier form of 'red-handed', simply 'red hand', dates back to a usage in the Scottish Acts of Parliament of James I, 1432. Red-hand appears in print many times in Scottish legal proceedings from the 15th century onward. For example, this piece from Sir George Mackenzie's A discourse upon the laws and customs of Scotland in matters criminal, 1674: "If he be not taken red-hand the sheriff cannot proceed against him." The earliest known printed version of 'red-handed' is from Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, 1819: "I did but tie one fellow, who was taken redhanded and in the fact, to the horns of a wild stag." Scott was an avid student of Scottish history and folklore, which he relentlessly mined for inspiration in his novel writing. He is certain to have heard 'redhand' before writing Ivanhoe. The step from 'redhand' to 'redhanded' isn't large, so calling Scott the originator of the term is perhaps being over generous to him. Nevertheless, the enormous popularity of his books certainly brought 'red-handed' to a wide audience and, without him, the term might now be long forgotten. 16th and 17th century Scottish sources provide various examples of 'apprehended redhand', 'taken with redhand' etc. but the earliest known citation of the currently used 'caught red-handed' phrase is in the English novelist George Alfred Lawrence's work Guy Livingstone; or, 'Thorough', 1857: My companion picked up the object; and we had just time to make out that it was a bell-handle and name-plate, when the pursuers came up - six or seven "peelers" and specials, with a ruck of men and boys. We were collared on the instant. The fact of the property being found in our possession constituted a 'flagrans delictum' - we were caught "red-handed." See also - phrases coined by Sir Walter Scott.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-09-07 17:43:00

  Prime time Meaning The time of day when the TV audience is at its largest. Origin We now associate the term 'prime time' with TV ratings and advertising, i.e. the prime slot for the placing of TV adverts. In that context it originated in the USA soon after WWII. For example, this piece from The Wall Street Journal, January 1947: "Columbia Broadcasting System, for instance, has an unsold hour of prime time on Tuesday nights, beginning at 9:30." A prior usage of 'prime time' had been coined many centuries earlier, to mean Spring or 'at the beginning' (of the day, of life etc.). It is likely to have been inherited into English from the French word for Spring - Printemps. Geoffrey Chaucer used the term in the late 14th century, in his translation of the French lyric poem The Romance of the Rose: "Pryme temps full of frostes whit, And May devoide of al delit." By the 16th century, the Anglicization to 'prime time' was complete, as in this example from Edward Hall's The Union of the Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and York, 1548: "In ye pryme tyme of the yere he toke his iorney towardes Yorke." [In the Spring he took his journey to York] Many European languages have a form of 'prime' meaning 'first/primary', for example, 'prime', in English/Dutch/German, 'prim', in Swedish/Danish/Icelandic, 'prima', in Spanish/Portuguese/Italian etc. These all stem from the Latin 'prima' (first hour). In addition to the Chaucerian 'Spring', the Latin 'prima' was also the source of 'prime' as the name of the first of the canonical hours of prayer of the Catholic Church. This gave us a yet earlier meaning of 'prime time', i.e. 'early morning', the time when the first prayers were offered. Old English texts which include references to this 'prime' include The Rule of Saint Benedict, which dates from circa 530.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-09-22 17:40:13

  The whole shebang Meaning All of it; the whole thing. Origin This is an American phrase, from the 1920s. The first question for those of us not living in the USA, and I suspect quite a few that do, is, what's a shebang? That isn't so easy to answer. The earliest known citation of the word uses it as some form of hut or rustic dwelling. That's in Walt Whitman's Specimen Days, from Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, 1862: "Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the camps, talking with the men, &c. Sometimes at night among the groups around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes." Just a few years later, the Marysville Tribune, November 1869 printed a list of 'The Idioms of Our New West' and defined 'shebang' like this: "'Shebang' is applied to any sort of house or office." Soon after that, Mark Twain uses 'shebang' to refer to a form of vehicle - in Roughing It, 1872: "Take back your money, madam. We can't allow it. You're welcome to ride here as long as you please, but this shebang's chartered, and we can't let you pay a cent." There are various 'the whole' expressions which derive from America - 'the whole ball of wax', 'the whole nine yards', 'the whole box of dice', 'the whole shooting match', 'the whole enchilada', 'the whole kit and caboodle' etc. Whilst these by and large refer to real objects, none of them represent 'wholeness' and they have just been tacked on to 'the whole' to make catchy phrases. 'Shebang' was also used that way - and that the fact that people using it didn't know what a shebang was didn't really matter. It was simply a colourful way of saying 'thing'. The word appears to have arrived fully-formed in the 1860s. Prior to 1862, there are no examples in print. During the 1860s there are dozens of examples in US newspapers, literature etc. That 'vehicle' usage does suggest a possible link with the name for a form of early UK sightseeing bus, i.e. charabanc (pronounced sharra-bang). This derives from the French char-?bancs - carriage with benches. Charabancs, affectionately known to passengers as 'sharras', were a commonplace in Britain from the introduction of horse-drawn examples in the early 1800s to as late as the 1970s. Could 'shebang' be a variant of 'sharra-bang'? Well, it's certainly possible, although the evidence to support that view is entirely circumstantial. In June 1872, the same year that Twain was using 'shebang' to mean vehicle, the Sedalia Daily Democrat printed a piece which used the name just to mean 'thing', and this is the earliest example of 'the whole shebang': "Well, the Democracy can flax [beat up] the whole shebang, and we hope to see our party united."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-09-22 17:40:44

  The whole kit and caboodle Meaning A collection of things. Origin The words kit and caboodle have rather similar meanings. A kit - is set of objects, as in a toolkit, or what a soldier would put in his kit-bag. A caboodle (or boodle) - is an archaic term meaning group or collection, usually of people. There are several phrases similar to the whole kit and caboodle, which is first recorded in that form in 1884. Most of them are of US origin and all the early citations are American. Caboodle was never in common use outside the USA and now has died out everywhere, apart from its use in this phrase. - The whole kit - the whole of a soldier's necessaries, the contents of his knapsack. From Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785. - The whole kit and boodle Although this citation is slightly later than that of the final 'whole kit and caboodle', it's worth including as it gives a 19th-century version of the meaning of the term. It may still be a step along the way - either unrecorded before 1888 or recorded in an, as yet, undiscovered work. This piece, titled 'The Origin of Boodle', is from The Dunkirk Observer-Journal, New York, September 1888: "It is probably derived from the Old-English word bottel, a bunch or a bundle, as a bottel of straw. "The whole kit and boodle of them" is a New England expression in common use, and the word in this sense means the whole lot. Latterly, boodle has come to be somewhat synonymous with the word pile, the term in use at the gaming table, and signifying a quantity of money. In the gaming sense, when a man has "lost his boodle", he has lost his pile or whole lot of money, whatever amount he happened to have with him." - The whole kit and boiling (or bilin') Sinclair Lewis, in 'Main Street', 1920: "...and some of these college professors are just about as bad, the whole kit and bilin' of 'em are nothing in God's world but socialism in disguise!" - The whole (or whool) boodle From J. Neal's, 'Down-Easters', 1833: "I know a feller 'twould whip the whool boodle of 'em an' give 'em six." From Bangor Daily Whig And Courier, Maine, 1839: "A whole squad have got to permit to see you. Who are they? I don't know, a whole boodle of them." - The whole caboodle From the Ohio State Journal, 1848: "The whole caboodle will act upon the recommendation of the Ohio Sun." Which brings us finally to the whole kit and caboodle From the Syracuse Sunday Standard, New York, Nov, 1884: "More audiences have been disappointed by him and by the whole kit-and-caboodle of his rivals." It is most likely that these phrases were in use simultaneously and that there isn't a clear parentage of one to another. 'Kit and caboodle' had the advantage of the alliterative 'k' sound and that's doubtless why it has outlasted the others, which are now all fallen out of use. What we can't confirm is that the word caboodle migrated from boodle in order to sound better when matched with kit. It is possible that that's what happened, but the dates of the known citations don't support it. Whole kit and caboodle, (1884) is recorded before whole kit and boodle, (1888) and whole caboodle comes well before both, in 1848. Perhaps that's just the inadequacy or either records or research and that citations with the appropriate dates will emerge later.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-09-22 17:40:45

  The whole kit and caboodle Meaning A collection of things. Origin The words kit and caboodle have rather similar meanings. A kit - is set of objects, as in a toolkit, or what a soldier would put in his kit-bag. A caboodle (or boodle) - is an archaic term meaning group or collection, usually of people. There are several phrases similar to the whole kit and caboodle, which is first recorded in that form in 1884. Most of them are of US origin and all the early citations are American. Caboodle was never in common use outside the USA and now has died out everywhere, apart from its use in this phrase. - The whole kit - the whole of a soldier's necessaries, the contents of his knapsack. From Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785. - The whole kit and boodle Although this citation is slightly later than that of the final 'whole kit and caboodle', it's worth including as it gives a 19th-century version of the meaning of the term. It may still be a step along the way - either unrecorded before 1888 or recorded in an, as yet, undiscovered work. This piece, titled 'The Origin of Boodle', is from The Dunkirk Observer-Journal, New York, September 1888: "It is probably derived from the Old-English word bottel, a bunch or a bundle, as a bottel of straw. "The whole kit and boodle of them" is a New England expression in common use, and the word in this sense means the whole lot. Latterly, boodle has come to be somewhat synonymous with the word pile, the term in use at the gaming table, and signifying a quantity of money. In the gaming sense, when a man has "lost his boodle", he has lost his pile or whole lot of money, whatever amount he happened to have with him." - The whole kit and boiling (or bilin') Sinclair Lewis, in 'Main Street', 1920: "...and some of these college professors are just about as bad, the whole kit and bilin' of 'em are nothing in God's world but socialism in disguise!" - The whole (or whool) boodle From J. Neal's, 'Down-Easters', 1833: "I know a feller 'twould whip the whool boodle of 'em an' give 'em six." From Bangor Daily Whig And Courier, Maine, 1839: "A whole squad have got to permit to see you. Who are they? I don't know, a whole boodle of them." - The whole caboodle From the Ohio State Journal, 1848: "The whole caboodle will act upon the recommendation of the Ohio Sun." Which brings us finally to the whole kit and caboodle From the Syracuse Sunday Standard, New York, Nov, 1884: "More audiences have been disappointed by him and by the whole kit-and-caboodle of his rivals." It is most likely that these phrases were in use simultaneously and that there isn't a clear parentage of one to another. 'Kit and caboodle' had the advantage of the alliterative 'k' sound and that's doubtless why it has outlasted the others, which are now all fallen out of use. What we can't confirm is that the word caboodle migrated from boodle in order to sound better when matched with kit. It is possible that that's what happened, but the dates of the known citations don't support it. Whole kit and caboodle, (1884) is recorded before whole kit and boodle, (1888) and whole caboodle comes well before both, in 1848. Perhaps that's just the inadequacy or either records or research and that citations with the appropriate dates will emerge later.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-09-22 17:41:13

  The whole nine yards Meaning All of it - full measure. Origin Of all the feedback that The Phrase Finder site gets this is the phrase that is asked about the most often. At the outset it should be said that no one is 100% sure of the origin, although many have a fervent belief that they do. These convictions are unfailingly based on no more evidence than 'someone told me'. How was the phrase derived? "The whole nine yards" crops up in many contexts, which isn't surprising, as there are many things that can be measured in linear, square or cubic yards - and there are also yard-arms, steelyards etc. to account for. This is the source of the variability of the many plausible, but of course mostly incorrect, explanations of the phrase's origin. Regrettably, plausibility doesn't get us very far, as the following will show. The early citations of the phrase don't in fact refer to yards of any particular material, just to a non-specific measure - 'yards'. The most probable source of the phrase is the US military - that's where many early references to the phrase originate. The earliest such military reference is from the 1960s, in Elaine Shepard's novel about the Vietnam War - The Doom Pussy (A narrative about the Vietnam War and the men who are fighting it). The book was first published in 1967 and recounts army life during the early 1960s. The whole nine yards is used several times in the book, principally by the character Major 'Smash' Crandell. The first citation relates to his extracting himself from an unwanted marriage: The story began when he had absent-mindedly gone through a wedding ceremony a couple of years before while snockered one Saturday night in San Francisco. Slipping out of the knot was expensive but Smash was eventually able to untangle what he called "the whole nine yards." A later reference concerns a letter to a serviceman from a sweetheart, promising him comprehensive sexual favours when he gets back home. His response to this is: God. The first thing in the early pearly morning and the last thing at night. Beds all over the gahdam house. The whole nine yards. It is possible that the phrase was coined by servicemen in Vietnam. One possible source for this would be the Montagnard hill tribes, who were known by the US forces as 'the Yards'. In 1970, the US author Robert L. Mole published The Montagnards of South Vietnam: A Study of Nine Tribes. Some reports suggest that these nine tribes are the source of the 'nine' in TWNY; other US service memoirs claim that Special Operations Group teams consisted of three US soldiers and nine Yards. The disparity in these reports gives some cause for caution, but it could be that the phrase did originate in Vietnam and that Elaine Shepard picked it up as force's jargon while researching for her book. The military are also the source of the majority of hearsay accounts of the phrase's source. Many of these are of the 'I was there' variety and carry more authority than the usual, and frankly unhelpful, 'I was told' stories. Having spent some time researching this phrase I have received many such reports from servicemen (usually U.S. servicemen). One such example is from a U.S. drill sergeant who claims that the phrase originated in Fort Benning, Georgia, where soldiers were trained in the 'tree-second rush'. This involved running nine yards in three seconds before diving to ground to avoid sniper fire. Of all the explanations I've heard this one seems to me to be the most believable and certainly fits the phrase's meaning, although without documentary evidence it is just another plausible story. When was it coined? Although the precise derivation of a given slang phrase is often difficult to determine, the date of its coinage usually isn't. Phrases that are accepted into common use appear in newspapers, court reports, novels etc. very soon after they are coined and continue to do so for as long as the phrase is in use. Anyone who puts forward an explanation of an origin for 'the whole nine yards' which dates it to before the 1950s has to explain the lack of a printed record of it prior to 1954. If, to take the most commonly repeated version for instance, the phrase comes from the length of WWII machine gun belts, why is there no printed account of that in the thousands of books written about the war and the countless millions of newspaper editions published throughout the 1950s and 60s? The idea that it pre-dates the war and goes back to the 19th century or even the Middle Ages is even less plausible. What I am sure of is that the phrase wasn't in wide circulation before 1961 - which tends to rule out many of the suggested sources. Why? In May 1961, the American athlete Ralph Boston broke the world long jump record with a jump of 27 feet 1/2 inch. No one had previously jumped 27 feet. This was big news at the time and widely reported. Surely the feat cried out for this headline?: "Boston goes the whole nine yards" And yet, not a single journalist worldwide came up with that line, which is missing from all newspaper archives. The phrase may have been coined before 1961, but it certainly wasn't then known to that most slang-aware of groups - newspaper journalists. The likelihood that the phrase originated in the mid 20th century is supported by the lack of any evidence prior to the early 1960s and the ample printed citations from the late 1960s. "The whole nine yards" was in wide enough circulation in the USA then for it to be appearing in newspaper adverts. There are many examples of this, as here from the Playground Daily News, Fort Walton Beach, Florida, 1st May 1969: 'Four bedroom home, located in Country Club Estates. Running distance from Golf Course. Completed and ready to move in. This home has "the whole nine yards" in convenience.' Earliest citations in print The earliest known example of the phrase in print is in The Agitator, 29th March 1855. This newspaper, based in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, claimed to be 'Devoted to the Extension of the Area of Freedom and the Spread of Healthy Reform'. Despite that claim, the paper's content consists of made-up stories of the 'WWII bomber found on the moon' sort we see in our contemporary gutter press. The story from 1855 concerns a judge who arrived at an event without a spare shirt and decided to have one made for him. As a joke a friend ordered one with three times the required material, i.e. 'nine yards of bleached domestic and three yards of linen'. The outcome was: "He found himself shrouded in a shirt five yards long and four yards broad. What a silly, stupid woman! I told her to get enough to make three shirts; instead of making three, she has put the whole nine yards into one shirt!" Well, that does contain the phrase in question and it does relate to yards of material, which is one of the commonly repeated origins. This appears to be by pure chance though. After all, the individual words are common enough and have to appear together arbitrarily sometimes. This can't be accepted as the origin. To get a more plausible source we have to come forward to as recent a date as 1964, which is the earliest date I've yet found for the 'whole thing' meaning of the expression. On 18th of April that year, the Texas newspaper The San Antonio Express and News reprinted an article headed How To Talk 'Rocket', by Stephen Trumbull. He wrote the piece for The World Book Encyclopedia Science Service and it lists and explains new jargon terms that were in use in the space exploration community in the USA. He offered the opinion that "the new language spreads across the country - like a good joke - with amazing rapidity", which suggests that the terms listed were recently coined and went on the write: "Give 'em the whole nine yards" means an item-by-item report on any project. Whether the term actually originated as spaceman's jargon is open to doubt. It could easily have been appropriated by them from another source. That source could well have been the US military, as that's where many early references to the phrase originate. Suggested derivations Despite being sure they are all inventions, I'm obliged to include some of the versions of the source of the phrase that are going the rounds. Take your pick, and feel free to make up your own, everyone else does: It comes from the nine cubic yards capacity of US concrete trucks and dates from around 1970s. Widely circulated although arrant nonsense as even the largest concrete mixers were smaller than 9 cubic yards in 1967. The explanation refers to World War II aircraft, which if proved correct would clearly predate the concrete truck version. There are several aircraft related sources: The length of US bombers bomb racks. The length of RAF Spitfire's machine gun bullet belts. The length of ammunition belts in ground based anti-aircraft turrets, etc. No evidence to show that any of these measured nine yards has been forthcoming. Tailors use nine yards of material for top quality suits. Related to 'dressed to the nines'? The derivation has even been suggested as being naval and that the yards are shipyards rather than measures of area or volume. Another naval version is that the yards are yardarms. Large sailing ships had three masts, each with three yardarms. The theory goes that ships in battle can continue changing direction as new sails are unfurled. Only when the last sail, on the ninth yardarm, is used do the enemy know which direction the ship is finally headed. A mediaeval test requiring the victim to walk nine paces over hot coals. If anyone has any hard evidence of this phrase being used before 1964, e.g. an appearance of the phrase in print, I would love to see it. Please post your feedback at the Phrase Finder Discussion Forum - but please, evidence not conjecture.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-09-22 17:41:44

  Barking mad Meaning Insane; intensely mad. Origin There are a couple of stories which link 'barking mad' with the east London suburb of Barking. One is that the phrase owes its origin to a mediaeval asylum for the insane which was part of Barking Abbey. The second story isn't a suggested origin, just a neat 1980s joke at the expense of Margaret Thatcher. She was known by those who disliked her as 'Daggers' Thatcher - not from a reputation for stabbing colleagues in the back, but because she was said to be 'three stops past Barking'. [Dagenham is three stations beyond Barking on the London Underground] The problem with the asylum tale is the date - it is far too early. 'Barking mad' isn't mediaeval and began to appear in the language only around the beginning of the 20th century. The first record of it that I can find in print is from the USA. The 11th November 1927 edition of the Oklahoma newspaper The Ada Evening News reported on the frenetic and, if contemporary photographs are to be believed, borderline insane sport of Auto-polo: "At 2:30 this afternoon at Park field a half dozen barking mad auto polo cars will be whirled into action." That usage suggests a readership who were already familiar with the phrase, and the playing of polo in cars, while having a strong claim to epitomise madness, isn't the likely source. A much more prosaic derivation, that the phrase refers to mad and possibly rabid dogs, is a more probable source. There are many examples of 'barking like a mad dog' in print. For example, this from records of the trial for murder of a Walter Tricker, in 1867: Mrs Hitchins, at the Inquest, says 'It was not ordinary barking. They [the dogs] were barking like tearing mad.' See also: barking up the wrong tree; as mad as a hatter.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-09-29 20:57:12

  Top dog Meaning One who is dominant or victorious. Origin 'Top dog' is synonymous with the similar, if now archaic, phrases, 'upper dog' and 'over dog'. It is also the antonym of 'under dog' (now usually spelled as a single word) and its archaic synonym, 'bottom dog'. We have here a golden opportunity for those who consider plausibility to be enough evidence to hang a phrase derivation on and the following explanation has been widely repeated. When wooden planks were sawn by hand, two men did the job using a two-handed saw. The senior man took the top handle, standing on the wood, and the junior took the bottom, in the saw-pit below. Add to this the fact that the irons that were used to hold the wood were called dogs and that the bottom position was much the more uncomfortable, and we can jump from this scene to the origin of 'top dog' and 'underdog'. That may be true. The problem with it as an explanation is that no one has found evidence to back it up. There are printed references to saw-pits and to this form of work going back to the early 15th century in England and the 19th century in America. None of these make any mention of 'top dog' or 'under dog'. It is hardly likely that everyone, including Shakespeare, who referred to saw-pits in The Merry Wives of Windsor, would have ignored these colourful phrases had they been in use at the time. For example, this extract from the 1876 Yale Review describes saw-pits in some detail makes no mention of 'top dog': "The saw-pit was a rude structure about seven feet high, made of strong posts set in the ground wide enough apart to hold one or two pieces of heavy pine timber, and the sawyers, one above and one beneath, sawed out one hundred feet per day." In fact, there are no known references to 'top dog' or 'under dog' in the context of wood sawing until well after the practise was superseded by mechanical sawing. What citations there are to these terms that date from the days that the pits were still in use all refer to fights of some sort, particularly dog fights. Here's a piece, for which the word doggerel might have been invented, that appeared in several US newspapers in 1859, under the name of David Barker: The Under Dog In The Fight But for me - and I care not a single fig If they say I am wrong or right wrong, I shall always go for the weaker dog, For the under dog in the fight. I know that the world, that the great big world, Will never a moment stop. To see which dog may be in the fault, But will shout for the dog on top. The earliest record that I can find of a figurative use of 'top dog' is a 20th century one, in The Speaker; a review of politics etc., 1900: "The most popular argument in favour of the war is that it will make the individual Briton top dog in South Africa." There are several earlier examples of a related phrase - 'tip-top dog' and these all relate to actual prize fighting or hunting dogs. For example, from The Sporting Review, 1840: "Even a good judge may be unable to form an accurate estimate of a dog's olfactory powers, Should there be no tip-top dog at hand to compare with, the only other criterion ... is the manner of finding game." The move from 'tip-top dog' to 'top dog' is quite easy to accept and, while the saw-pit theory as the origin of 'top dog' and 'under dog' is attractive, the complete lack of evidence to support it renders it as mere speculation. There appears to be little reason to doubt that 'top dog' had a literal derivation - 'a dog that is top'. See also: the Nonsense Nine.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-10-06 12:10:08

  Toe the line Meaning To conform to an established standard or political programme. Origin There is some confusion between 'toe the line' and the frequently seen misspelling 'tow the line'. The 'tow' version is no doubt encouraged by the fact that ropes or cables on ships are often called lines and that 'tow lines' are commonplace nautical items. The earlier meaning of 'to toe the line' was to position one's toes next to a marked line in order to be ready to start a race, or some other undertaking. In the 19th century, we wouldn't have been limited to lines when it came to placing our feet, but would have had a choice of what to toe - a mark, scratch, crack or trig [a line or small trench]. These were all then in use in 'toe the ...' phrases. The earliest version we know about is from The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan, 1813, by 'Hector Bull-Us' - known to his family and friends as James Paulding: "He began to think it was high time to toe the mark." Pauling was using the figurative rather than literal meaning of the phrase, i.e. to 'toe the mark' was to conform to a set standard. Going back to the original, literal 'toeing' of a line; there are many circumstances where one might place one's toes up to a line - the start of a sporting event, standing in formation on parade, etc, etc. So, which is the source of the phrase? One explanation that is often repeated is that the phrase derives from the British House of Commons. Arguments in the House are often heated. To deter members of opposing parties from attacking each other, two parallel red lines are marked, two sword-lengths apart, on the floor of the house. MPs are expected to stay behind these lines when a speech is in progress. Members, of course, no longer carry swords, but the tradition remains. Visitors to the House of Commons are very likely to hear this tale related by a tour guide. Counting against this supposed derivation is the fact that the current Commons Chamber dates from only 1950, when the building was rebuilt following WWII bomb damage. Paintings of earlier Commons chambers, from the times when members might actually have worn swords, show no such lines. The parliamentary link may be strengthened in some people's minds because of the 'toe the party line' usage, which relates to orthodoxy in politics. Another possible source is prizefighting. The scratch was the line marked across the ring in early 'toe-to-toe' boxing bouts. Anyone man enough to enter into such a contest was 'up to scratch' (see also: start from scratch). This version of the phrase was known in the USA by the early 19th century, for example, this piece from the Gettysburg newspaper The Peoples Press, from October 1835, in which the public was invited to put up or shut up in a wager about an election: Come gentlemen "toe the scratch" or hereafter forever hold your peace. Other early examples of 'toe the ...' have a nautical connection. In the 19th century, sailors were expected to prepare themselves for group punishment by standing in formation on deck and 'toeing the line' between boards - also called 'toeing the crack'. This usage is the earliest that I've found for 'toe the line' in print - from The Edinburgh Literary Journal, January - June 1831: "The matter, therefore, necessarily became rather serious; and the whole gang of us being sent for on the quarter-deck, we were ranged in a line, each with his toes at the edge of a plank, according to the orthodox fashion of these gregarious scoldings, technically called toe-the-line matches." Which is the source? Well, no one knows. What is for certain - it is toe, not tow.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-10-13 10:02:12

  In the pink Meaning In perfect condition, especially of health. Origin The general usage of this phrase has altered somewhat since it first entered the language. We now usually see it with the specific meaning of 'the pink of condition', i.e. in the best possible health. It is tempting but, as it turns out, misguided, to assume an association between 'the pink of condition' and the healthily glowing pink cheeks of new-born babies or energetic sportsmen/sportswomen and the like. The earliest citations of 'in the pink' are from the 16th century and, at that time, the meaning was 'the very pinnacle of something', but not necessarily limited to health. The earliest example that I can find of pink being used with that meaning is from 1597 Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, 1597: Mercurio: Why, I am the very pinke of curtesie. The earliest citation I've found for 'in the pink' is from Leigh's Kensington Gardens, 1720: "'Tis the Pink of the Mode, to marry at first Sight: - And some, indeed, marry without any Sight at all." It isn't until the 20th century that we find the phrase in the 'pink of condition' form that is currently used, in the Kynoch Journal, 1905: "Makers may despatch explosives from the factory in the pink of condition." So, what's special about pink? The association of the phrase 'in the pink' with the so-called pink jackets worn by the UK fox-hunting aficionados is unproven. The jackets, which are in fact scarlet, have been said to have derived their 'hunting pink' name from a tailor called Thomas Pink and that 'in the pink' refers to both the jackets and to the healthy, energetic approach to the pastime that many hunters adopt. Fox-hunters can be said to be literally in the pink but the hunting derivation is nevertheless far-fetched. There are no historical records of any such Thomas Pink and his association with the fox-hunting fraternity wasn't suggested until long after the first references to pink jackets. Why pink has been chosen to epitomise the pinnacle of quality is more likely to do with the Dianthus flower, many varieties of which are called Pinks. It is known that society in the reign of Elizabeth I admired the flowers, hence the first uses of pink with the 'excellent' meaning in that period. What is interesting to speculate on is why the flowers were called Pinks. You may think that a silly question, as Dianthuses are almost always pink in colour. There are two quite believable theories. One suggests that it is the flowers that gave their name to the colour, rather than vice-versa, and that the name derives from the Dutch 'pinck-ooghen' - 'little eye' (literally - to blink). The second theory is based on the earlier verb form of pink, which means to cut or to pierce material - in a style that would now be done using pinking shears. Dianthuses are said to be called Pinks because their edges are pinked. Take your choice.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-10-22 17:50:44

  On the warpath Meaning Intent on a confrontation or fight. Origin 'War path' was originally written as two words and, following the usual hyphenation phase, i.e. as 'war-path', it is now more commonly seen as the single word 'warpath'. The 'war path' was the literal 'path to war' taken by native Americans (who were variously referred to in early citations of this phrase as Indians, red-skins or savages) when travelling to an enemy's territory to engage in battle. In America in So Many Words, 1997, Metcalf and Barnhart state that the name was used in 1755 on 'a map' - "Canoes may come up to the Crossing of the War Path". Unfortunately, they don't cite their source, although the book is well-researched and I've no reason to doubt their assertion. The phrase was unquestionably in use in the USA twenty years later, when James Adair included it in The history of the American Indians, 1775 and qualifies as one of the very earliest American phrases: "I often have rode that war path alone." The 'war path' was also sometimes called the 'warrior's path', as in A Sketch of the History of Wyoming, by Isaac Chapman, 1830: "He commenced his march by way of Fort Allen on the Lehigh near the Water-gap, and thence by the warrior's path to Wyoming." It took a little while for the phrase to take on its present-day figurative meaning. The process of change from the literal began with this simile in the Cyclopaedia of Wit and Humor, by William Burton, 1859: "Tell not such a tale to the seaman,... nor to the author,... publishing at his own cost, the critics, like savages, come out on the war path, track him by the print he makes, and then scalp him." The process was complete by 1880, when Mark Twain (S. L. Clemens) used the phrase with no Indians in sight, in the travelogue A tramp abroad: "She was on the war path all the evening." The phrase is still used when tribes go to war, as in the recent (September, 2007) 'Microsoft on the warpath' headlines that were used to report the so-called 'Portal wars' between Microsoft and Google.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-10-28 12:05:29

  Three sheets to the wind Meaning Very drunk. Origin Our colleagues at CANOE, the Committee to Ascribe a Nautical Origin to Everything, have been hard at work and, to their great pleasure, they can add this phrase to their list. 'Three sheets to the wind' is indeed a seafaring expression. To understand this phrase we need to enter the arcane world of nautical terminology. Sailors' language is, unsurprisingly, all at sea and many supposed derivations have to go by the board. Don't be taken aback to hear that sheets aren't sails, as landlubbers might expect, but ropes (or occasionally, chains). These are fixed to the lower corners of sails, to hold them in place. If three sheets are loose and blowing about in the wind then the sails will flap and the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor. The phrase is these days more often given as 'three sheets to the wind', rather than the original 'three sheets in the wind'. The earliest printed citation that I can find is in Pierce Egan's Real Life in London, 1821: "Old Wax and Bristles is about three sheets in the wind." Sailors at that time had a sliding scale of drunkenness; three sheets was the falling over stage; tipsy was just 'one sheet in the wind', or 'a sheet in the wind's eye'. An example appears in the novel The Fisher's Daughter, by Catherine Ward, 1824: "Wolf replenished his glass at the request of Mr. Blust, who, instead of being one sheet in the wind, was likely to get to three before he took his departure." Robert Louis Stevenson was as instrumental in inventing the imagery of 'yo ho ho and a bottle of rum' piracy as his countryman and contemporary Sir Walter Scott was in inventing the tartan and shortbread 'Bonnie Scotland'. Stevenson used the 'tipsy' version of the phrase in Treasure Island, 1883 - the book that gave us 'X marks the spot', 'shiver me timbers' and the archetypal one-legged, parrot-carrying pirate, Long John Silver. He gave Silver the line: "Maybe you think we were all a sheet in the wind's eye. But I'll tell you I was sober; "

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-11-02 14:45:19

  The living daylights Meaning A person's eyes; more recently, the life force or consciousness. Origin The release of the 1987 film The Living Daylights, the fifteenth in the James Bond series, reawakened usage of this old phrase. When we refer to someone having the living daylights beaten, scared, or knocked out of them, we just mean that they have been badly beaten or scared, or knocked unconscious. The imagery is of someone being so discomforted as to lose the power of sight. Like similar phrases, for example 'beat the stuffing out of', the phrase is often used with an air of exaggeration and not always meant to be taken literally. The original 18th century meaning of 'daylights' was quite specific and literal; it meant 'the eyes'. That meaning is now long forgotten and few people are aware of it. The word was occasionally used to denote other items to do with seeing - spectacles, windows etc. (see daylight robbery), but usage of 'daylights' was largely limited to the eyes and to threats to close them by force. The first known citation of the word is one such example; in Henry Fielding's novel Amelia, 1752: "Good woman! I don't use to be so treated. If the lady says such another word to me, d--n me, I will darken her daylights." Francis Grose, in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796, reinforces the pugilistic usage: "Plump his peepers, or daylights; give him a blow in the eyes." The 'eyes' meaning of the word was going out of use even in the 19th century, hence the emergence then of 'knocking or beating the daylights out of someone'. The phrase is intended to indicate a severe beating, but perhaps not literally that severe. The lack of appreciation of the 'eyes' meaning led to the later 'beat the living daylight' variant. When referring to eyes, 'daylights' makes sense, whereas the singular 'daylight' doesn't, unless the intent is to punch only one eye that is. The first usage of 'beating the daylights out' that I can find is in Augustus Peirce's poem The Rebelliad, 1842: The people used to turn about, And knock the rulers' daylights out By the time that the intensifier 'living' was added, the phrase had lost all association with eyes. The earliest known version of that form was printed in several US newspapers in the 1890s, for example, The Decatur Morning Review, September 1890: "'I'm not going to be insulted by a miserable rabbit', and he started to club the living daylights out of the beast with his gun." The 20th century version of the phrase is the American 'punch someone's lights out'. The precursor to this form of the phrase was a widely syndicated newspaper report of the 1956 fight between Sugar Ray Robinson and Carl (Bobo) Olson: "Robinson's knockout punch turned out the lights for Bobo in the second round."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-11-02 14:50:42

  pugilistic: [ .pju:dʒi'listik ] a. 拳击的,拳击家的 英英解释: 形容词pugilistic: 1. of or relating to pugilism or pugilists

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-11-09 19:24:29

  Keep the ball rolling Meaning Maintain a level of activity in and enthusiasm for a project. Origin The American expression 'keep the ball rolling' was preceded by the similar, now archaic, British phrase 'keep the ball up'. They had much the same meaning, the earlier one alludes to keeping a ball in the air, i.e. conveying the notion of keeping an activity going. This was used figuratively by the radical social philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in a letter to George Wilson in 1781, referring to his efforts to keep a conversation going: "I put a word in now and then to keep the ball up." Bentham may be long dead but continues to be radical. He didn't opt for the traditional coffin, buried six feet under, but willed that his body be stuffed, mounted and put on display. It is exhibited in a cabinet at University College, London (although the severed head has now been removed). As a student at the University in the 1960s I was one of many who took the opportunity to open the cabinet doors to see Bentham peering back through the waxy glass - quite disconcerting. The 'keep the ball rolling' version of the phrase owes its origin and popularity to the US presidential election of July 1840. That election is widely regarded as introducing all the paraphernalia of present-day elections, i.e. campaign songs, advertising slogans and publicity stunts of all kinds. The unpopular incumbent President Martin Van Buren was pitted against Whig candidates, General William Harrison, a war hero who had fought against the Shawnee Indians at Tippecanoe, and John Tyler. The Whig candidates revelled in a folksy 'cider-drinking, log-cabin, men of the people' image and adopted the first known political slogan - 'Tippecanoe and Tyler, too'. A song of the same name was considered to have sung Harrison into the presidency: Don't you hear from every quarter, quarter, quarter, Good news and true, That swift the ball is rolling on For Tippecanoe and Tyler Too. Harrison's campaign literature referred to Victory Balls. These weren't, as we might expect, dance parties that celebrated his famous victory, but ten-foot diameter globes made of tin and leather, which were pushed from one campaign rally to the next. His supporters were invited to attend rallies and push the ball on to the next town, chanting 'keep the ball rolling'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-11-17 17:02:22

  Red herring Meaning A deliberate misleading and diverting of attention from the real issue. Origin Red herrings are salted herrings that turn a reddish colour during the smoking process. They have come to be synonymous with the deliberate false trails that are the stock in trade of 'who done it' thrillers. The term has been used to refer to people as well as to fish for some centuries. John Heywood's 1546 glossary, A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue includes the expression: She is nother fyshe nor fleshe, nor good red hearyng. Fish was eaten by the clergy, flesh by the rich and the dried and smoked herrings by the poor. So this list of the foods eaten by all classes of society was a metaphor for 'encompassing all eventualities'. How do we move from the actual herrings in that expression to the figurative 'throwing off the scent' meaning? One theory has it that the meaning derives from the practice of using the oily and smelly herrings to lay false trails for hunting dogs. This practice is well documented from as far back as the late 1600s and Nicholas Cox's The Sportsman's Dictionary: Or The Gentleman's Companion, 1686 describes it: "The trailing or dragging of a dead Cat, or Fox, (and in case of necessity a Red-Herring) three or four miles... and then laying the Dogs on the scent." It seems implausible that people laid false 'fishy' trails in order to deceive hounds so that their prey would escape. After all, there was no hunt saboteur movement in 1686, and who would have a motive to do that? It's more likely that the use of red herrings was a training exercise, intended to put the hounds on the scent rather than to throw them off it. Nevertheless, the laying of a scent trail for dogs does establish the linguistic 'surrogate' meaning for 'red herring' and the further step to 'deliberate deceit' isn't a large one. Another theory is that the meaning derives from a trick played on one of his servants by the wealthy English clergyman Jasper Mayne. Mayne died in 1672 and willed large sums for the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and to the poor people of his parishes of Cassington and Pyrton. He also willed to a servant "Somewhat that would make him Drink after his Death", which was left in a large trunk. When the trunk was opened the servant was disappointed to find that the bequest turned out to be a salted herring. The will doesn't mention a 'red herring', but a report of the event in Jacob's Poetical Register, 1719, does, so we can date the 'false representation' meaning to that date at the latest. Of the two theories, the Mayne story seems the more compelling. It introduces the idea of a deliberate misdirection, which, unless we are to believe that people deliberately misdirected hounds, the other lacks. Whatever the source, the figurative usage of the phrase was well established in UK by the early 1800s and had migrated to the USA by the middle of the century, as in this example from The New York Times, in May 1864: But when the Emperor found that England would not join him in a war, he cleverly started the "red herring" of the Congress which he knew well enough was out of the question, but which has admirably answered his purpose of creating a diversion.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-11-24 06:43:08

  Grass up Meaning Inform on someone to the police. Origin In 2005, British newspapers picked up on a story about a burglar who had stolen cash, jewellery and an African Grey parrot from a house near Hungerford, Berkshire. David Carlile, widely described in the press as 'feather-brained', explained to the police that he knew that African Greys could talk and he didn't want the bird to 'grass him up'. Presumably, had the parrot been a Norwegian Blue, he would have left it to pine for the fiords. 'Grassing up' has been a commonly used expression in the UK since the mid 20th century, but is less common elsewhere. The first known use of 'grass' in that context is Arthur Gardner's Tinker's Kitchen, 1932, which defined a grass as "an informer". Grass was a well-enough established word in the 1980s to have spawned 'supergrass', i.e. a republican sympathiser who later 'turned Queen's evidence' and informed on the IRA, and which gave the Brit-pop band Supergrass their name in the 1990s. Informers are variously known as squealers, noses, moles, snouts and stool pigeons. These terms invoke imagery of covert snooping around and of talking. Grass is less intuitive. It could just have arisen from 'snake in the grass', which derives from the writings of Virgil (in Latin, as 'latet anguis in herba') and has been known in English, meaning traitor, since the late 17th century. There is another route to the word and this is via rhyming slang. Farmer and Henley's 1893 Dictionary of Slang defines 'grasshopper' as 'copper', i.e. policeman. The theory is that a 'grass' is someone who works for the police and so has become a surrogate 'copper'. The rhyming slang link was certainly believed in 1950 by the lexicographer Paul Tempest, when he wrote Lag's lexicon: a comprehensive dictionary and encyclopaedia of the English prison to-day: "Grasser. One who gives information. A 'squealer? or 憇queaker'. The origin derives from rhyming slang: grasshopper - copper; a 'grass' or 'grasser' tells the 'copper' or policeman." That comes only a few years after the term grass was coined and there seems little reason to doubt it as the derivation. The original users of the term 'grass up' were from the London underworld and would have certainly been better acquainted with rhyming slang than the works of Virgil. Some have also theorised that the term 'shop', meaning 'give information that leads to an arrest', derives from the same source, i.e. that, as 'grass' derives from 'grasshopper', then so does 'shopper'. The earliest known use of shop in that context dates from around the same time as the emergence of grasshopper. The issue of the magazine Tit-Bits for May, 1899 includes: "[He] volunteered for a fiver to 'shop' his pals." As far as we know, African Greys don't go shopping.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-11-30 22:23:49

  On cloud nine Meaning In a state of blissful happiness. Origin Whenever a phrase includes a number, like the whole nine yards, at sixes and sevens etc., then attempts to find its derivation usually focus on the number. 'On cloud nine' is no exception. A commonly heard explanation is that the expression originated as one of the classifications of cloud which were defined by the US Weather Bureau in the 1950s, in which 'Cloud Nine' denotes the fluffy cumulonimbus type that are considered so attractive. Another explanation is that the phrase derives from Buddhism and that Cloud Nine is one of the stages of the progress to enlightenment of a Bodhisattva (one destined to become a Buddha). Neither of these explanations holds water. To begin with, both the cloud classifications and the Buddhist stages to enlightenment have ten levels. To single out the last but one stage of either is rather like attributing the source of the 'whole nine yards' to American Football, where it is ten yards rather than nine that is a significant measure. Also, the fact that nine is far from the only number that has been linked with clouds, argues against those origins. Early examples of 'cloud' expressions include clouds seven, eight, nine and even thirty-nine. It seems that it is the clouds themselves, rather than the number of them, that were in the thoughts of those who coined this phrase. The imagery was originally of a 'cloud cuckoo land' or 'head in the clouds' dreaminess, induced by either intoxication or inspiration, rather than the 'idyllic happiness' that we now associate with the phrase. The early references all come from mid 20th century USA and the earliest that I've found is in Albin Pollock's directory of slang, The Underworld Speaks, 1935: "Cloud eight, befuddled on account of drinking too much liquor." 'Cloud nine' comes a little later, for example, in The Oxnard Press-Courier, August 1946: "I think he has thought of everything, unless the authorities pull something new on him out of cloud nine." Around the same period we find clouds seven and thirty-nine, in The San Mateo Times, April 1952 and Ross抯 Hustlers, 1956, respectively: "Mantovani's skilled use of reeds and strings puts this disc way up on Cloud Seven." "That stuff is way up on Cloud Thirty-nine." The early favourite was 'cloud seven' and many of the oldest citations use that form, as in this piece from The Dictionary of American Slang, 1960, which was the first printed definition of the term "Cloud seven - completely happy, perfectly satisfied; in a euphoric state." This early preference for seven as the significant number may have been influenced by the existing phrase 'seventh heaven'. Since the 1980s or so, 'cloud nine' has become predominant. Linguistic hype being what it is, we now hear people expressing their happiness with the inflationary 'cloud ten', which brings us back to the cumulonimbus/Buddhist theories. Eighth heaven anyone?

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-12-19 08:43:56

  Spelling-bee Meaning A spelling contest. Origin The term 'bee' has been used in the USA with the meaning of 'gathering', either for work, pleasure or competition, since the mid 18th century. The first such usage was the name 'spinning-bee', as in this example from The Boston Gazette, 1769: "Last Thursday about twenty young Ladies met at the house of Mr. L. on purpose for a Spinning Match; (or what is called in the Country a Bee)." Bees got their name by quite a roundabout route. The Middle English word for a prayer was a 'bene', from which we derive words like 'benefit'. This migrated to 'boon', with the meaning of 'a favour granted'. The English Dialect Dictionary, 1905, records the country term 'boon' as meaning "voluntary help, given to a farmer by his neighbours, in time of harvest, haymaking, etc". Migrants from England to the USA would have taken the term 'boon', which was also spelled 'been' or 'bean', with them. Communal activities were an essential ingredient of survival in frontier America and the word would certainly have been called on there. The imagery of the social and industrious nature of bees was sufficient to change 'beens' into 'bees'. Many of the activities where people congregated to undertake communal work became known as bees of one sort or another - 'husking-bees', 'quilting-bees', 'barn-raising-bees'. A less pleasant form of assembly was the hanging or lynching bee. A reference to such was made in The Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel in August 1874. The paper reported a story of an incident in Maysville, Indiana, in which a case of mistaken identity almost resulted in a lynching: "And he came very near being the chief attraction at a Lynching Bee." The best-known 'bee', and the one that remains in common use, is the 'spelling bee'. Such events were originally called simply 'spelling-matches' but, being social gatherings, they came to be referred to as 'spelling-bees' by the early 19th century. The first reference I can find to the expression 'spelling-bee' in print is in The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1850: "Those who have attended a 'spelling-bee' - and what reader who ever went to a district-school in the country but has attended them?" It is clear that the term was well-established by 1850, as the citation suggests that the tests had then been in use for some years. Sometimes the tests were simply called 'spellings' rather than 'spelling-bees'; for example, this line from Oscar L. Jackson's 1860 reminiscences The Colonel's Diary: "The boys were anxious for a spelling in the evening." The popularity of spelling-bees in the USA was partly due to literacy being encouraged as a patriotic duty and partly to the widespread use of Noah Webster's American Spelling Book, which was first published in 1783. Webster is now best known for his American Dictionary of the English Language, but his spelling book, popularly known as the Blue-backed Speller, has possibly been more influential. This report from The Decatur Daily Review, May 1899, acknowledges Webster's significance: "After the regular business meeting of the Baptist Senior Endeavor society Monday night the members put aside dull care for an hour and had fun with the English language in an old fashioned spelling bee. If the ghost of Noah Webster was watching the scene he probably congratulated himself that he had not lived in vain."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-12-19 08:44:21

  Get down to brass tacks Meaning Engage with the basic facts or realities. Origin The figurative expression 'getting down to brass tacks' isn't particularly old as phrases go. Its first known appearance, in the USA in 1863, was in the Texas newspaper The Tri-Weekly Telegraph: "When you come down to 'brass tacks' - if we may be allowed the expression - everybody is governed by selfishness." All of the other known early citations either originate in, or refer to, Texas. It is reasonable to assume that the phrase was coined there, in or about the 1860s. The derivation of 'getting down to brass tacks' is uncertain. Nevertheless, it is a phrase that is often asked about, so I will list the most likely possible sources and the evidence for and against them and leave you to make up your mind for yourself. Brass tacks are, of course, real as well as figurative items and two of the most commonly repeated supposed derivations refer to actual tacks. Firstly, there's the use of brass-headed nails as fabric fixings in the furniture trade, chosen on account of their decorative appearance and imperviousness to rust. Such brass tacks were commonly used in Tudor furniture and long predate the use of the phrase, which would tend to argue against that usage as the origin - why wait hundreds of years and then coin the phrase from that source? The supporters of that idea say that, in order to re-upholster a chair, the upholsterer would need first to remove all the tacks and fabric coverings, thus getting down to the basic frame of the chair. While that is true, it hardly seems to match the meaning of the expression, as the tacks would be the first thing to be removed rather than the last. The second explanation that relies on actual tacks comes from the haberdashery trade. Here the notion is that, in order to be more accurate than the rough-and-ready measuring of a yard of material by holding it out along an arm's length, cloth was measured between brass tacks which were set into a shop's counter. Such simple measuring devices were in use in the late 19th century, as is shown by this piece from Ernest Ingersoll's story The Metropolis of the Rocky Mountains, 1880: "I hurried over to Seabright抯. There was a little square counter, heaped with calicoes and other gear, except a small space clear for measuring, with the yards tacked off with brass tacks." Various other explanations relate to the tacks in boots, those that were put on chairs as a prank, the rivets on boats etc, etc. None of these come equipped with any real evidence and are best left alone. Of the supposed explanations that don't have literal allusions, we can rule out links with any form of 'brass tax'. There have been taxes on brass at various times, but no one can find any connection with this phrase. 'Getting down to brass tax' appears to be just a misspelling. The expression is also often said to be an example of Cockney rhyming slang, meaning 'facts'. In the strange world of Cockney argot, 'tacks' does indeed rhyme with 'facts' (facks), but that's as far as it goes. Rhyming slang coinages from the 19th century are limited to the UK and Australia. The apparent US origin of the phrase discounts the rhyming slang origin. For my money, the 'fabric measuring' derivation is the strongest candidate but, given no smoking gun, we await further evidence.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2007-12-23 11:43:16

  Cooking the books Meaning The deliberate distorting of a firm's financial accounts, often with the aim of avoiding the payment of tax. Origin Cooking seems a rather odd choice of word to convey fraud. The Oxford English Dictionary lists a dozen or so meanings of the verb cook, ranging from 'prepare opium for use' to 'make the call of a cuckoo' and, of course, 'prepare food by the action of heat'. Tucked away at the bottom there is also the meaning - 'present in a surreptitiously altered form' and it is that use of cook that was used in the coinage of the phrase. The allusion appears to be the changing of one thing into another, as in the conversion of food ingredients into meals. This usage dates back to Tudor England and it was used by the Earl of Strafford in his Letters and dispatches, 1636: "The Proof was once clear, however they have cook'd it since." The verb was in common use by the 18th century and its meaning was used explicitly with regard to finance in Tobias Smollett's The adventures of Peregrine Pickle, 1751: "Some falsified printed accounts, artfully cooked up, on purpose to mislead and deceive." Apart from in the expression 'cooking the books' this use of 'cook' has disappeared from the language and the expression, while still being used occasionally, had itself became increasingly uncommon throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The preferred euphemism for the manipulation of financial statements came to be 'creative accounting'. This is first recorded in the 1960s and is attributed to the US comedian Irwin Corey, as in this example from the Middlesboro Daily News, May 1968: 'Professor' Irwin Corey claims his CPA [Certified Public Accounts] isn't exactly crooked - but the government's questioning him about his "creative accounting". The numerous corporate fraud cases of the 1990s turned public opinion against the semi-admiring tone of 'creative accounting' and journalists stopped using it. That, and the transformation of bookshops, which now seem to sell more coffee and cakes than they do books, has brought about a revival of the term 'cooking the books', which looks like staying with us for some years to come.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-01-02 11:56:26

  Boxing Day Meaning The 26th of December, also called St. Stephen's Day. Boxing Day is a public holiday that forms part of the Christmas festivities in most of the countries that were once part of the British Empire. It was originally the first working day after Christmas Day, but is now always celebrated on December 26th, regardless of which day of the week it falls. Origin Christmas boxes were originally literally earthenware boxes. In mediaeval England, these boxes were used by the poor (servants, apprentices etc.) to save money throughout the year. At Christmas, the boxes were broken open and the savings shared to fund Christmas festivities. This meaning of Christmas box dates back to at least the early 17th century. The boxes were known in France as tirelire and are referred to in Randle Cotgrave's A Dictionarie of the French and English tongues, 1611: "Tirelire, a Christmas box; a box having a cleft on the lid, or in the side, for money to enter it; used in France by begging Fryers, and here by Butlers, and Prentices, etc." In a similar tradition, which is almost as old as the above and which is the one that has stayed with us until the present day, Christmas boxes were gifts, usually money, given to tradespeople or others who have rendered some service throughout the year but who aren't normally paid directly by the donor - for example, office cleaners, milkmen etc. So, why is Boxing Day so called? Sporting fixtures, which used regularly to include boxing, have taken place over the holiday season for centuries. The view that Boxing Day was a day for pugilism gets some support via the earliest reference to the name that I can find, which is in The Sporting Magazine, Volume 25, 1805: On boxing-day, Dec. 26, a numerous assemblage of the holiday folk were amused by a hard fought battle, in St. Pancras-fields. This fight was one that afforded plenty of diversion to several pugilists and admirers of the art present. Nevertheless, the link to boxing in that citation is just co-incidence and the origin of the name is the giving of 'Christmas box' gifts to tradespeople, which traditionally took place, not on Christmas Day, but on the first subsequent working day.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-01-10 08:51:56

  Go off at half-cock Meaning Speak or act prematurely. Origin Flintlock firearms have a 'cock' or striker mechanism, which is held in a raised, sprung position ready to discharge and make a spark to 'fire' the gun. These can be set at half-cock, when the gun is in a safe state, or at full-cock, when it is ready to be fired. A gun would only 'go off at half-cock' by mistake. The term half-cock is as old as flintlock guns and appears in print from the mid 18th century. For example, in John Desaguliers' A course of experimental philosophy 1734?4: "The gun being at Half-Cock, the Spring acts upon the Tumbler with more Advantage." The earliest known citation of the phrase 'going off at half-cock' comes from London and Its Environs Described, 1761: "Some arms taken at Bath in the year 1715, distinguished from all others in the Tower, by having what is called dog locks; that is, a kind of lock with a catch to prevent their going off at half-cock." We now commonly use 'go off at half-cock' or, in America, 'go off half-cocked', to mean 'speak or act impulsively and without proper preparation'. This clearly alludes to the sudden discharge of a firearm. Despite that, the first figurative use of the phrase had a completely different meaning. When the 'half-cocked' imagery was first appropriated it was to mean tipsy, or half-drunk. This was the meaning intended in John Shebbeare's novel Lydia, 1786: "Who should enter unto the company, but young Captain Firebrace, half-cocked... come hither to finish his evening's potation." There doesn't appear to be any particular link between the mechanics of firearms and drunkenness. Several other 'half' phrases were also used in the 18th century to mean 'half-drunk'. 'Half-seas-over' was a nautical term that is listed in the first slang dictionary BE's Dictionary of the Canting Crew, circa 1700, with the meaning 'almost drunk'. Another example is 'half-and-half', which, in addition to being the name of a mixture of equal parts ale and porter, was also listed as a term meaning 'tipsy'. This meaning of 'half-cocked' was taken up with particular enthusiasm in Australia. Clearly, they felt they hadn't enough terms for drunkenness and wanted to expand their repertoire. Fergus Hume's Madame Midas: a story of Australian mining life, 1888, explained the term: "This last drink reduced Mr. Villiers to that mixed state which is known in colonial phrase as half-cocked." By 1888, the rest of the English-speaking world had opted for the current meaning of 'half-cock' and 'half-cocked'. For example, in To-day in Ireland, 1825: "Master Dillon - never let an insult go off half-cock." Across the Atlantic, The Register of Debates in Congress, 1833, recorded the opinions of Dutee Pearce of Rhode Island: "I regret that the gentleman from Maryland has gone off half cocked." See also - lock, stock and barrel.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-01-21 10:01:38

  Parting shot Meaning A final remark, usually cutting or derogatory, made just before departing. Origin A 'parting shot' is now a metaphorical term but it clearly alludes to the shooting of weapons. The first such literal reference that I've come across is in the writings of John McLeod, who was surgeon of His Majesty's Ship Alceste. McLeod includes this comment in A Narrative of a Voyage to The Yellow Sea, 1818: The consort, firing a parting shot, bore up round the north end of the island, and escaped. The figurative use of the phrase comes not much later, in the records of the Religious Society of Friends (The Quakers) - The Friend or, Advocate of Truth, 1828: I think it would be much more becoming..., if you could separate without giving each other a parting shot. If you could but use this short sentence, "we cannot agree and therefore we separate." That derivation of 'parting shot' appears to be very simple and straightforward. Not so fast; enter the Parthians and their 'Parthian shots'. The Partians were an ancient race who lived in north-east Persia. They were renowned archers and horsemen and were known for their practice of confusing the enemy by pretending to flee and firing arrows backwards while retreating - not the easiest thing to do on a galloping horse. The tactic must have been successful as in first century B.C. Parthia stretched from the Euphrates to the Indus rivers, covering most of what is now Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. The Parthians' reputation was well known to English-speaking scholars in the 16th and 17th centuries. For example, Samuel Butler makes a specific reference to their battle tactic in An Heroical Epistle of Hudibras to His Lady, 1678: You wound, like Parthians, while you fly, And kill with a retreating eye. The use of the actual term 'Parthian shot' comes rather later. As with 'parting shot', the literal use comes first. That is found in A Tour in India, the account of a Captain Mundy, who was Aide-de-Camp to Lord Combermere during a shooting trip to India in 1832. With all the bravery of those who now club baby seals to death, Mundy describes his heroic encounter with a tiger: Out rushed a little cub tiger of about three months, and charged me so courageously that my elephant took to her heels. I made a successful Parthian shot with my favourite Joe Manton [shotgun], and slew my determined little pursuer. The metaphorical use of 'Parthian shot' comes soon afterwards, in The Times, April 1842: They have probably enough dealt a Parthian shot to British interests, by setting the Nacional once more upon its legs. Having two almost identical terms in the language which mean the same thing has led to the belief that one derives from the other. That may be the case, but there's no real 'smoking gun' evidence to link the two. 'Parthian shot' is unlikely to have derived from 'parting shot', as the military tactic it alludes to is so ancient. The fact that the earliest known examples of 'parting shot' pre-date those of 'Parthian shot' also tends to suggest that they were coined separately. We can't be sure, but is seems that the similarity between the two expressions is just co-incidence.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-01-21 10:02:17

  Ups-a-daisy Meaning An exclamation made when encouraging a child to get up after a fall or when lifting a child into the air. Origin It is difficult to choose which of the numerous variants of the expression to use as the heading of this piece. As with many words that are said to small children, it is more often a spoken term than one that appears in print and this has led to much inconsistency about how it is spelled. In fact, I can't think of a single term that appears in so many different spellings. For example: Upsidaisy Upsa daesy Upsy-daisy Oops-a-daisy Oopsy-daisy Hoops-a-daisy The form in which it is now most commonly spoken and spelled is 'oops-a-daisy'. The first known printed record of any form of the term is in Clough Robinson's The dialect of Leeds and its neighbourhood, 1862: Upsa daesy! a common ejaculation when a child, in play, is assisted in a spring-leap from the ground. This was preceded by 'up-a-daisy', which has its own variations of spelling - 'up-a-dazy', 'up-a-daisey', etc. Jonathan Swift used this in his collection of letters, which was published in 1711 as The Journal to Stella: Come stand away, let me rise... Is there a good fire? - So - up a-dazy. The earlier dialect term 'upaday', which has the same meaning, appears to be the source. The 'daisy' part is a fanciful extension of 'day', perhaps alluding to the child being on the ground amongst the daisies. Of course, the name daisy itself derives from 'day' - the flower, which closes at night and exposes its yellow centre in sunlight, was thought of as the day's eye. Not content with spawning so many forms, ups-a-daisy also has a role in the coining of the word 'lackadaisical'. This first appears in the language in 1768 and can be traced backwards to 'alack-the-day', which dates to at least Shakespeare's usage of it in Romeo and Juliet, 1592: Shee's dead, deceast, shee's dead: alacke the day! In the next century, this mutated to the more familiar form 'lack-a-day', which is found in The Grounds & Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion, by John Eachard, 1685: 'Lack a day! says one of the accomplish'd, in what a lamentable condition I have seen a mortal Clergyman. In the middle of the next century we find 'lack-a-daisy', in Tobias Smollett's The Adventures of Roderick Random 1748: Good lack-a-daisy! the rogue is fled! This is a form of 'lack-a-day' with the ending taken from 'ups-a-daisy'. From 'lack-a-daisy', it isn't a long step, either in time or language, to 'lackadaisical', which is first recorded in Laurence Sterne's A sentimental journey through France and Italy, 1768: Sitting in my black coat, and in my lack-adaysical manner, counting the throbs of it. 'Ups-a-daisy' is clearly also the direct source of 'whoops-a-daisy'. This has a different meaning and is an exclamation made after a stumble or other mistake. It is usually said by the perpetrator of the error and the saying out loud is a public acknowledgement, somewhat like 'mea culpa'. 'Whoops-a-daisy', and the shortened forms 'whoops' and 'oops', are all American in origin. The expression is first recorded, as 'Whoopsie Daisy!', in the New Yorker, in September 1925. In the 1999 film Notting Hill, Hugh Grant's character falls over, saying 'whoops a daisies'. Julia Roberts' character then says: "No one has said 'whoops a daisies' for fifty years and even then it was only little girls with blonde ringlets." Maybe that's true in California, but it's rather surprising that the film's English screenwriter, Richard Curtis, gave her that line in a film set in London. Like many in the UK, I still use the phrase frequently, but, as a large middle-aged man with a small amount of straight brown hair, I don't qualify on any of Roberts' criteria.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-02-08 22:03:32

  Best bib and tucker Meaning One's best clothes. Origin This term originated not in any figurative sense, but literally - both bibs and tuckers were items of women's clothing from the 17th to late 19th centuries. Early bibs were somewhat like modern day bibs, although they weren't specifically used to protect clothes from spilled food as they are now. Tuckers were lace pieces fitted over the bodice - sometimes called 'pinners' or 'modesty pieces'. These were known by the late 17th century and were described by Randle Holme in The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon, 1688: "A Pinner or Tucker, is a narrow piece of Cloth - which compasseth the top of a Womans Gown about the Neck part." Tuckers, as the name suggests, were originally tucked in. Pinners differed by being pinned rather than tucked. Pinner is clearly the precursor of pinafore - originally pin-a-fore, i.e. pinned on the front. Incidentally, the blazons of the title of Holme's book gave the name to another form of dress - the blazer. Blazons were the heraldic coats of arms or badges of office worn by the king's messenger. Blazer jackets, which became fashionable in the early 20th century as uniforms for supporters of sports teams and as school uniforms, mimicked the heraldic style. 'Best bib and tucker' is an 18th century term, the first known citation of which is from a translation of the Marquis d'Argens' ambitiously entitled work New Memoirs establishing a True Knowledge of Mankind, 1747: "The Country-woman minds nothing on Sundays so much as her best Bib and Tucker." Tuckers continued to be worn until the late 19th century. Charlotte Bronte referred to the practice in Jane Eyre, 1847: "Some of the girls have two clean tuckers in the week; the rules limit them to one." 'Tuck' is a slang term for food which was coined in English public schools in the 19th century. For example, Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's School Days, 1857: "The Slogger looks rather sodden, as if he didn't take much exercise and ate too much tuck." This migrated to Australia, where it was modified to tucker. Both this meaning of tucker and the women's bib meaning have connections with food and it is tempting to speculate that they are in some way connected. It seems that they aren't. Tucker in the food sense derives from the earlier term 'a tuck-out' (later also 'tuck-in'), which meant 'a hearty meal'. 'Tuck-out' was synonymous with 'blow-out'. Both terms are listed in John Badcock's Slang: A Dictionary of the Turf, 1823: Blow-out - a good dinner will blow-out a man's tripes like any thing; so will a heavy supper. Either, or any other gormandising meal, is also 'a famous tuck-out'. 'Blow-out', which appears to have had quite a crude meaning, is a long way removed from the protective crinoline bibs worn by Jane Austen heroines. Another link that is sometimes made is the possible connection between tucker and tuxedo. The two names sound similar of course and the cummerbund that is usually worn with the formal tuxedo suit is rather like a tucker. There's no foundation to that notion. Tuxedos are named from Tuxedo Park, New York, where they were first worn in 1886.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-02-08 22:05:04

  I haven't got a clue Meaning Without any knowledge or understanding. Origin This little phrase, which is often given as 'I don't have a clue', doesn't at first sight appear to be idiomatic at all and hardly deserving of investigation. After all, a clue is an insight or idea that points us towards a solution. To be without a clue is simply to be ignorant. However, a clue (also spelled clew) previously had a different meaning - a globular ball formed from coiling worms or the like or, more specifically, a ball of thread. Clew has been used with that meaning for at least a thousand years and citations of it in Old English date back to 897AD, when no less an author than Aelfred, King of Wessex used it in his West-Saxon translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care. Shakespeare also used the word with the 'thread' meaning, for example, in All's Well that Ends Well, 1601: "If it be so, you have wound a goodly clewe." That seems a long way from crossword clues or Sherlock Holmes' stories. How did we get from a ball of thread to the current meaning of clue? Go back to Greek myth and recall the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur. Theseus entered the labyrinth to kill the half-man, half-bull Minotaur. He did so but was only able to find his way out by retracing his path, marked by the string given to him by Ariadne. So, Theseus 'had a clew' about the safe route out of the maze and was able to escape. Geoffrey Chaucer recorded this story in The Legend of Ariadne, Part VI of The Legend of Good Women, 1385: Therto have I a remedie in my thoght, By a clewe of twyn as he hath gon, The same weye he may returne a-non, ffolwynge alwey the thred as he hath come. So, don't be clueless - all you need is some string.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-02-08 22:07:10

  The devil to pay Meaning Impending trouble or other bad consequences following from one's actions. Origin People seem to love ascribing nautical origins to phrases. Here's a good case in point. The 'devil' is a seam between the planking of a wooden ship. Admiral William Henry Smyth defined the term in The Sailor's Word-book: An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, 1865: Devil - The seam which margins the waterways on a ship's hull. 'Paying' is the sailor's name for caulking or plugging the seam between planking with rope and tar etc. 'Paying the devil' must have been a commonplace activity for shipbuilders and sailors at sea. This meaning of 'paying' is recorded as early as 1610, in S. Jourdain's Discovery of Barmudas: Some wax we found cast up by the Sea... served the turne to pay the seames of the pinnis Sir George Sommers built, for which hee had neither pitch nor tarre. Many sources give the full expression used by seafarers as "there抯 the devil to pay and only half a bucket of pitch", or "there抯 the devil to pay and no pitch hot". Nautical origin; case closed? Well, no. The phrase doesn't originate from the name of the ship's seam, as is sometimes supposed. It is the name 'devil' in this context which comes from the phrase 'the Devil to pay', rather than the other way about. The other meaning of paying the Devil alludes to Faustian pacts in which hapless individuals pay for their wishes or misdeeds by forfeiting their soul. This allusion, and the everyday usage meaning 'I am in trouble now, I will have to pay for this later', date from the 18th century. For example, Thomas Brown's Letters From the Dead to the Living, 1707: Don't you know damnation pays every man's scores... we knew we should have the Devil to pay one time or other, and now you see like honest men we have pawn'd our Souls for the whole Reckoning. This quotation predates the earliest recorded usage of 'devil' to mean the seam of a ship (Smyth's Sailor's Workbook, 1865) by more than a century. Given the known nautical meaning of 'paying' a seam and the well-established phrase 'the Devil to pay', sailors probably adopted the phrase in reference to the unpleasant task of seam caulking. George Lemon put forward his understanding of how the phrase was coined in English Etymology, 1783. Lemon explains that, when sailors were ready to start caulking seams before the tar was melted, they used the phrase 'here's the Devil to pay and no pitch hot'. As Lemon put it: "Here's the black gentleman come to pitch the vessel's sides and you have not so much as made the pitch kettle hot enough to employ him." Whether we accept Lemon's version or prefer the 'pact with the Devil' derivation, it is clear that the devil in the phrase was originally a reference to Satan, not the seam of a ship. See also: Between the Devil and the deep blue sea.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-02-15 21:16:58

  Acronyms Meaning Words which are formed from the initial letters of other words. Origin When looking for the origin of an unexplained word, people sometimes suggest that the word was coined as an acronym of some phrase or other. Occasionally, that notion is correct and there are some commonly used words that we might use without necessarily being aware they are acronyms, for example 'gulag' or 'Hamas'. Words that were coined as acronyms form quite a small part of the language. Nevertheless, supposed acronym derivations are the largest source of folk etymologies - those popular fallacies about the origins of words or phrases. With many of these false derivations the word comes first and then some suitably chirpy phrase is invented to match it. These back-formations have been given the intuitive name 'backronyms'. There are many examples and two of the more common, 'posh' and 'golf' (supposedly 'port out, starboard home' and 'gentlemen only, ladies forbidden' respectively), make it onto the Nonsense Nine, our list of popular fallacies. Other backronym examples are: cop - Constable on patrol news - North, east, west, south Some backronym coinages make little attempt to feign authenticity and are clearly intended to poke fun. Examples of these are, Ford - Fix or repair daily and DOS - Defunct operating system. Deciding whether an acronym's supposed origin is genuine isn't always so easy. The best place to start is the age of the word. If the word is old, then it probably isn't an acronym. The term 'acronym' itself wasn't coined until the mid 20th century. The earliest known citation of it is from American Notes and Queries, February 1943: Words made up of the initial letters or syllables of other words... I have seen... called by the name acronym. Some examples do date from before 1943 but were rare enough beasts in the early 20th century not to have needed a generic name. The field of computing is now the most prolific source of acronyms - 'gif', 'ascii', 'wysiwyg', 'mpeg', not to mention the names of most programming languages, the list seems endless. Before computers, the military held top spot. Almost all of the earliest known acronyms derive from the armed forces. For example (with the date of their earliest use as an acronym that I know of): Anzac - Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (1915) Naafi - Navy, Army, and Air Force Institutes (1927) Gestapo - Geheime Staats-Polizei (1934) Waaf - Women's Auxiliary Air Force (1940) Radar - Radio detection and ranging (1941) So, if someone suggests to you that the name of the 15th century game of golf was coined as an acronym, you might suggest suitable therapy, or possibly a free membership of the Committee Resisting Acronymic Proliferation.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-02-22 09:07:08

  Raining cats and dogs Meaning Raining very heavily. Origin This is an interesting phrase in that, although there's no definitive origin, there is a likely derivation. Before we get to that, let's get some of the fanciful proposed derivations out of the way. The phrase isn't related to the well-known antipathy between dogs and cats, which is exemplified in the phrase 'fight like cat and dog'. Nor is the phrase in any sense literal, i.e. it doesn't record an incident where cats and dogs fell from the sky. Small creatures, of the size of frogs or fish, do occasionally get carried skywards in freak weather. Impromptu involuntary flight must also happen to dogs or cats from time to time, but there's no record of groups of them being scooped up in that way and causing this phrase to be coined. Not that we need to study English meteorological records for that - it's plainly implausible. One supposed origin is that the phrase derives from mythology. Dogs and wolves were attendants to Odin, the god of storms, and sailors associated them with rain. Witches, who often took the form of their familiars - cats, are supposed to have ridden the wind. Well, some evidence would be nice. There doesn't appear to be any to support this notion. It has also been suggested that cats and dogs were washed from roofs during heavy weather. This is a widely repeated tale. It got a new lease of life with the e-mail message "Life in the 1500s", which began circulating on the Internet in 1999. Here's the relevant part of that: I'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of thatch roofs, well that's all they were. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to get warm. So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs, all lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, "it's raining cats and dogs." This is nonsense of course. It hardly needs debunking but, lest there be any doubt, let's do that anyway. In order to believe this tale we would have to accept that dogs lived in thatched roofs, which, of course, they didn't. Even accepting that bizarre idea, for dogs to have slipped off when it rained they would have needed to be sitting on the outside of the thatch - hardly the place an animal would head for as shelter in a rainstorm. Another suggestion is that 'raining cats and dogs' comes from a version of the French word 'catadoupe', meaning waterfall. Again, no evidence. If the phrase were just 'raining cats', or even if there also existed a French word 'dogadoupe', we might be going somewhere with this one. As there isn't, let's pass this by. The much more probable source of 'raining cats and dogs' is the prosaic fact that, in the filthy streets of 17th/18th century England, heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals and other debris. The animals didn't fall from the sky, but the sight of dead cats and dogs floating by in storms could well have caused the coining of this colourful phrase. Jonathan Swift described such an event in his satirical poem 'A Description of a City Shower', first published in the 1710 collection of the Tatler magazine. The poem was a denunciation of contemporary London society and its meaning has been much debated. While the poem is metaphorical and doesn't describe a specific flood, it seems that, in describing water-borne animal corpses, Swift was referring to an occurrence that his readers would have been well familiar with: Now in contiguous Drops the Flood comes down, Threat'ning with Deluge this devoted Town. ... Sweeping from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts, and Blood, Drown'd Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench'd in Mud, Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood. We do know that the phrase was in use in a modified form in 1653, when Richard Brome's comedy The City Wit or The Woman Wears the Breeches referred to stormy weather with the line: "It shall raine... Dogs and Polecats". Polecats aren't cats as such but the jump between them in linguistic rather than veterinary terms isn't large and it seems clear that Broome's version was essentially the same phrase. The first appearance of the currently used version is in Jonathan Swift抯 A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation in 1738: "I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs". The fact that Swift had alluded to the streets flowing with dead cats and dogs some years earlier and now used 'rain cats and dogs' explicitly is good evidence that poor sanitation was the source of the phrase as we now use it.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-02-29 09:19:52

  Round Robin Meaning A tournament in which each contestant plays each of the others. Origin In order to identify the derivation of 'Round Robin', we need first to be clear about what the term means. It is now used to refer to things that operate in a rotational manner, like tournaments where each player plays every other, circular letters etc. Long before those contemporary meanings were known of, the term Round Robin had been used to refer to a variety of things. The earliest use was as a disparaging nickname, along the lines of 'sly dog' or 'dark horse'. This dates back to the 16th century and was cited in a work by Miles Coverdale, in 1546: Certayne fonde talkers... applye to this mooste holye sacramente, names of despitte and reproche, as to call it Jake in the boxe, and round roben, and suche other not onely fond but also blasphemouse names. [fond then meant confounded, or foolish] Other uses were: - A reference to Roundheads, i.e. the supporters of Parliament during the English Civil War, as in Rump, 1662, which was a collection of scurrilous poems and songs. - The name of a high-spirited game. For example, in The Works of Mr. Thomas Brown, 1707 - "The noble and ancient recreation of Robin-Robin, Hey-Jnks, [sic] and Whipping the Snake." - The name of virtually anything that was round in shape. For instance, Angler fish, pancakes and even, in An Epistle to Lieutenant Hamilton, a Scottish dialect poem by Alan Ramsey, 1721, the chubby little garden visitor, the Robin: Now, now I hope we'll ding the Dutch, As fine as a round Robin, Gin greediness to grow soon rich Invites not to stock-jobbing The variety of contexts in which the term has been used seems to argue against it being derived from the roundness of robins. It is more likely that 'Robin' was attached to 'round' just as a pleasant-sounding alliteration. The currently used ' rotational' meaning is independent of all of the earlier uses. This began in the 18th century as the name of a form of petition, in which the complainants signed their names in a circle, so as to disguise who had signed first. This was especially favoured by sailors - not surprisingly, as mutiny was then a hanging offence. The term is recorded in the January 1730 edition of The Weekly Journal: "A Round Robin is a Name given by Seamen, to an Instrument on which they sign their Names round a Circle, to prevent the Ring-leader being discover'd by it, if found." It may be that this derives from the French 'rond rouban', which was a similar form of petition, in which the names were written on a circle of ribbon. That's an attractive and plausible notion, but I can't find any actual documentary evidence to substantiate it. Another idea, again attractive at first sight, is that the term 'ringleader' derives from the person who was first to sign the circle of names on a round robin. That's not likely, as the first use of ringleader is from well before 1730. The most frequent use of 'Round Robin' now is as the name of tournaments with rounds where everyone plays everyone else. This originated in the USA at the end of the 19th century. The earliest citation I have of that is from the Official Lawn Tennis Bulletin, issued in New York in 1895: "The so-called round-robin tournament, where each man plays every other, furnishes the best possible test of tennis skill."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-03-10 14:31:59

  Strait and narrow Meaning A conventional and law-abiding course. Origin 'Straight' is a much more frequently used word than 'strait' these days and so the most common question about this phrase concerns the spelling - should it be 'strait and narrow' or 'straight and narrow'? Well, that depends on just how pedantic you want to be. The source of the expression is the Bible, specifically Matthew 7:13/14. The King James' Version gives these verses as: Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. That clearly opts for 'strait' rather than 'straight', as it calls on a now rather archaic meaning of strait, that is, 'a route or channel, so narrow as to make passage difficult'. This is still found in the names of various sea routes, e.g. the Straits of Dover. Such a nautical strait was defined in the 1867 version of Admiral Smyth's Sailor's Word-book as: "A passage connecting one part of a sea with another." Smyth also offered the opinion that strait "is often written in the plural, but without competent reason". The 'confined and restricted' meaning of strait still also lingers on in straitjacket, dire straits, strait-laced and straitened circumstances. All of these are frequently spelled with 'straight' rather than 'strait'. These spellings, although technically incorrect, are now widely accepted and only 'dire straights' comes in for any sustained criticism. The use of 'straight' is quite understandable, certainly in 'straight and narrow'. After all, it means 'direct and reliable', as in the phrase 'as straight as a die', and the imagery of a direct and unwavering route to salvation would have been attractive to Christian believers in the 17th century, when that version of the spelling first appeared. It was included in an 1827 publication of A Journal of George Fox, Volume 1, which claims to be a facsimile reprint of the 1694 original journal. The earliest definitive documentation that I can find comes from a few years later, in The Critical Works of Monsieur Rapin, 1706: "The soul of the common people seems too straight and narrow to be wrought upon by any Part of Eloquence." This version of the phrase is old enough and close enough in date to the earliest example of 'strait and narrow' that I can find in print as to match it in status. That example is in A Vindication of the Government in Scotland: During the Reign of King Charles II, 1712: "Strait and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life." 'Straight and narrow' is now the more common spelling and you will be in good company if you opt to use it, even though 'strait and narrow' might be a better choice if you want to get high marks in that English language test.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-03-14 22:06:58

  Through thick and thin Meaning Through all forms of obstacle that are put in one's way. Origin 'Through thick and thin' is one of the English language's older expressions and one that has maintained its figurative meaning over many centuries. It is venerable enough to date from the times when England was still a predominantly wooded country, with few roads and where animals grazed on what was known as wood pasture, i.e. mixed woodland and grass. The phrase originated as 'through thicket and thin wood', which was a straightforward literal description of any determined progress through the 'thick' English countryside. The earliest citation I can find that uses our contemporary wording is in Richard Baxter's religious text A Saint Or a Brute: The Certain Necessity and Excellency of Holiness, 1662: "Men do fancy a necessity [of holiness] where there is none, yet that will carry them through thick and thin." The phrase had been in use in Old and Middle English, in the literal 'thicket or thin wood' sense, for some centuries before that. The earliest known usage is in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Reeve's Tale: And whan the hors was laus, he gynneth gon Toward the fen, ther wilde mares renne, And forth with "wehee," thurgh thikke and thurgh thenne. [And when the horse was loose, he begins to go Toward the fen, where wild mares run And forth with "wehee," through thick and through thin]

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-03-21 16:20:02

  Guinea-pig Meaning A person or animal who is used as the subject of an experiment. Origin It isn't at all clear why these cute family pets came to be given their name. They are cavies, not pigs, and they don't originate from Guinea. Both 'guinea' and 'pig' seem to stem from simple, but mistaken, associations. The name 'guinea pig' dates from the 17th century and the first record of it is in Henry Power's Experimental Philosophy, 1664: "You may see them... like so many Ginny-Pigs, munching and chewing the cud." The 'guinea' part of the name is perplexing. It was certainly a reference to a place rather than to the idea that the animals cost a guinea to buy, as is sometimes wrongly suggested. Guinea is in fact in West Africa but the little rodents, properly called Cavia Cobaya, are from the Andean region of South America. It could be that the name derives from the 'Guineamen', which were sailing ships that followed a route from the UK to Africa and then on to the Americas, plying the slave trade. It could also be that the distinction between East Africa and South America wasn't as clear as it is now. 'Guinea' may have just been a synonym for 'somewhere a long way across the sea'. 'Pig' is a little easier to understand. Cavies do at least look somewhat like tiny pigs and that was in the mind of the academics who first gave them a Latin name - Cavia porcellus, porcellus meaning 'little pig'. This is in line with the habit at the time of naming any small and vaguely porcine creatures as 'pigs'. George Gascoigne's translation of Noble Arte Venerie, 1575 does that for baby badgers: "There are Foxes and theyr Cubbes, and Badgerdes and theyr Pigges." The same loose associations were no doubt at work when the animal was called the Spanish Coney in a 1710 edition of The British Apollo: Containing Two Thousand Answers to Curious Questions in Arts and Sciences: "A Guinea Pig... in Johnston's Natural History goes by the Name of a Spanish Coney." Coney was the old name for rabbit so, instead of a pig from Guinea we have a rabbit from Spain. The first use of the term 'guinea pig' to describe a person didn't have the current 'subject of an experiment' meaning, but was a name for inexperienced midshipmen on the sailing ships mentioned above, as recorded in The Adventures of a Kidnapped Orphan, 1747: "He sent his nephew, at the age of fourteen, on a voyage as a Guinea-pig." It wasn't until the 20th century that the expression was given its current meaning. This was first alluded to by George Bernard Shaw, in Quintessence of Ibsenism Now Completed, 1913: "The... folly which sees in the child nothing more than the vivisector sees in a guinea pig: something to experiment on with a view to rearranging the world." Shaw, who was a noted vegetarian and what would now be called an animal liberationist, was referring to the practice of using guinea pigs in scientific experiments. This had been going for some time by 1913. The celebrated French chemist Antoine Lavoisier used a guinea pig in an experiment on respiration in 1780. Why guinea pigs were chosen as subjects of experimentation isn't entirely clear. They may not have cost the huge price of a guinea but, being imported from 'Guinea', they were more expensive than mice and rats, which have now largely, if doubtless reluctantly, taken their place.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-03-28 13:04:09

  Chaise lounge Meaning A form of sofa with a backrest at one end only. Origin 'Chaise lounge' appears to be a very early example of an eggcorn, dating from long before eggcorns were given a name. [Note: eggcorns are words or phrases which have been coined mistakenly, often due to an incorrect guess as to how a word is spelled, but one which makes some kind of sense. For example, Old-Timer's Disease for Alzheimer's Disease and daring-do for derring-do.] 'Chaise lounge', also sometimes spelled 'chase lounge', began life as such a linguistic mistake and has survived because it does make intuitive sense. The piece of furniture in question is properly called a 'chaise longue'. The name is of French origin, of course, and has been known there since the 18th century, translating into English simply as 'long chair' - which is just what it is. The understandability of the misspelling of 'longue' as 'lounge' is that lounging is what one does on these sofas and the supposed translation of 'lounging chair' makes perfect sense. The spelling and pronunciation as 'chaise lounge' is largely limited to America. It is so well-established there that it is far too late to turn back the clock - only the most foolhardy of visitors to the USA would attempt to flag it as a mistake. The confusion for those outside America is added to by the fact that those items of garden or poolside furniture which are known in most other English-speaking countries as a 'sun-loungers', are also often called 'chaise lounges' in the USA. Those English-speakers from the Mother Country who look down on this as a typical mangling of the language by those uncultured Yanks might be dismayed to find that the earliest known citation of the 'chaise lounge' spelling comes from no less a bastion of 'proper' English than The Times newspaper. The January 16th 1807 edition included an advert for An Assemblage of truly elegant furniture, fitted up in the most modern style, and this includes the offer of "sofas, chaise lounge, loo tables" etc. The earliest citation that I can find from America, and which appears to refer to a 'sun-lounger', is in the 4th January 1875 edition of The Newport Daily News: "A real rattan chaise lounge, such as is made at Singapore."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-04-04 23:10:18

  Point-blank Meaning Close enough to go directly to a target. Origin In the Late Middle Ages, when 'point-blank' was coined, archery and artillery targets were usually white. 'Blank' derives from the French 'blanc', which of course means white. 'Point' is a little more ambiguous. What was first meant by 'point-blank range' was rather more precise than our current meaning. Then, as now, it meant 'too close to miss', but the specific meaning was 'within the distance that a missile travels in a direct line, with no perceptible drop due to gravity'. The 'point' in the term may have referred to the point of the arrow that was about to be fired - if the point coincided with the target in the archer's eyeline then the target would be hit, so long as it was within 'point-blank range'. Another interpretation is that 'point' was a verb and that 'point-blank' just meant 'pointing at the (blanc) target'. The expression betrays its ye-olde origins by appearing first in print in the form of 'poynt blancke'. An example of that comes from the English mathematician Thomas Digges' Arithmetical Military Treatise, 1579, asking the kind of question that might have turned up in a Tudor maths lesson (no wonder they crept like snails, unwilling to school): If a Falcon that carrieth poynt blancke 150 pase, at vtmost randon randge 1300 pases, I demaunde howe farre a Culuering at his vtmost randon will reach, that at poynt blancke, or leuell, rangeth 250 pase. Note: Falcons and culverins were cannons, small and large respectively. Into the 17th century and the 'direct level flight' meaning was alluded to by no less an author than Sir Walter Raleigh, in The History of the World, 1614: Training his Archers to shoot compasse, who had bin accustomed to the point blanke. Note: Compass meant 'curved', as in the flight of an arrow over a long distance. The figurative 'direct and blunt' meaning that we now often use is found in phrases like 'asked/denied/refused pointblank'. This also came into use around the turn of the 17th century and was listed in John Florio's English/Italian dictionary A worlde of wordes, 1598, in which he equates 'forthright' with 'point blanke'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-04-14 14:04:43

  Silver bullet Meaning A direct and effortless solution to a problem. Origin We now use the term 'silver bullet' to refer to an action which cuts through complexity and provides an immediate solution to a problem. The allusion is to a miraculous fix, otherwise portrayed as 'waving a magic wand'. This figurative use derives from the use of actual silver bullets and the widespread folk belief that they were the only way of killing werewolves or other supernatural beings. The most famous user of silver bullets was of course the Lone Ranger. This cowboy series ran from 1933 on radio and later as a highly popular television show. Silver bullets fitted well with the masked hero's miraculous persona. He typically arrived from nowhere, overcame evil and departed, leaving behind only a silver bullet and echoes of 'who was that masked man?'. The belief in the magical power of silver, especially of weapons made from silver, is very ancient. Book XVI of Horace's Odes has it that the Delphic Oracle advised Philip of Macedonia to 'fight with silver spears'. References to the use of silver bullets date from the late 17th century. An early 19th century citation which specifically mentions the belief in their use as the only way to kill evil supernatural beings is found in Sir Walter Scott's Tales of My Landlord, 1816: Conspicuous by his black horse and white feather ... the object of aim to everyone, he seemed as if he were impassive to their shots. The superstitious fanatics looked upon him as a man gifted by the Evil Spirit with supernatural means of defence. Many a whig that day loaded his musket with a dollar cut into slugs, in order that a silver bullet (such was their belief) might bring down the persecutor of the holy kirk, on whom lead had no power. There are numerous examples in 19th century fiction of the efficacy of silver bullets against werewolves, witches, the Devil and all manner of creatures, which were generically called 'uncanny bodies'. Into the 20th century and the term was adopted in other contexts as meaning a solution to a problem. War bonds with that name were issued in 1914. In 1916, The Times advised the population of the UK to: "Invest the savings in buying 'Silver Bullets' in the form most suitable and convenient - Exchequer bonds, or through the Post Office Savings Bank." Silver Bullet cocktails, a solution in a literal sense, were devised a little later. Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book, 1930, lists the ingredients: Silver bullet cocktail. {half} Gin. {quarter} Lemon Juice. {quarter} Kummel. Shake well and strain into cocktail glass. The expression 'magic bullet' also came into being at around this time. This had a similar meaning to 'silver bullet' but related specifically to highly targeted medical treatments. It was coined by the German scientist Paul Ehrlich in a speech in 1906, using the German word Zauberkugel. This was translated as 'magic bullet' when Ehrlich's work was reported in Science, in August 1924: "Ehrlich aptly compared them [natural antibodies] to magic bullets, constrained by a charm to fly straight to their specific objective, and to turn aside from anything else in their path." Oddly, the figurative use of 'silver bullet' that is now commonplace wasn't adopted into general use until well after all of the above, probably in response to the activities of 'that masked man'. The US newspaper The Bedford Gazette included this piece in a September 1951 issue: "There are those who warn against viewing the atom as a magic weapon... I agree. This is not a silver bullet which can deliver itself or otherwise work military miracles."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-04-29 13:16:24

  Blown to smithereens Meaning Disintegrated into small fragments, by a sudden impact or explosion. Origin Smithereens is an Irish word. It derives from, or is possibly the source of, the modern Irish 'smidir韓', which means 'small fragments'. There is a town near Baltimore, close to the south-west coast of Ireland, called Skibbereen. The name means 'little boat harbour' and it is tempting to imagine sailing ships arriving there from the wild Atlantic by being 'blown to Skibbereen'. The more recent 'Troubles' also bring up images of property/people being dynamited and 'blown to Skibbereen' from all over Ireland. There's no record of any such phrase however, and the similarity between the words Skibbereen and smithereens seems to be no more than co-incidence. Another enticing notion as to the source of smithereens is that it refers to the shards of metal formed when iron is forged and hammered in a smithy. Again, there's nothing but wishful thinking to support that idea. The actual origin is more prosaic. 'Smiodar' means fragments in Irish. 'Een' is a commonplace diminutive ending, as in colleen (girl), i.e. Caile (country woman) + een. Similarly, smiodar + een lead us to smithereen. As with many words that are inherited from other languages, it took some time for the English spelling to become stable. Both 'smiddereens' and 'shivereens' are recorded in the mid 19th century. The notion of things being 'broken/smashed/blown to smithereens' dates from at least the turn of the 19th century. Francis Plowden, in The History of Ireland, 1801, records a threat made against a Mr. Pounden by a group of Orangemen: "If you don't be off directly, by the ghost of William, our deliverer, and by the orange we wear, we will break your carriage in smithereens, and hough your cattle and burn your house." ['Hough' is a variant of 'hock' - to disable by cutting the tendons] Smithereens is one of those unusual nouns that, like suds and secateurs, never venture out by themselves - the word is always plural.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-04-29 13:17:06

  Bale out/bail out Meaning Various meanings, including 'making an emergency parachute escape from an aeroplane' and 'ladling water from a boat'. Origin This is an unusual phrase (or is that pair of phrases?) in that it isn't the origin or the meaning that is the source of debate, but the spelling. Is it 'bale out' or bail out', and should there be different spellings for the different meanings of the phrase? Those meanings would be a good place to start: - Make an emergency exit from an aeroplane, using a parachute. - Ladle water from a boat. - Liberate from prison, into the security of a guarantor. - Jump from a surfboard/skateboard/bicycle etc., in order to avoid getting injured. - Step away from a pitch in baseball. You may be clear in your own mind as to the correct spelling for each of these. Whichever you opt for you will have no difficulty in finding supporting examples in print. There are many examples of both 'bail out' and 'bale out' for all of the above meanings. There is a 'correct' spelling for each however, based on whether the expression in question derives from 'bale' or 'bail' and, more significantly, where you live. In the USA, 'bail' is almost always used for all variants. Let's take the meanings for which there is a degree of agreement about the spelling. The ladling of water from a boat is properly written as 'bailing' or 'bailing out'. This derives from 'baile', which is an early name for a bucket or pail. It is tempting to imagine that a bail is some sort of cross between a bucket and a pail, but that's just fancy. This usage has been known since the 17th century. For example, Samuel Purchas's Pilgrimage, 1613: They bailed and pumped two thousand tuns [another name for bucket] and yet were ten foot deepe. Liberating from prison, often on the payment of a surety, is also unambiguously 'bailing out'. This derives from the French 'baillier' - to deliver on trust. This usage dates back to the 14th century in French and appears in Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus, 1588: Thou shalt not baile them, see thou follow me. The last two meanings above, which both utilize the sense of 'bail' as withdrawing from something, are clearly of fairly recent American derivation and it is reasonable to defer to the US 'bail' spelling there. The earliest example I can find of such is in Ted Masters' Surfing Made Easy, 1962: Bailing out, getting off and away from the surfboard on purpose. What is essentially the same meaning of 'bailing' was adopted as Valley Speak, as demonstrated in Mimi Pond's Valley Girl's Guide to Life, 1982: When you skip school.., it's cool to go, 'like, I bailed, man.' Or when you leave a party, you go, 'Let's bail.' The only meaning of 'bail/bale out' for which the spelling is widely disputed is the emergency exiting of aeroplanes. This depends on whether the allusion being made is to aircrew being bundled out of a stricken aeroplane like a bale of hay, or being tipped out as in the bailing out of a boat. An alternative allusion for the 'bail' spelling would be the 'bailing out of', i.e. the removing from, jail. The US 'bail out' shows that they rejected the bale of hay imagery. It isn't merely that the US have opted to spell hay-bale as hay-bail - they are quite happy to 'tote that barge and lift that bale'. The earliest reference I can find to the naming of the jump from an aircraft is from the USA, in a September 1925 edition of The Oakland Tribune: The pilot who has to 慴ail out?hurriedly from a crippled or burning plane. In other parts of the English-speaking world, should you decide to record your heroic jump from an aircraft, you'd be advised to write it as 'bale out'. The first record of this from a non-US source is Fred Tredrey's flying school diary, Pilot's Summer, 1939: If you bale out and land in water... a smart rap will release the whole lot and you can swim free.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-05-02 14:47:14

  To bandy words Meaning To argue persistently. Origin To 'bandy' is to 'exchange', to 'toss to and fro'. This is the source of the name of the game bandy - a ferocious ball game similar to ice hockey. The word was in use in English by the 16th century and had counterparts in both French (bander) and Spanish (bandear), although which of these came first is uncertain. The sport originally associated with bandying wasn't bandy itself, but tennis. Raphael Holinshed's The firste volume of the chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, 1577, includes: "Kingdoms... be no balles for me to bandie." He was probably referring there to tennis 'balles' and tennis was mentioned explicitly in Randle Cotgrave's A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, 1611. Cotgrave translated the French verb 'bander' as the English 'bandie' and gave an example of its use as "to bandie at Tennis". The 16th century was well before the development of lawn tennis and the game being referred to was what we now call real tennis (or in some countries court tennis) - which may be a corruption of royal tennis. This was an indoor game in which the walls form part of the court. The best known court, which is still in use, was built at Hampton Court Palace by Henry VIII in 1530. A 'bandy' was a particular sort of tennis stroke. Players would shout 'A Bandy, Sir', when returning the ball. A 'bandy' must have been different in some way from other strokes - players would presumably have soon got tired of shouting that warning every time the ball was played. It is known that a 'check' was a return in which the ball didn't strike the walls, i.e. the only form of stroke allowed in modern-day tennis. It is possible that a 'bandy' was a 'check' that was returned - that's speculation though, we just don't know. Whatever the precise meaning in real tennis, the word bandy was taken up to mean 'to and fro' and soon became used in other expressions. For example, Shakespeare used it in King Lear, 1605: "Do you bandy lookes with me, you Rascall?" Samuel Johnson used it in 1767, as reported by Boswell, 1831: "It was not for me to bandy civilities with my sovereign." There are various records of people 'bandying taunts' and 'bandying arguments' during the 17th and 18th centuries. The first example that I can find of 'bandy words with' is in The Fair Maid of the Inn, by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, 1750, in which a character refuses to be taunted into an argument concerning a promise of marriage: "I'll not bandy Words, but thus dissolve the contract."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-05-12 14:42:08

  Donkey's years Meaning A very long time. Origin A query at the Phrases and Sayings Discussion Forum asked if the British slang term for 'a very long time' was donkey's years or donkey's ears. My first thoughts were, "donkey's years of course - what would ears have to do with it?". It turns out that I was being rather hasty. Donkey's years is now the more commonly used slang term when meaning 'a long time', but donkey's ears, although used little in recent years, has been a jokey alternative for some time - certainly from the early 20th century, viz. E. V. Lucas' Vermilion Box, 1916: "Now for my first bath for what the men call 'Donkey's ears', meaning years and years." This slightly pre-dates the earliest printed version that I can find of donkey's years, in the US newspaper The Bridgeport Telegram, 1923: "With a heavy make-up, you'll be the cutest vamp I've seen in donkey's years." It is quite likely that donkey's ears was the earlier form and that it originated as rhyming slang, in an allusion to the length of the animal's ears. Donkey's ears/years is often shortened just to donkeys. That is characteristic of rhyming slang, as in syrup (of figs) - wig or plates (of meat) - feet. Donkey's ears works as rhyming slang whereas donkey's years doesn't. In rhyming slang the last word of a short phrase is rhymed with the word that gives the slang meaning. For example, trouble and strife - wife, apples and pears - stairs, etc. It makes little sense for the phrase to have originated in slang form as donkey's years, as that would rhyme 'years' with 'years'. The migration from donkey's ears to donkey's years was no doubt aided by the belief that donkeys live a long time. There's some truth in that. Lively Laddie, a donkey who had lived up to his name for many years while plying his trade on Blackpool Pleasure Beach was, at age 62, a contender for the 'oldest living donkey' title.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-05-16 16:07:43

  Let the cat out of the bag Meaning Disclose a secret. Origin There are two commonly heard suggested origins of this phrase. One relates to the fraud of substituting a cat for a piglet at markets. If you let the cat out of the bag you disclosed the trick - and avoided buying a pig in a poke (bag). This form of trickery is long alluded to in the language and 'pigs in a poke' are recorded as early as 1530. The other theory is that the 'cat' referred to is the cat o' nine tails, which was used to flog ill-disciplined sailors. Again, this has sufficient historical record to be at least possible. The cat o' nine tails was widely used and was referred to in print many years prior to the first use of 'let the cat out of the bag'. The 'nine tails' part of the name derives from the three strands of cord that the rope lashes were made from. Each of the cords were in turn made from three strands of string. When unbraided a piece of rope separated into nine strings. The 'cat' part no doubt alluded to the scratches that the knotted ends of the lash made on the victim's back, like those from a cat's claws. Of the two explanations, the 'pig in a poke' derivation is the more plausible, although I can find no direct documentary evidence to link 'letting the cat out of the bag' to the selling of livestock. The cat o' nine tails story is dubious at best. It is reported that the lashes were sometimes stored in bags, but the suggested nautical punishment origin fails at the critical point, in that it doesn't match the 'disclose a secret' meaning of the phrase. The first known use of the phrase in print that I have found is in a 1760 edition of The London Magazine: "We could have wished that the author... had not let the cat out of the bag." There are several other literary references to the phrase in the 1760s and 1770s, most of which place it in quotations marks - a sure sign of it being not commonly understood and consequently, newly coined. Cats feature very often in English proverbs: A cat may look at a king - 1546 All cats are grey in the dark - 1596 Curiosity killed the cat - 1921 There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream - 1855 When the cat is away, the mice will play - 1607 This routine appearance of cats in the language is no doubt a consequence of them being widely kept as mousers and pets in domestic houses. As to 'who let the cats out?', we can't be certain; but it probably wasn't a sailor.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-05-26 18:04:49

  Die-hard Meaning A person who holds stubbornly to a minority view, in defiance of the circumstances. Origin The title of the 1988 film Die Hard was chosen to signify both the 'hardness' of the lead character and the difficulty that he and the bad guys had in killing each other. In choosing not to hyphenate 'die-hard', which is the currently accepted spelling, they reverted to the original meaning of the term - to 'die hard' was to die reluctantly, resisting to the end. This meaning of the term was recorded in 1703, in Psychologia: or, an Account of the Nature of the Rational Soul. The text argues the pros and cons of a condemned man's approach to death: Against this Reason he [William Coward] urges the case of those that die hard, as they call it, at Tyburn who will therefore, according to him, out-brave the Terrors of the Lord. Tyburn, near what is now Marble Arch, in London, was the principal location for public hangings in England until 1785. The 'drop' method of hanging wasn't then in use and the process was sometimes a prolonged affair. There are records showing that some of those who were about to be hanged opted to take the opposite course to the 'die hards' and paid people to hang onto their legs so that they died quickly. There's no evidence however for the commonly repeated notion that this is the derivation of the phrase 'pulling one's leg'. The wider use of the term came into being in the following century. At the Battle of Albuhera in the Peninsula War in 1811, William Inglis, the commander of the British 57th Regiment of Foot, ordered all ranks "Die hard the 57th, die hard!", i.e. to fight until the last. The regiment later became known as the Die-hards. In the early 20th century, 'die-hard' was more usually used to describe a member of the political faction who were prepared to 'die in the last ditch' in their resistance to the Home Rule Bill of 1912. In 1922, the meaning took a step away from actual deaths, toward our present-day figurative meaning, when the members of the Conservative Party who followed the leadership of the Marquess of Salisbury named themselves 'The Die-hards'. Like 'zigzag', 'meanwhile', and countless other terms which are coined as two words, later to become hyphenated and later still to merge into a single word, the 'diehard' spelling will probably come to be preferred before long.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-05-30 09:46:20

  Ne'er cast a clout till May be out With most phrases and sayings the meaning is well understood but the origin is uncertain. With this one the main interest is the doubt about the meaning. So, this time, we'll have the origin first. Origin 'Ne'er cast a clout till May be out' is an English proverb. The earliest citation is this version of the rhyme from Dr. Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732, although it probably existed in word-of-mouth form well before that: "Leave not off a Clout Till May be out. Meaning Let's look first at the 'cast a clout' part. The word 'clout', although archaic, is straightforward. Since at least the early 15th century 'clout' has been used variously to mean 'a blow to the head', 'a clod of earth or (clotted) cream' or 'a fragment of cloth, or clothing'. It is the last of these that is meant in 'cast a clout'. This was spelled variously spelled as clowt, clowte, cloot, clute. Here's an early example, from the Early English Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, circa 1485: "He had not left an holle clowt, Wherwith to hyde hys body abowte." So, 'ne'er cast a clout...' simply means 'never discard your [warm winter] clothing...'. The 'till May be out' part is where the doubt lies. On the face of it this means 'until the month of May is ended'. There is another interpretation. In England, in May, you can't miss the Hawthorn. It is an extremely common tree in the English countryside, especially in hedges. Hawthorns are virtually synonymous with hedges. As many as 200,000 miles of hawthorn hedge were planted in the Parliamentary Enclosure period, between 1750 and 1850. The name 'Haw' derives from 'hage', the Old English for 'hedge'. The tree gives its beautiful display of flowers in late April/early May. It is known as the May Tree and the blossom itself is called May. Using that allusion, 'till May is out' could mean, 'until the hawthorn is out [in bloom]'. Other rhymes in which May is ambiguous are: - April showers bring forth May flowers. - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date. (Shakespeare's Sonnet 18) The Hawthorn has long been a potent symbol of rebirth and appears, as May, in other old rhymes. For example, 'Here we go gathering nuts in May'. That is probably a corruption of 'here we go gathering knots of May [blossom]'. After all, there are no nuts to collect in England until Autumn - certainly not in May. Putting the case for the month, as opposed to the flower... A French proverb - 'En avril, ne te d閏ouvre pas d'un fil; en mai, fais ce qui te pla顃'. This translates as 'In April, do not shed a single thread; in May, do as you please', which has much the same meaning as 'ne'er cast a clout...'. Captain John Stevens's work, 'A New Spanish and English Dictionary', published in London in 1706, translates a Spanish proverb, as "Do not leave off your Coat till May be past". Those rhymes may well have originated in England and migrated across the Channel. It is difficult to understand why the Spanish would coin such a proverb, which would seem a little cautious for that part of the world - the average temperature in Seville in May is 20癈. There is a homegrown version that supports the 'month' theory - a fuller version of the rhyme, which goes: "Button to chin, till May be in, Cast not a clout till May be out" The first line appears to have been added later and can't be found earlier than the 20th century. It clearly refers to the month though, as May blossom can come out, but can hardly be expected to go back in again, which indicates that whoever coined this additional line thought that way. There's an explicit mention of the month in the version of the rhyme from F. K. Robertson's Whitby Gazette, 1855: The wind at North and East Was never good for man nor beast So never think to cast a clout Until the month of May be out Wise words for the North Sea-facing Whitby, which can't match Seville and can be icy cold even in mid-summer. All in all, although the May blossom interpretation seems appealing, the 'May' in this proverb is the month of May. It's quite timely that, here in Yorkshire at the end of May, it's turned sunny and warm - having been cold and wet until now. I'm just about ready to take my coat off and head into flaming June.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-06-05 15:23:05

  High-flyer Meaning High-flyers, sometimes spelled high-fliers, are people who have achieved notable success, especially those who have become successful more quickly than is normal. The term is also used to describe speculative stock that has reached a high price in a short time. Origin We might expect this term to have originated in the world of aviation. In a way that's correct. The phrase does in fact predate the invention of planes/balloons by some hundreds of years, but there is an avian connection - if we recall that the word aviation derives from the Latin name for birds - avis. The first known citation of it in print is in Richard Harvey's diatribe Plaine Perceuall the peace-maker of England, 1590: "Men haue great desire to be compted [regarded as] high fliers and deepe swimmers." When looking for the origin of the term we need to take account of its change in meaning over time. When coined in the 16th century it wasn't used admiringly to refer to someone who had achieved success, but critically about someone who unwisely aspired to achievements beyond their talents. We still retain a version of the phrase with that meaning - high-flown, which we reserve for critical judgments of people who are extravagantly ambitious and bombastic. These are of course exactly the character faults that were ascribed to Icarus, the figure of Greek mythology who ignored his father's warnings not to use his homemade wax and feather wings to fly too close to the Sun, resulting in the inevitable crash to Earth. It is clear that, until the late 17th century at least, high-flyers were directly equated with Icarus. For example, William Chilcot's Practical treatise concerning evil thoughts, 1698: "These highflyers, when they are in their altitudes, suddenly their waxen wings melt, and down they fall headlong."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-06-16 11:01:50

  Toodle-oo Meaning A colloquial version of 'goodbye', now rather archaic. Origin The British term 'toodle-oo' is a fellow-traveller of various terms associated with walking or departing in a carefree manner - toddle, tootle and their extended forms toddle-off and tootle-pip. Let's also not forget tootle-oo, which is a commonly heard alternative form of toodle-oo, and also its Irish variant tooraloo. Tootle is a variant of toddle, both meaning 'walk in a leisurely manner'. Toddle, which is really the base word which leads eventually to toodle-oo, is moderately old and makes an appearance in print in Allan Ramsay's The tea-table miscellany, or a collection of Scots songs, 1724: "Could na my love come todlen hame." [toddling home] The word is still with us in the term 'toddle off' which, although somewhat archaic in sound, is still commonplace in the UK at least. This was in use by the early 19th century and appears in The Dublin University Magazine, 1838: "Show this gentleman to his bedchamber, Klaus... and I'll toddle off to my library," said the Nabob. 'Tootle', which also often comes complete with its 'off', has been used to mean 'walk aimlessly' since at least the early 1900s, for example, this piece from the English literary journal The Cornhill Magazine, July 1902: "I tootled down to Cooney's a half-hour before time." 'Toodle-oo' sounds the kind of language that we might expect P.G. Wodehouse to indulge in, in his Jeeves and Wooster stories. Wodehouse doesn't disappoint and although he didn't originate the phrase his use of it in an early Jeeves story - Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg, 1919, makes a clear link between toddling and toodling: "Ripping! I'll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man. See you later." "Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy." He trotted off... The first known record of toodle-oo came just a few years earlier, in a 1907 edition of Punch magazine, which was surely essential reading for the young Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, who was a contributing author to Punch at that date, and so may have written this himself: "Toodle-oo, old sport." Mr. Punch turned round at the amazing words and gazed at his companion. The mixing up of all of these terms may also have been influenced by 'toot-toot' and 'pip-pip', which were used in the early 1900s to denote the sounds of early car horns. This has lead to tootle-pip and toodle-pip, which might be imagined to be from the same period, but which are in fact late 20th century inventions in the Jeeves style. Wodehouse again had an indirect hand in this, as is shown by this piece from his 1920 novel Damsel in Distress: "Well, it's worth trying," said Reggie. "I'll give it a whirl. Toodleoo!" "Good-bye." "Pip-pip!" Reggie withdrew. Tootle-oo is first known from a date that is near enough to that of toodle-oo as to make it difficult to be certain which came first. This variant is recorded in the Letters of T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia), in 1908. The other famous Lawrence, D.H. Lawrence, is coincidentally the first known user of the Irish form tooraloo, also recorded in a letter, this time from 1921, and published in 1968 in Phoenix II: "So long! See you soon! Too-ra-loo!" Before closing, I ought to mention another commonly repeated theory on the origin of 'toodle-oo' - that tootle-oo, and by extension toodle-oo and tooraloo, derived as a slang version of the French ?tout ?l'heure, meaning "I'll see you soon". There's no evidence at all to support this theory, which relies entirely on the co-incidence of sound. There is also some circumstantial evidence against a French origin. Whilst the English and French nobility were closely enough mingled in the Middle Ages for the English then to have taken on many French terms verbatim, by the turn of the 20th century France had long become an unpopular rival. Very few French idioms were granted the status of a popular English slang version in the early 1900s. Just off the top, I can't think of any. It is difficult to imagine a French term being adopted as slang by the hostile and predominantly non-French speaking English populace in 1907. Finally, I suppose we ought also to deal with another derivation theory from the bottom of the pile, so to speak. This is that the word loo derives from toodle-oo, as 'too the loo'. Let's not waste bandwidth further on that one and just say, "it doesn't".

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-06-20 17:00:03

  Think outside the box Meaning Think creatively, unimpeded by orthodox or conventional constraints. Origin 'Think outside the box' originated in the USA in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Various authors from the world of management consultancy claim to have introduced it. The earliest citation that I have found comes from the weekly magazine of the US aviation industry - Aviation Week & Space Technology, July 1975: "We must step back and see if the solutions to our problems lie outside the box." The 'box', with its implication of rigidity and squareness, symbolises constrained and unimaginative thinking. This is in contrast to the open and unrestricted 'out of the box' or 'blue-sky' thinking. This latter phrase dates from a little earlier, for example, this piece from the Iowa newspaper the Oelwein Daily Register, April 1945: "Real thinking. Speculation. Pushing out in the blue. Finding out [the facts] was what put me onto the theory of blue-sky thinking." The encouragement to look for solutions from outside our usual thinking patterns was championed in the UK by Edward De Bono, the British psychologist and inventor, who coined the term Lateral Thinking in 1967 and went on to develop it as a method of structured creativity. So, what's this box? It turns out that, rather than being metaphorical, the reference was to a specific box - in the form of a two-dimensional square. Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks, and Conundrums (With Answers), 1914, included a puzzle, known as the 'Nine Dots Puzzle', which was posed like this: "Draw a continuous line through the center of all the eggs so as to mark them off in the fewest number of strokes." Loyd was a little sloppy with the puzzle's rules and ought to have added that the lines must be straight, although he did supply an illustration that makes the meaning clear. The 60/70s management gurus who exhorted trainees to 'think outside the box' made their point by resurrecting the old 'Nine Dots Puzzle' as a test. Those of you who are familiar with the puzzle's solution will see why. If you haven't yet solved it for yourself, just click on the nine-dot image below. (Or, if you have a text-based mail reader, use a web browser to go to http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/think-outside-the-box-solution.html )

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-06-30 13:53:43

  With bells on Meaning Eager; ready to participate. Origin This phrase is frequently used in reply to a party invitation and the common format in that case is to indicate one's enthusiasm with 'I'll be there with bells on!'. The phrase originated in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and most of the early citations of it suggest a US origin. The first record of it that I have found in print, which I doubt is the earliest usage, is in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned, 1922: "All-ll-ll righty. I'll be there with bells!" The phrase is paralleled in the UK by 'with knobs on', which means, 'with additional ornament'. This is recorded from the 1930s onward, as in the English novelist Margaret Kennedy's The Fool of the Family, 1930: "I'm waiting for the Marchese Ferdinando Emanuele Maria Bonaventura Donzati." "With knobs on," agreed Gemma airily. "Who's he?" The ornamentation is sometimes added to, using the intensified form 'with brass knobs on'. Eric Partridge, in A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, 1977, states that 'with brass fittings' was also known in the USA by 1930, but unfortunately omits any documentary evidence and, as yet, I've been unable to verify that assertion. Whilst 'with bells on' is largely reserved as being an enthusiastic response or as indicating additional ornament, both it and 'with (brass) knobs on' are also used as aggressive responses to a challenge. One might hear all of these in conversation - or rather one might have heard, as all versions are now falling out of use: "Your 21st? - I'll be there with bells on". "Little Richard; he's like Jerry Lee Lewis with bells/brass knobs on" and "You incompetent dummy!". "Same to you with bells/brass knobs on!". The knobs in the above are fairly easy to identify. The allusion is to the iron bedsteads which were commonplace items of furniture at the time the term was coined. The better class examples were embellished with brass knobs at the top of each bedpost. The 'bells' derivation is less clear-cut. Bells are often used to indicate ornament or exuberance, as in the late 20th century phrase 'bells and whistles' and the earlier British expression 'pull the other one [leg], it's got bells on'. The explanation most often put forward as the source of the bells in 'with bells on' is that they were those worn as part of jesters' costumes. The 'going to a party' scenario certainly fits with that. However, the distance in time and place between the world of mediaeval court jesters and the emergence of the phrase in 20th century USA tends to call that explanation into question. Another speculative suggestion along similar lines is that the bells are the bell-bottomed trousers that were worn by sailors. The US Navy and the British Royal Navy both issued bell-bottoms for their sailors in the 19th century but, that aside, there's nothing to support a naval origin. 'Pull the other one, it's got bells on' seems an apt response there. A stronger contender comes from the settlement of US immigrants in Pennsylvania and other states. Their preferred means of transport were large, sturdy wooden carts, called Conestoga wagons. These were drawn by teams of horses or mules whose collars were fitted with headdresses of bells. George Stumway, in Conestoga Wagon 1750-1850, states that the wagoners personalised the bells to tunings of their liking and took great pride in them. If a wagon became stuck, a teamster who came to the rescue often asked for a set of bells as reward. Arriving at a destination without one's bells hurt a driver's professional pride, whereas getting there 'with bells on' was a source of satisfaction. That's not a conclusive proof of derivation but it offers better circumstantial evidence than the others.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-07-04 13:44:47

  Chop-chop Meaning Be quick; hurry up. Origin This little reduplicated term has its origins in the South China Sea, as a Pidgin English version of the Chinese term k'w鈏-k'w鈏. The earliest known citation of chop-chop in print is from the English language newspaper that was printed in Canton in the early 19th century - The Canton Register, 13th May 1834: We have also... 'chop-chop hurry'. A slightly fuller account was printed two years later, in a monthly journal which was produced by and for American missionaries in Canton - The Chinese Repository. In January 1836 it contained an article headed 'Jargon Spoken in Canton', which included: "Chop-chop - pidgin Cantonese phrase for 'Hurry up!'" The adoption of the chop-chop pronunciation was influenced by the long-standing use of 'chop' and 'chop-up' by English seamen, with the meaning 'quick' or 'hurried'. This usage dates back to at least the 16th century, when it was commonly used in the strange expression - 'chopping-up the whiners'. This referred to gabbling through prayers in order to get them finished quickly. For example, from Philip Stubbes' The anatomie of abuses, 1583: Which maketh them [Reading ministers] to gallop it over as fast as they can, and to chop it up with all possible expedition, though none understand them. The seafaring usage of 'chop up' referred specifically to a sudden change in the wind and the waves. This also gives us of the term 'choppy' for turbulent water and is a constituent part of the expression 'chop and change'. 'Chop-up' was recorded by Sir William Monson in Naval Tracts, 1642: "The Wind would chop up Westerly." One of the many other meanings of the word chop is 'to eat; to snap up' - i.e. 'to take into the chops' (the jaws/cheeks/mouth). It would be a reasonable conjecture that this was the source of the word 'chop-sticks'. Reasonable, but not correct. It is the 17th century sailor's slang use of 'chop' to mean 'quick' which lead to chop-sticks. The nimbleness of the Chinese in their eating without the aid of forks caused the seamen to coin the term 'quick-sticks' or chop-sticks'. William Dampier recorded this in 1699 in A New Voyage Round the World: "At their ordinary eating they [the Chinese] use two small round sticks about the length and bigness of a Tobacco-pipe. They hold them both in the right hand, one between the fore-finger and thumb; the other between the middle-finger and fore-finger... they are called by the English seamen Chopsticks." This is in line with the original Chinese meaning. The Chinese name for chop-sticks is k'w鈏-tsze, which translates literally as 'nimble boys' or 'nimble ones'. Apart from in travelogues of the Far-East, there is little recorded mention of chop-sticks in English until the mid 20th century. The term 'quicksticks' however, did make it back to Britain in the 19th century, as an imperative meaning 'hurry up; do it without delay'. John C. Hotten recorded this in A dictionary of modern slang, 1859: "Quick sticks, in a hurry, rapidly; 'to cut quick sticks', to be in a great hurry."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-07-15 13:40:19

  Fight fire with fire Meaning Respond to an attack by using a similar method as one's attacker. Origin When we 'fight fire with fire' we are likely to employ more extreme methods than we would normally do. That was also the case with the actual fire-fighting that was the source of this phrase. US settlers in the 19th century, who originated the phrase, attempted to guard against grass or forest fires by deliberately raising small controllable fires, which they called 'back-fires', to remove any flammable material in advance of a larger fire and so deprive it of fuel. This literal 'fighting fire with fire' was often successful, although the settlers' lack of effective fire control equipment meant that their own fires occasionally got out of control and made matters worse rather than better. One such failure was recorded in Caroline Kirkland's novel, based on her experiences of frontier Michigan in the 1840s, A New Home - Who'll Follow? Or, Glimpses of Western Life (written under the pseudonym of Mrs. Mary Clavers): The more experienced of the neighbours declared there was nothing now but to make a "back-fire!" So home-ward all ran, and set about kindling an opposing serpent which should "swallow up the rest;" but it proved too late. The flames only reached our stable and haystacks the sooner, The method has continued to be used however and foresters now routinely create roads or unplanted areas to act as fire-breaks in woodland that is at risk of fire. The term 'backfire' is now more often applied to plans that fail in a way that weren't intended. It wasn't used in that negative sense until the early 20th century and probably derives from the popping explosions that used to be commonly heard from the exhausts of faulty motor vehicles, not from forest 'back-fires' which ran out of control. The earliest usage of 'fight fire with fire' that I've found in print is in the US author Henry Tappan's 1852 reminiscence A Step from the New World to the Old, and Back Again: Smoking was universal among the men; generally cigars, not fine Havanas, but made of Dutch tobacco, and to me not very agreeable. I had some Havanas with me, and so I lighted one to make an atmosphere for myself: as the trappers on the prairies fight fire with fire, so I fought tobacco with tobacco.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-07-22 11:13:08

  A cock and bull story Meaning A fanciful and unbelievable tale. Origin It is widely reported that this phrase originated at Stony Stratford ("The Jewel of Milton Keynes"), Buckinghamshire, England. Visitors to Milton Keynes might feel the bar for 'jewel' status is set rather low in that region, although Stony Stratford is indeed a rather pleasant market town. Stony Stratford (the stony ford on the Roman road) is located on the old Roman road of Watling Street, now the A5. In the height of the coaching era - the 18th and early 19th centuries - Stony Stratford was an important stopping-off point for mail and passenger coaches travelling between London and the North of England. This coaching history is the source of the supposed origin of the phrase 'cock and bull story'. The Cock and the Bull were two of the main coaching inns in the town and the banter and rivalry between groups of travellers is said to have resulted in exaggerated and fanciful stories, which became known as 'cock and bull stories'. The two hostelries did, and still do, exist. By now, you may have noticed the 'widely reported' and 'supposed' adjectives above and picked up that I don't believe a word of it. Although it is an appealing story, regrettably, it is little more than that. There's no evidence whatsoever to connect the two inns with the phrase, apart from the coincidence of the two names. Whisper it not in Stony Stratford if you want to get out alive, but it's more likely that the phrase comes from old folk tales that featured magical animals. The early 17th century French term 'coq-a-l'ane' was defined in Randle Cotgrave's A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, 1611 as: An incoherent story, passing from one subject to another. This was later taken up in Scots as "cockalayne", again with the same meaning. The first citation of 'cock and bull' stories in English is from Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621: "Some mens whole delight is to talk of a Cock and Bull over a pot." This reference to 'a cock' and 'a bull', which is duplicated in all the early 17th and 18th century citations of the phrase, lends support to the view that the stories were about cocks and bulls, i.e. fanciful tales, rather than stories told in the Cock or the Bull. The early date doesn't entirely rule out the coaching inn story, as coaches were used for transport in England prior to 1621 and both establishments were in business before that date but, in my view, that derivation is a 20th century invention. What is missing from the Stony Stratford tale, and this is commonplace in folk-etymological sources that attempt to connect language with a particular place (see by hook and by crook, for example), is any link between the supposed origin and the meaning of the phrase. Why should patrons of the Cock and the Bull have been any more likely to make up fanciful tales than anyone else? Neither the Cock nor the Bull has distinguished itself in the making of the English language. The Bull now languishes under the outrageous 'InnFamous Bull' pun on its inn sign. The Cock, in addition to the 'cock and bull story', has another cock and bull story all to itself. It is said to be the source of the nursery rhyme line 'ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross'. The story goes that horses were hired at the Cock Inn by travellers on route to nearby Banbury. Again, this is tosh. A cockhorse has been a nursery term since at least the early 16th century, as this citation from Sir Thomas Elyot's The Image of Governance, 1540, indicates: "The dotyng pleasure to see my littell soonne ride on a cokhorse." It isn't clear whether cockhorses were originally sticks with horses' heads that children played with or a reference to children being bounced on the knee of an adult. What they were definitely not were horses hired from a pub thirty miles away. I must close now; the paramilitary wing of the Stony Stratford tourist office is on my tail...

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-07-25 12:50:17

  Bats in the belfry Meaning Crazy; eccentric. Origin Bats are, of course, the erratically flying mammals and 'belfries' are bell towers, sometimes found at the top of churches. 'Bats in the belfry' refers to someone who acts as though he has bats careering around his topmost part, i.e. his head. It has the sound of a phrase from Olde Englande and it certainly has the imagery to fit into any number of Gothic novels based in English parsonages or turreted castles. In fact, it comes from the USA; nor is it especially old. All the early citations are from American authors and date from the start of the 20th century. For example, this piece from the Ohio newspaper The Newark Daily Advocate, October 1900: To his hundreds of friends and acquaintances in Newark, these purile [sic] and senseless attacks on Hon. John W. Cassingham are akin to the vaporings of the fellow with a large flock of bats in his belfry." Ambrose Bierce, also American, used the term in a piece for Cosmopolitan Magazine, in July 1907, describing it as a new curiosity: "He was especially charmed with the phrase 'bats in the belfry', and would indubitably substitute it for 'possessed of a devil', the Scriptural diagnosis of insanity." The use of 'bats' and 'batty' to denote odd behaviour originated around the same time as 'bats in the belfry' and they are clearly related. Again, the first authors to use the words are American: 1903 A. L. Kleberg - Slang Fables from Afar: "She ... acted so queer ... that he decided she was Batty." 1919 Fannie Hurst - Humoresque: "'Are you bats?' she said." There have been several attempts over the years to associate the term 'batty' with various people called Batty or Battie, notably the 18th century physician William Battie. He was a governor of the Bethlem Hospital, a.k.a. Bedlam, and physician to St Luke's Hospital for Lunaticks, where he wrote A Treatise on Madness. Despite those illustrious credentials, it was bats rather than Battie that caused scatterbrained people to be called 'batty'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-08-03 20:46:23

  Upside down Meaning Turned so that the upper surface becomes the lower. Origin 'Upside down' is one of a longish list of English expressions that refer to things being inverted or in disorder - 'topsy-turvy', 'head over heels' (even though that is the usual arrangement), '**** over tea-kettle' etc. The mediaeval English also had the terms 'overset', 'overtumble' and 'topset downe', which have now gone out of use. This profusion of similar phrases suggests a widespread interest in the recounting of stories of people falling over - matched today by the popularity of home video television shows. The interest is common in other languages too; the French even have a specialist term for a sequence of stamps in which some are printed upside down - t阾e-b阠he. 'Upside down' was originally 'up so down', i.e. 'up as if down'. The 'so' part migrated into various forms, 'upsa', 'upse' (which spawned 'upset') etc., in the same way as in phrases like 'ups-a-daisy' and 'upset the applecart'. The change from 'up so down' to forms like 'upset-down' and eventually 'upside-down' appear to be for no better reason than to make the expression's meaning more intuitive. 'Upside down' doesn't sound especially old but, in its early forms, it can claim to be one of the oldest expressions in English. It joins the handful of phrases that can be dated from the first part of the 14th century or before, for example, 'haven't slept a wink', 'in the twinkling of an eye', 'by dint of'. The earliest version of 'upside down' known in print is in The proces of the seuyn [seven] sages. The precise publication date of that text isn't known, but it is accepted as being before 1340: "The cradel and the child thai found Up so doun upon the ground." (Note: The '****' above is the upshot of the policy of many ISPs of blocking all mail which contains words that they have decided might give you a fit of the vapours. Apologies to the many subscribers who didn't get recent '**** and bull story' mailing.)

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-08-08 15:17:33

  Warts and all Meaning The whole thing; not concealing the less attractive parts. Origin This phrase is said to derive from Oliver Cromwell's instructions to the painter Sir Peter Lely, when commissioning a portrait. At the time of the alleged instruction, Cromwell was Lord Protector of England. Lely had been portrait artist to Charles I and, following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he was appointed as Charles II's Principal Painter in Ordinary. Lely's painting style was, as was usual at the time, intended to flatter the sitter. Royalty in particular expected portraits to show them in the best possible light, if not to be outright fanciful. Lely's painting of Charles II shows what was expected of a painting of a head of state in the 17th century. It emphasizes the shapely royal calves - a prized fashion feature at that time. Cromwell did have a preference for being portrayed as a gentleman of military bearing, but was well-known as being opposed to all forms of personal vanity. This 'puritan Roundhead' versus 'dashing Cavalier' shorthand is often used to denote the differences in style of the two opposing camps in the English Commonwealth and subsequent Restoration. It is entirely plausible that he would have issued a 'warts and all' instruction when being painted and it is unlikely that Lely would have modified his style and produced the 'warts and all' portrait of Cromwell unless someone told him to. We have Cromwell's death mask as a reference. From that it is clear that Lely's portrait is an accurate record of Cromwell's actual appearance. Despite the plausibility of the account, there doesn't appear to be any convincing evidence that Cromwell ever used the phrase 'warts and all'. The first record of a version of that phrase being attributed to him comes from Horace Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in England, 1764. Walpole's authority for the attribution came from a reported conversation between John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, the first occupant of Buckingham House, now Buckingham Palace, and the house's architect, Captain William Winde. Winde claimed that: Oliver certainly sat to him, and while sitting, said to him - "Mr Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it." That was published in 1764 - over a hundred years after Lely painted Cromwell. Walpole included no evidence to support the attribution, nor any explanation of why no one else had mentioned the phrase in the preceding hundred years - this despite Cromwell's life being the subject of minutely detailed historical research and over 160 full-length biographies. We can only assume he was indulging in a piece of literary speculation rather than historical documentation. The first known citation in print of the actual phrase 'warts and all' is from a 'Chinese whisper' retelling of Walpole's story - an address given by an Alpheus Cary, in Massachusetts, in 1824: When Cromwell sat for his portrait he said, "Paint me as I am, warts and all!" It may well be the case that Oliver Cromwell preferred portraits of him to be accurate, but it is most unlikely that he ever uttered the words 'warts and all'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-08-30 20:22:36

  As easy as pie Meaning Very easy. Origin There are many similes in English that have the form 'as X as Y'. These almost always highlight some property - X, and give an example of something that is well-known to display that property - Y. For example, 'as white as snow', 'as dead as a dodo' and, risking a group slander action from our noble friends, 'as drunk as a lord'. How though, are pies thought to be easy? They aren't especially easy to make; I know, I've tried it. The easiness comes with the eating. At least, that was the view in 19th century America, where this phrase was coined. There are various mid 19th century US citations that, whilst not using 'as easy as pie' verbatim, do point to 'pie' being used to denote pleasantry and ease. 'Pie' in this sense is archetypally American, as American as apple pie in fact. The usage first comes in the phrase 'as nice as pie', as found here in Which: Right or Left? in 1855: "For nearly a week afterwards, the domestics observed significantly to each other, that Miss Isabella was as 'nice as pie!'" Mark Twain frequently used just 'pie' to mean pleasant or accommodating: In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884, "You're always as polite as pie to them." "So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice,... and was just old pie to him, so to speak." Pie was also used at that time for something that was easy to accomplish. For example, The US magazine Sporting Life, May 1886: "As for stealing second and third, it's like eating pie." 'Pie in the sky', also an American phrase from around the same time, refers to 'pie' as something pleasant that we will receive eventually. The earliest example of the actual phrase 'as easy as pie' that I can find comes from the Rhode Island newspaper The Newport Mercury, June 1887 - in a comic story about two down and outs in New York: "You see veuever I goes I takes away mit me a silverspoon or a knife or somethings, an' I gets two or three dollars for them. It's easy as pie. Vy don't you try it?" Pie seems to rank right up there with cake in the US lexicon of ease and pleasantry - 'a piece of cake', 'take the cake', 'cake-walk' are all American phrases from the 19th century.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-08-30 20:23:16

  In a cleft stick Meaning In a position where advance and retreat are both impossible; in a fix. Origin When we cleave something we split it into two pieces and it is then said to be 'cleft' or 'cloven'. These archaic-sounding words aren't commonly used alone these days and only persist in phrases like 'cleft-palate', 'cloven-hoofed' and 'in a cleft stick'. Cleft sticks are those which are split at one end, i.e. forked sticks. These were used as simple tools for carrying small items such as bundles of paper or candles. Jonathan Swift makes a reference to such in his 'Directions to Servants' in Works, circa 1745: "You may conveniently stick your candle in a bottle, or with a lump of butter against the wainscot, in a powder-horn, or in an old shoe, or in a cleft stick." Swift's use, although hardly serious, is a literal one and doesn't suggest the figurative use, which is first recorded in the correspondence in William Cowper's Works, 1782: "We are squeezed to death, between the two sides of that sort of alternative which is commonly called a cleft stick." 'In a cleft stick' originated in the UK and its use elsewhere is limited. How then did it come to mean 'in a difficult situation, unable to move'? As is so often the case, there is more than one theory. Theory One has it that cleft sticks were used to capture snakes, pinning them to the ground so that they were unable to move. Theory Two suggests that cleft pegs were used to punish over-talkative women, pinching their tongues so that they were unable to speak. The first theory has the advantage of closely matching the meaning of the phrase - snakes certainly are sometimes caught and made immobile using split sticks. Also, the first citation of the use of a cleft stick to catch a snake predates references in other contexts. That comes in the Review of the Works of the Royal Society of London, 1751, in which Captain Silas Taylor described 'A Way to Kill Rattlesnakes': Procure a cleft Stick, and put into the Notch of it, a Quantity of the bruised Leaves of wild Pennyroyal; direct the End of the Stick towards the Serpent's Nose; as he avoids it, still pursue him with it; and in half an Hour's Time he will be killed by the mere Scent of the Herb. It is unlikely that the English antiquary Taylor ever came within a stick's length of a rattlesnake and his rather roundabout method of dispatching them isn't quite the evidence we are looking for. On to Theory Two. In 16th century England, any women who was considered to be a scold, i.e. a user of abusive or ribald language, especially against her husband, was in danger of being punished in a fearsome apparatus called a 'branks', also known as a 'scold's bridle' or gossip's bridle'. The device was an iron cage with a tongue that projected into the mouth of the victim and prevented speech. They A branks might look like a prop from a Ye Olde Englande B-feature, but they were widely used punishments throughout the Middle Ages. In 1890, when William Andrews published Old-time Punishments, Walton-on-Thames Parish Church had such a device on display. It was dated 1632 and inscribed with this little couplet: Chester presents Walton with a bridle To curb women's tongues that talk too idle. The early English settlers to the USA didn't bring these punishment devices with them and other methods for chastising unruly women were used there. The Records of the Town of East-Hampton, 1639-1680, transcribed and published in 1883, record the use of the alternative 'cleft stick' method in the case of a woman described as "very ignorant, selfish and imperious": February 2, 1652. "It is ordered that Goody Edwards shal pay ? or have her tongue in a cleft sticke for the Contempt of a warent." In addition to their superficial plausibility, what the two theories given above have in common is an American source. The phrase isn't American though and doesn't appear in print there until many years after Cowper's 1782 citation. It is more likely that 'in a cleft stick' never did refer to a specific item but to the general condition of immobility when stuck between a cleft stick's jaws.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-08-30 20:23:52

  Come a cropper Meaning Fall over or fail at some venture. Origin The word crop derives from the Old Norse word kropp, which was the name of a hump or swelling on the body. The OED graphically describes a crop as a 'swollen protuberance or excrescence'. This later modified into meaning any swollen or rounded item, for example, a bird's gullet, the seed head of a ripe plant (the source of the word crop as applied to cereals etc.) or, spelled as croup, the rear end of a horse - also called the crupper. 'Come a cropper' is one from the list of British phrases that is associated in the popular imagination with Victorian inventors. These include the various phrases based on the name of Thomas Crapper, the sanitary engineer and 'bats in the belfry', reportedly coined after George Bateson. Henry Smith Cropper is the man supposedly the source of 'come a cropper'. Unlike Bateson, who turns out to be an invented inventor, Cropper, like Crapper, did actually exist. Indeed he was a prominent enough citizen to become Sheriff of Nottingham. He didn't occupy his time in chasing outlaws around the local forests though. H. S. Cropper and Co. began selling the Minerva platen printing press in 1866. It was a successful design and before long all platen presses were known as croppers. It is suggested that 'come a cropper' derives from the accidents that print workers had when catching their fingers between the plates of the presses. Like the Bateson story, this is an appealing tale. There's no truth to it though - it's just another invention. For the actual derivation we need to consider the nether quarters of a horse - the croup or crupper. In the 18th century, anyone who took a headlong fall from a horse was said to have fallen 'neck and crop'. For example, this extract from the English poet Edward Nairne's Poems, 1791: A man on horseback, drunk with gin and flip, Bawling out - Yoix - and cracking of his whip, ... The startish beast took fright, and flop The mad-brain'd rider tumbled, neck and crop! 'Neck and crop' and 'head over heels' probably both derive from the 16th century term 'neck and heels', which had the same meaning. 'Come a cropper' is just a colloquial way of describing a 'neck and crop' fall. The phrase is first cited in Robert S. Surtees' Ask Mamma, 1858: [He] "rode at an impracticable fence, and got a cropper for his pains." By the time John C. Hotten published his A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words in 1859, the phrase has come to refer to any failure rather than just the specific failure to stay on a horse: "Cropper, 'to go a cropper', or 'to come a cropper', i.e., to fail badly."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-09-05 09:56:37

  Chip on your shoulder Meaning A perceived grievance or sense of inferiority. Origin The word chip has several meanings; the one that we are concerned with here is the earliest known of these, namely 'a small piece of wood, as might be chopped, or chipped, from a larger block'. The phrase 'a chip on one's shoulder' is reported as originating with the nineteenth century U.S. practice of spoiling for a fight by carrying a chip of wood on one's shoulder, daring others to knock it off. This suggested derivation has more than the whiff of folk-etymology about it. Anyone who might be inclined to doubt that origin can take heart from an alternative theory. This relates to working practices in the British Royal Dockyards in the 18th century. In Day and Lunn's The History of Work and Labour Relations in the Royal Dockyards, 1999, the authors report that the standing orders of the [Royal] Navy Board for August 1739 included this ruling: "Shipwrights to be allowed to bring [chips] on their shoulders near to the dock gates, there to be inspected by officers". The permission to remove surplus timber for firewood or building material was a substantial perk of the job for the dock workers. A subsequent standing order, in May 1753, ruled that only chips that could be carried under one arm were allowed to be removed. This limited the amount of timber that could be taken and the shipwrights were not best pleased about the revoking of their previous benefit. Three years later, for this and other reasons, they went on strike. Hattendorf, Knight et al., in British Naval Documents, 1204 - 1960, record a letter which was sent by Chatham Dockyard officers to the Navy Board, relating to the 1756 dockyard workers' strike at Chatham. The letter records a comment made by a shipwright who was stopped at the yard's gates: "Are not the chips mine? I will not lower them." It goes on to report that "Immediately the main body pushed on with their chips on their shoulders." That's a nice story and does connect an incident concerning chips and shoulders with a belligerent attitude. We need to be a little wary of swallowing that derivation whole however. The problem with it is that the phrase isn't known to be recorded in print in England with its figurative meaning anywhere near the 18th century. The first such record by an English author doesn't seem to be until the 1930s in fact, in Somerset Maugham's Gentleman in the Parlour: "He was a man with a chip on his shoulder. Everyone seemed in a conspiracy to slight or injure him." A gap of nearly 200 years between the use of a phrase and the incident that supposedly spawned it in the same country is hard to explain. In my humble opinion, the 'chips on shoulders' report dating from 1756 refer literally to just that, chips carried on shoulders. There's no evidence at all to suggest 'a chip on one's shoulder' existed as a figurative phrase until the 19th century. The confrontational challenge to knock a chip of wood off someone's shoulder does after all appear to be the correct derivation. Circumstantial evidence is all we have to go on here, but that clearly points to a 19th century US coinage. The earliest printed citations that I can find that refer to chips on shoulders are all from America, which the OED states quite firmly to be the source of the phrase. For example: The American writer and historian James Kirke Paulding's Letters from the South, 1817: "A man rode furiously by on horseback, and swore he'd be d----d if he could not lick any man who dared to crook his elbow at him. This, it seems, is equivalent to throwing the glove in days of yore, or to the boyish custom of knocking a chip off the shoulder." In 1830 the New York newspaper The Long Island Telegraph printed this: "When two churlish boys were determined to fight, a chip would be placed on the shoulder of one, and the other demanded to knock it off at his peril." The actual phrase 'chip on his shoulder' appears a little later, in the Weekly Oregonian 1855: "Leland, in his last issue, struts out with a chip on his shoulder, and dares Bush to knock it off."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-15 10:02:16

  Tide over Meaning Make a small allowance (of money, food etc.) last until stocks are replenished. Origin My attention was drawn to the little phrase 'tide over' on 'Meltdown Monday' - 15th September 2008, when Robert Peston, the BBC's Business Editor, posted this on his blog: "As for the US central banking system, the Fed, it is endeavouring to minimise the damage to the financial system from these shocks by allowing securities firms to swap shares for short-term loans, to tied them over." As is the norm with the BBC's audience, the 'tied over' misspelling produced a much more impassioned response than the chaos in the world's financial system. It may well have been merely a typo - 'e' and 'd' are next to each other on QWERTY keyboards after all. The correct spelling is of course 'tide over'. On reflection, 'tide over' doesn't seem any more intuitive than 'tied over'; so what is the origin of the phrase? 'Tiding over', i.e. the eking out of a small stock until a larger supply arrives, doesn't at first sight appear to have any direct connection with tidal waters. That's because the meaning of this phrase has changed slightly over the years. The original 'tiding over' was a seafaring term. The literal meaning was 'in the absence of wind to fill the sails, float with the tide'. This usage was recorded by the English seaman Captain John Smith. Smith is best known for his role in establishing the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Virginia. In addition to that achievement, he had more luck as a mariner than his namesake John Edward Smith, the master of the Titanic. His status as a sailing authority was established by his writing the influential sailor's manual A Sea Grammar, 1627, which includes this earliest known citation of 'tide over': "To Tide ouer to a place, is to goe ouer with the Tide of ebbe or flood, and stop the contrary by anchoring till the next Tide." That sense of tiding over, in which ships would tide over here and tide over there, was superseded by a 'coping with a short-term problem' meaning. This meaning drew on the imagery of ships floating over a obstacle on a swelling tide. Our present figurative usage of that image was established by the early 19th century, as in the Earl of Dudley's Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff, 1821: "I wish we may be able to tide over this difficulty."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-15 11:27:56

  Hedge your bets Meaning To avoid committing oneself; to leave a means of retreat open. Origin Hedge has been used as a verb in English since at least the 16th century, with the meaning of 'equivocate; avoid commitment'. An example of this comes in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, 1598: "I, I, I myself sometimes, leaving the fear of God on the left hand and hiding mine honour in my necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge and to lurch ." It began to be used in relation to financial transactions, in which a loan was secured by including it in a larger loan, in the early 17th century. Initially, the phrase associated with this form of hedging was 'hedging one's debts', for example, John Donne's Letters to Sir Henry Goodyere, circa 1620: "You think that you have Hedged in that Debt by a greater, by your Letter in Verse." 'Hedging one's bets' was coined later in that century. It referred to the laying off of a bet by taking out smaller bets with other lenders. The purpose of this was to avoid being unable to pay out on the original larger bet. The phrase was first used by George Villiers, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, in his satirical play The Rehearsal, 1672: "Now, Criticks, do your worst, that here are met; For, like a Rook, I have hedg'd in my Bet." The verb 'to hedge' derives from the noun hedge, i.e. a fence made from a row of bushes or trees. These hedges were normally made from the spiny Hawthorn, which makes an impenetrable hedge when laid. To hedge a piece of land was to limit it in terms of size and that this gave rise to the 'secure, limited risk' meaning. Hedge funds, much in the news nowadays, take their name from their method of limiting, i.e. hedging, their risk. Curiously, the original examples of another financial device currently newsworthy i.e. stocks, were literally made from material that was taken from hedges. In the 17th century, the tally that recorded a payment to the English Exchequer was a rough stick of about an inch in diameter, split along its length. One half, the stock, was given as a receipt to the person making the payment; the other half, the counterfoil, was kept by the Exchequer. Ownership of payments that were made jointly by a group were shared among the members of so-called joint stock companies, hence stocks and shares.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-15 11:57:00

  An Englishman's home is his castle Meaning The English dictum that a man's home is his refuge. Origin The maxim that 'An Englishman's home (or occasionally, house) is his castle' is most often cited these days in articles in the British right-wing press that bemoan the apparent undermining of the perceived principle that a man can do as he pleases in his own house, which they hold up as an ancient right. The grumbles centre about the feminist 'what about Englishwomen?' response and the public disquiet about the smacking of children, attacking of intruders etc. The proverb was used in almost all of the articles about the court case of Tony Martin in 2000. Martin was convicted by jury trial of murder, after shooting and killing a 16-year old who had broken into his house in Norfolk, UK. Did Englishmen actually ever have a unique right to act as they please within the walls of their own home? Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it has been a legal precept in England, since at least the 17th century, that no one may enter a home, which would typically then have been in male ownership, unless by invitation. This was established as common law by the lawyer and politician Sir Edward Coke (pronounced Cook), in The Institutes of the Laws of England, 1628: "For a man's house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man's home is his safest refuge]." This enshrined into law the popular belief at the time, which was expressed in print by several authors in the late 16th century, including Richard Mulcaster, the headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School in London, in his treatise on education - Positions, which are necessarie for the training up of children, 1581: "He [the householder] is the appointer of his owne circumstance, and his house is his castle." Judged against the standards of his time, Mulcaster was an enlightened educationalist. His charges were nevertheless terrified of him and he condoned methods in the 'castle' of his school that would result these days in a visit from Social Services. His own experience in castles wasn't that happy either. He was imprisoned for theft in 1555 in the Tower of London and probably tortured into a confession. What was meant by 'castle' was defined in 1763 by the British Prime Minister with an admirable selection of names to choose from - William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham, a.k.a. Pitt the Elder: "The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail - its roof may shake - the wind may blow through it - the storm may enter - the rain may enter - but the King of England cannot enter." It is clear from the above that the law was established to give householders the right to prevent entry to their homes. Like the 'rule of thumb', which was popularly and mistakenly believed to be the right of a man to beat his wife, the 'Englishman's home is his castle' rule didn't establish a man's right to take actions inside the home that would be illegal outside it. The principle was exported to the United States where, not unnaturally, the 'Englishman' was removed from the phrase. In 1800, Joel Chandler Harris's biography of Henry W. Grady, the journalist and writer on the US Constitution, included this line: "Exalt the citizen. As the State is the unit of government he is the unit of the State. Teach him that his home is his castle, and his sovereignty rests beneath his hat." These days, with all the news of banking collapses and mortgage foreclosures, men and women, English or American, might be glad to have somewhere to call home, even if they have to obey the law when inside it.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-15 11:57:15

  Many a little makes a mickle Meaning Many small amounts accumulate to make a large amount. Origin A mickle, or as they prefer it in Scotland, a muckle, means 'great or large in size'. Apart from 'many a little (or pickle) makes a mickle' the words only now remain in use in UK place-names, like Muckle Flugga in Shetland (which amply lives up to its translated name of 'large, steep-sided island') and Mickleover in Derbyshire (listed in the Domesday Book as Magna Oufra - 'large village on the hill'). 'Over' and 'upper' are very common prefixes in English place-names, along with their opposites 'under', 'lower', 'nether' or 'little'. Examples of these are the Cotswold villages of Upper and Lower Slaughter, and the Hampshire villages of Over and Nether Wallop. The word 'much' derives from the Old English 'mickle' and has now almost entirely replaced it. 'Much' is also used in place-names like Much Wenlock, Shropshire (there's also a Little Wenlock, of course). The proverbial phrase 'many a little makes a mickle' has now itself been largely superseded by the 18th century 'look after the pennies (originally, 'take care of the pence'), and the pounds will look after ('take care of') themselves'. The first mention in print of what was undoubtedly an older proverb comes in a 1614 work by William Camden, with a rather desultory title - Remaines of a greater worke concerning Britaine, 1605: "Many a little makes a micle." In the next century it was taken across the Atlantic by George Washington, who included it in Writings, 1793: "A Scotch [steady on George, I think they prefer to be called Scots] addage, than which nothing in nature is more true 'that many mickles make a muckle'." The phrase's variant form 'many a mickle makes a muckle' is also sometimes heard. This 20th century version is actually nonsensical as it derives from the misapprehension that mickle and muckle, rather than meaning the same thing, mean 'small' and 'large' respectively.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-15 11:58:05

  In limbo Meaning In a state of being neglected and immobile, with no prospect of movement to a better place. Origin For those of a certain age, limbo is now most often associated with the party dance, in which dancers bend backwards and shuffle under a horizontal stick without touching it. This originated in the West Indies the 1950s and became something of a fad in the 1960s. The craze was created, or the uncharitable might say, cashed in on, by Chubby Checker, who released the single Limbo Rock and the album Limbo Party in 1962. The adjective 'limber' has been in use in English since the 16th century, with the meaning 'pliant and supple; easily bent'. There's no definitive documented link between limber and limbo, but it seems very probable that they are actually versions of the same word. People had been in limbo well before the 1950s, of course. Limbo was originally a place rather than a dance - the borders of Hell, no less. That limbo derived from the Latin 'limbus', meaning edge. Mediaeval Christian belief had it that only those who were baptized into the Christian Church could enter Heaven. Theologists, especially those of the Roman Catholic persuasion, were much exercised by the fate of those who, while not being sinners to be condemned to Hell, were unbaptized through no fault of their own. In particular, babies who died at birth or those who had died before the time of Christ, would have had no choice but to remain unbaptized. By the 14th century, the incongruity was avoided via the concept of Limbo, the abode of righteous souls who weren't destined for either Heaven or Hell. Two of the forms of Limbo were Limbo Infantum (Limbo of the Infants) and Limbo Patrum (Limbo of the Adults). Thus, Limbo was on the border, not in Hell, but not in Heaven either, and 'in limbo' later came to take on the metaphorical meaning - 'in prison'. Shakespeare used this in Henry VIII, 1613: I have some of 'em in Limbo Patrum, and there they are like to dance these three days. Soon after that, the meaning was extended to our current usage, which refers to any situation where someone or some project is confined and neglected, with nowhere to go until something happens to restart it. This was alluded to in John Milton's An Apology..., 1642, in which he refuted an attack that had been made on a Presbyterian group known as Smectymnuus: "I am met with a whole ging of words and phrases not mine, for he hath maimed them and ... mangled them in this his wicked limbo." Mediaeval belief had it that the spirits of those in limbo were all around us (and many still believe this). These days, Limbo remains close by. 'In limbo' is the name that computer scientists give to the condition of files which are deleted from view but not yet physically removed from storage - like those in the Windows' Recycle Bin.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-15 11:58:49

  Jump on the bandwagon Meaning Join a growing movement in support of someone or something, often in an opportunist way, when that movement is seen to have become successful. Origin The word bandwagon was coined in the USA in the mid 19th century, simply as the name for the wagon that carried a circus band. Phineas T. Barnum, the great showman and circus owner, used the term in 1855 in his unambiguously named autobiography The Life of P.T. Barnum, Written by Himself, 1855: "At Vicksburg we sold all our land conveyances excepting four horses and the 'band wagon'." Barnum didn't coin 'jump on the bandwagon', which came later, but he did have a hand in some other additions to the language. He was nothing if not a publicist and, even though there is no definitive evidence of his inventing any new word or phrase, he certainly can be said to have made several of them popular. Firstly, there are a couple of celebrated quotations: "There's a sucker born every minute." and "You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time." The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations lists those under their Barnum entry, along with the dictionary compiler's favourite weasel words - "attributed to". There is considerable doubt that he said either of the above. Barnum's acquaintances have claimed that the first would have been somewhat out of character for him, and Abraham Lincoln is often confidently cited as the author of the second. Actually, the 'some of the people' dictum isn't found in print until 1887 (some years after Lincoln's death and when Barnum was in his dotage), when it appears in print in several American newspapers, again guarded by vagaries like "Lincoln once said". Two other terms that we certainly can thank Barnum for popularising are 'Jumbo' and 'Siamese twins'. Jumbo was a little-used slang term in Barnum's day and was recorded in John Badcock's Slang. A dictionary of the turf, 1823: "Jumbo, a clumsy or unwieldly fellow." The word was coined as the the name of a giant elephant that was housed at London Zoo. Jumbo was sold to Barnum in 1882 and exhibited in his shows. It is via Barnum's marketing zeal that the word became widely used as epitomising hugeness. The creature itself didn't have much luck. It died in 1885 after being struck by a train. Its heart was cut out and the torso was stuffed and mounted and continued to tour with Barnum's circus. It was destroyed in a fire in 1975 and now languishes as 14 ounces of ash in a peanut butter jar. Barnum's other contribution to the language is the term 'Siamese twins', which he applied to the 'joined at the hip' brothers Chang and Eng Bunker. Back to the bandwagon. Circus workers were skilled at attracting the public with the razzmatazz of a parade through town, complete with highly decorated bandwagons. In the late 19th century, politicians picked up on this form of attracting a crowd and began using bandwagons when campaigning for office. The transition from the literal 'jumping on a bandwagon', in order to show one's alliance to a politician, to the figurative use we know now was complete by the 1890s. Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt made a clear-cut reference to the practice in his Letters, 1899 (published 1951): "When I once became sure of one majority they tumbled over each other to get aboard the band wagon."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-15 13:05:42

  Graveyard shift Meaning A late-night/early-morning work shift. Origin I am loath to do it, as there may just be someone who will take the following passage as literal truth, but here's a reprint of the last (and quite possibly the least) paragraph of the collection of invented and untrue twaddle that has been circulating on the Internet for some time, under the name of 'Life in the 1500s': England is old and small and they started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer." We have debunked the saved by the bell and dead ringer myths previously, so now let's take a look at 'graveyard shift'. Given that the derivation of the phrases 'saved by the bell' and 'dead ringer' had nothing whatever to do with burials or graveyards, it might be thought that 'graveyard shift' could be dismissed without further investigation. That may be a little hasty. Those phrases may have had nothing to do with bells being attached to coffins to guard against premature burial, but such devices did exist and were occasionally used. Given that some people had sufficient fear of being buried alive to invest in such coffins, it is at least plausible that they would also have made arrangements for someone to monitor the grave so that their coffin's bell could be heard in the event of them ringing it. Nevertheless, and as usual with phrase etymology, plausibility and truth are only distant relatives. The Graveyard Shift, or Graveyard Watch, was the name coined for the work shift of the early morning, typically midnight until 8am. The name originated in the USA at the latter end of the 1800s. There's no evidence at all that it had anything directly to do with watching over graveyards, merely that the shifts took place in the middle of the night, when the ambience was quiet and lonely. The earliest example of the phrase in print that I have found is in the US newspaper The Salt Lake Tribune, June 1897: The police changed shifts for the month yesterday. This month Sergeant Ware takes the morning relief. Sergeant Matt Rhodes the middle and Sergeant John Burbidge the graveyard shift. The 'graveyard watch' version of the phrase was normally used by sailors on watch - hardly a group in a position to supervise buried coffins. The graveyard link was made explicit in this definition, offered by the American mariner Gershom Bradford, in A Glossary of Sea Terms, 1927: "Graveyard watch, the middle watch or 12 to 4 a.m., because of the number of disasters that occur at this time." One more nail in the coffin of folk etymology, let's hope, or can I still hear a faint bell clanking in the Internet graveyard?

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-15 13:06:33

  Dressed to the nines Meaning Dressed flamboyantly or smartly. Origin Nine is, without doubt, the most troublesome number in etymology. Phrases of uncertain parentage that include 'nine' are 'cloud nine' and the infamous 'whole nine yards'. To those we can add 'dressed to the nines'. Numerous attempts have been made to associate the number nine with clothing and so to explain the phrase's derivation. One theory has it that tailors used nine yards of material to make a suit (or according to some authors, a shirt). The more material you had the more status, although nine yards seems generous even for a fop. Another commonly repeated explanation comes from the exquisitely smart uniforms of the 99th (Lanarkshire) Regiment of Foot, which was raised in 1824. The problem with these explanations is that they come with no evidence to support them, apart from a reference to the number nine (or 99, which seems to be stretching the cloth rather thinly). The regiment was in business in the early 19th century, which is at least the right sort of date for a phrase that became widely used in the middle of that century. The first example of the use of the phrase that I can find in print is an extract from the New York Herald, 1837: "One evening a smart young mechanic, 'dressed to the nines', as Ben Bowline says, might have been seen wending his way along Broadway." What counts against the above explanations, and indeed against any of the supposed explanations that attempt to link the number nine to some property of clothing, is the prior use of the shorter phrase 'to the nine' or 'to the nines', which was used to indicate perfection, the highest standards. That was in use in the 18th century, well before 'dressed to the nines' was first used, as in this example from William Hamilton's Epistle to Ramsay, 1719: The bonny Lines therein thou sent me, How to the nines they did content me. It is worth noting that the number nine has long been used as a superlative. Classical mythology gave us the Nine Muses of Arts and Learning. The Nine Worthies were characters drawn from the Pagan and Jewish history and from the Bible. This distinguished group consisted of Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Joshua, David, Judas Maccabaeus, King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon. The Nine Worthies, usually called simply The Nine, were well-known to mediaeval scholars as the personification of all that was noble and heroic. The Poetick Miscellenies of Mr John Rawlett, 1687, provides the earliest reference to 'to the Nine' that I can find: The learned tribe whose works the World do bless, Finish those works in some recess; Both the Philosopher and Divine, And Poets most who still make their address In private to the Nine. It seems clear that 'the Nine' that Rawlett was referring to were the Nine Worthies. It is just as clear that 'dressed to the nines' is merely an extension of 'to the nine/s' and that we could equally well say 'danced to the nines' or 'embroidered to the nines' to appreciate good dancing or embroidery. It isn't surprising that the search for the link between 'nines' and dress sense has unearthed no convincing candidates - call off the dogs; there is no such link.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-15 13:07:26

  Worth one's salt Meaning To be effective and efficient; deserving of one's pay. Origin Sodium chloride, a.k.a. salt, is essential for human life and, until the invention of canning and refrigeration, was the primary method of preservation of food. Not surprisingly, it has long been considered valuable. To be 'worth one's salt' is to be worth one's pay. Our word salary derives from the Latin salarium, (sal is the Latin word for salt). There is some debate over the origin of the word salarium, but most scholars accept that it was the money allowed to Roman soldiers for the purchase of salt. Roman soldiers weren't actually paid in salt, as some suggest. They were obliged to buy their own food, weapons etc. and had the cost of these deducted from their wages in advance. Salt continues to be important enough to feature in the language for many centuries. Other phrases that would have been known to the mediaeval mind were take with a grain of salt, the salt of the earth and below the salt. The ancient roots of 'worth one's salt', and its similarity to the 13th century 'worth one's weight in gold' and the 14th century 'worth one's while' (i.e. worth one's time), give the phrase a historical air. Nevertheless, 'worth one's salt' didn't exist in Roman Latin or even in mediaeval English and dates from as recently as the 19th century. The earliest citation of the phrase that I have found in print is in The African Memoranda, a report of an expedition to Guinea Bissau, by Philip Beaver, 1805: "Hayles has been my most useful man, but of late not worth his salt." It's worth pointing out that, although English is replete with phrases of a nautical origin, none of the above salty phrases has anything to do with the sea.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-15 13:08:14

  A piece of the action Meaning A share in an activity, or in its profits. Origin 'A piece of the action' has an unambiguously American flavour. It brings to mind images of gangster movies with Jimmy Cagney and the like demanding 'hey, gimme a pieca da action'. When the Star Trek franchise opted for a mobster themed episode in 1968 they called it 'A Piece of the Action'. It isn't essentially a US phrase though and tracing its genesis takes us well outside the USA and into a history of finance. In the early 1600s, the Dutch came upon an interesting trading innovation - the company. Until then, the spice trade had been profitable but small scale, with spices being brought back from 'the Indies' (broadly what we now call Asia) along the tortuous Spice Road on pack horses. The high price of spices encouraged entrepreneurs to build ships to bring the spices back in larger quantities. There was big money to be made, but the large capital cost of building a fleet and the threat of loss from pirates made it too risky a venture for an individual investor; so, in 1602, they formed a company - the Dutch East India Company. Dutch citizens were invited to invest in the company, which had been given exclusive trading rights to half the world and tax-free status back home. Profits were huge and the clamour to invest was intense. Dirck Bas Jacobsz, one of the company's founders, was instrumental in managing the joint ownership by offering what were then called in Dutch 'acties' or, in English, 'actions'. These were certificates that promised a share in any future profits of the company and what, not unnaturally, came later to be called share certificates. These shares were often purchased by groups rather than individuals. What each of these good citizens had bought was literally 'a piece of the action'. The term 'action', which continued to be used in that context well into the 19th century, was first recorded in English in John Evelyn's Diary, published between 1641 and 1706: "African Actions fell to £30, and the India to £80." 'A piece of the action' is certainly a 20th century American phrase. Despite its 1930s mobster overtones, the first use of it that I can find is in the 1957 film Monkey on My Back: "You want a piece of my action, Sam?" The 'action' in the phrase means 'a share in an activity; an opportunity'. It is doubtful that whoever coined it in 1950s America knew the history of the Dutch East Indies Company but, knowingly or not, it was the Dutch 'acties' that were the source of that meaning of 'action'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-15 13:08:51

  Harbinger of doom Meaning A sign, warning of bad things to come. Origin We now use 'harbinger' in a metaphorical sense, meaning 'forerunner; announcer'. With that meaning, almost anything can be harbingered (the word has been used as a verb as well as a noun since the 17th century, although that usage is now rare). We sometimes hear of 'harbingers of Spring', or 'harbingers of day', but it is the 'harbingers of doom' that are by far the busiest in our present-day language. The original meaning of harbinger was quite specific and had nothing to do with any of the above. In the 12th century, a harbinger was a lodging-house keeper. The word derives from 'harbourer' or, as they spelled it then, 'herberer' or 'herberger' , i.e. one who harbours people for the night. 'Herberer' derives from the French word for 'inn' - 'auberge'. 'Ye herbergers' are referred to (as common lodging-house keepers) in the Old English text The Lambeth Homilies, circa 1175. By the 13th century, 'harbinger' had migrated from its original meaning of lodging keeper, to refer to a scout who went ahead of a military force or royal court to book lodgings for the oncoming hoard. This is the source of the 'advance messenger' meaning that we understand now. Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to record this meaning of 'harbinger', in The Man of Law's Tale, circa 1386: The fame anon thurgh toun is born How Alla kyng shal comen on pilgrymage, By herbergeours that wenten hym biforn [The news through all the town was carried, How King Alla would come on pilgrimage, By harbingers that went before him] It was some centuries until the figurative usage, when people began to speak of the harbinger of things other than approaching royalty or house guests. The first usage was of our old friend 'doom', or as the Edinburgh Advertiser had it in September 1772, 'ruin': "The spirit of migration [from Scotland] is the infant harbinger of devoted ruin." It is rather appropriate to find that early usage coming from Scotland. The character of Private Frazer, in Dad's Army, a well-known (in the UK at least) BBC television series, was based on the perceived gloomy attitude of his race. John Laurie, who played the lugubrious Frazer, was the archetypal stage Scotsman and the show's line "We're all doomed, doomed I tell ye" became something of a catchphrase for him. Those pessimistic harbingers of doom who first decided that 'the end of the world is nigh' lived in the 19th century. The earliest printed example of that phrase that I have found is from James Emerson Tennent's Letters from the Aegean, 1829: "Achmet, our janissary, calculating from the decay of their empire and the daily fulfilment of the predictions of Mahomet with regard to the final resurrection, have come to a conclusion that the end of the world is nigh at hand."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2008-12-22 09:54:52

  Make no bones about Meaning To state a fact in a way that allows no doubt. To have no objection to. Origin This is another of those ancient phrases that we accept with our mother's milk as an idiom but which seem quite strange when we later give it some thought. When we are trying to convey that we acknowledge or have no objection to something, why bring bones into it? It has been suggested that the bones were dice, which were previously made from bone and are still called bones in gambling circles. That explanation doesn't stand up to scrutiny - 'to make no dice about it' makes little sense. Also, in a 1542 translation of Erasmus's Paraphrase of Luke he discussed the command given to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and wrote that 'he made no bones about it but went to offer up his son.' Erasmus wasn't noted for his visits to the gaming tables and would hardly have used betting terminology to discuss a biblical text. The actual source of this phrase is closer to home and hearth. In 15th century England, if someone wanted to express their dissatisfaction with something, they didn't 'make bones about it', they used the original form of the phrase and 'found bones in it'. This is a reference to the unwelcome discovery of bones in soup - bones = bad, no bones = good. If you found 'no bones' in your meal you were able to swallow it without any difficulty or objection. The earliest citation of the phrase in print comes from the Paston Letters, which include a collection of texts from 1459 relating to a dispute between Paston and the family of the Norfolk soldier Sir John Fastolf (Fastolf was, incidentally, the source of the character Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV). In the Paston Letters, the context of which is that the litigants are finally accepting a verdict with no objection, Paston includes the line: "And fond that tyme no bonys in the matere." [and found that time no bones in the matter] 'Making bones' is usually expressed in the negative. There are rare occurrences of people being described as 'making bones' about this or that, and an early example comes from Richard Simpson's The School of Shakspere, 1878: "Elizabeth was thus making huge bones of sending some £7000 over for the general purposes of the government in Ireland." 'Make no bones about it' is now rather archaic and heard less often than before. It did return briefly during the 1980s, as an example of the 'waiter, I'll have a crocodile sandwich, and make it snappy' form of joke. 'Waiter, I'll have tomato soup and make no bones about it' linked neatly back to the phrase's culinary origin.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-01-14 13:10:34

  Double cross Meaning An act of treachery, perpetrated on a previous partner in a deceit. Origin The term 'double-cross' has been used in various contexts for many centuries, usually as a straightforward reference to the shape of two crosses, as in the architectural design of cathedrals for example. That meaning is unrelated to the current figurative 'cheating' usage of 'double cross', which dates only from the late 18th century. To find the origin of the expression 'double cross' as it is now used, we need to look first at one of the many meanings of the noun 'cross'. From the mid 1700s, a 'cross' was a transaction that wasn't 'square', i.e. not honest and fair. The term was most often used in a sporting context, where a cross was a match that was lost as a result of a corrupt collusory arrangement between the principals involved. You might expect that a 'double cross' was a deceit in which two parties collude in a swindle and one of them later goes back on the arrangement, crossing both the original punters and his erstwhile partner in crime. Although that is the case, the term 'double' doesn't here mean simply 'two times'. 'To double' had long been used to mean 'to make evasive turns or shifts; to act deceitfully'. This derives from the imagery of someone doubling back over a previous route. This 'doubling' gave rise to the term 'double dealing', which has been used since the early 1500s to refer to someone duplicitously saying one thing and doing another, for example, a 'double agent'. Given that, by the mid 1700s, the language included both 'cross' and 'double', it wasn't a great leap to introduce the term 'double cross' to refer to aggravated duplicity. Double crossing dealings are the precise opposite of those that are 'fair and square', but the two expressions do have one thing in common - they are both tautological. 'Fair' and 'square' both mean honest and 'double' and 'cross' both mean dishonest. The earliest reference that I have found to 'double cross' in print is in David Garrick's 1768 farce The Irish Widow. The play centres around various practical jokes, and the phrase occurs as a play on words between two of the meanings of cross - 'marriage' and 'swindle': Sir Patrick O'Neale: I wish you had a dare swate crater [dear sweet creature] of a daughter like mine, that we might make a double cross of it. Mr. Whittle: (aside) That would be a double cross, indeed! The sporting usage was defined a few years later, in an early self-help tome, written by 'Two Citizens of the World' and 'Containing Hints to the Unwary to Avoid the Stratagems of Swindlers, Cyprians and Lawyers', i.e. How To Live In London, 1828: "A double cross, is where a boxer receives money to lose, and afterwards goes in and beats his man." A systematic policy of double crossing was given the UK government's official, if covert, sanction during the WWII. In 1941, MI5 set up a military counter espionage unit called The Twenty Committee, chaired by John Masterman. The naming of this unit clearly linked the double crosses of the Roman numerals for twenty (XX) with one of the unit's aims, which was to 'double cross' Germany by coercing German spies to become English double agents. The coercion was less than subtle; captured German agents were given an offer they couldn't refuse, i.e. feed false information back to Germany or be shot. During the Cold War, following the publishing of Masterman's The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939-1945, in 1972, the terms 'double cross' and 'double agent' became much more commonplace.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-01-14 13:11:05

  Without let or hindrance Meaning Without impediment. Origin 'Let or hindrance' is usually used in the form 'without let or hindrance', denoting something that is free to progress. 'Without' is just a straightforward indication of a negative and isn't an example of the confusing alternative 'outside' meaning of without, as in 'without a city wall'. 'Hindrance' is also straigthforward and only has one meaning. 'Let' is the word in this phrase that causes confusion. What is a 'let' exactly? When we talk about 'letting something happen', we are using the verb 'to let' in its most common contemporary form, meaning 'to allow'. This has been a common usage since the 10th century. Curiously, let has also been used since the 9th century to mean the exact opposite, i.e. 'to hinder or stand in the way of'. It is the second of these forms that is used in 'let or hindrance'. During the 12th century, the verb was reworked into a noun and obstacles began to be called lets. That version of the word has stayed with us in the language, notably in the game of tennis, where it denotes an obstruction that is specified in the rules and prompts a point to be replayed. Such replayed points are usually the result of the ball clipping the net during a service, but a let may be any interruption to play. Streakers, who are now almost as much of a tradition at the Wimbledon tennis championships as are strawberries and cream, are taken away to the sound of the umpire gravely announcing "play a let". Tennis is replete with obscure terms. Deuce refers to the situation where there are two points required to win a game, i.e. an Anglicized version of the French 'à deux de jeu'. The origin of the term 'love' and the reason why the scores progress irregularly from 15 to 30, to 40, to game, aren't known. The suggestion that 'love' is a variant of the French 'l'oeuf', relating a zero to the ovoid shape of an egg, has no basis in fact. Another similarly ancient sporting term for an obstacle is a 'rub', as in 'the rub of the green', so beloved of snooker commentators. A rub is more specific than a let, in that it refers to a lump on the playing surface. (See 'rub of the green' for more details on this). The expression 'let or hinder' dates from the 16th century and is mentioned in John Baret's A Triple Dictionary, in English, Latin, and French, 1574. In the following years it began to be used in legal proceedings, with specific reference to people who hampered the police in their duties. Samuel Freeman makes a reference to such rascals in The Town Officer, 1799: "Persons who wilfully let or hinder any sheriff or constable." The officers who in 1974 tackled Michael O'Brien, the first known streaker at a major sporting event, might have been surprised to have been told that, in the old linguistic sense at least, they were letting him get away with it.

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