Z A Phrase A Week

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-05-09 10:10:23

  Dressed to the nines Meaning Dressed flamboyantly or smartly. Origin Nine is the most troublesome number in etymology. There are several phrases of uncertain parentage that include the word. Examples are, cloud nine, nine days' wonder and the infamous whole nine yards. We can add 'dressed to the nines' to that list. The most frequently heard attempts to explain the phrase's derivation involve associating the number nine with clothing in some way. 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 kudos you accrued, 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 in Samuel Fallows' The Progressive Dictionary of the English Language, 1835. In his entry for the phrase 'to the nines' Fallows gives the example 'dressed up to the nines' and suggests that it "may perhaps" be derived from 'to thine eynes' - to the eyes. Not bad as a hypothesis, but without any evidence (and I can find none) 'may perhaps' is as far as we can go with that. What counts against the above explanations 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. The Nine Worthies were characters drawn from the Pagan and Jewish history and from the Bible. 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: And Poets most who still make their address In private to the Nine. It is 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 'dance to the nines' or 'philosophize to the nines'. The search for the link between 'nines' and dress sense has unearthed no convincing candidates. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but I'll stick my neck out here and say, with this phrase and with the other 'nines' phrases, 'nine' doesn't refer to anything specific - it just means 'a lot'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-05-09 10:11:18

  Beat around the bush Meaning Prevaricate and avoid coming to the point. Origin The figurative meaning of the odd phrase 'beat around the bush' or, as it is usually expressed in the UK, 'beat about the bush', evolved from the earlier literal meaning. In bird hunts, some of the participants roused the birds by beating the bushes and enabling others, to use a much later phrase, to 'cut to the chase' and catch the quarry in nets. So, 'beating about the bush' was the preamble to the main event, which was the capturing of the birds. Of course, grouse hunting and other forms of hunt still use beaters today. The phrase is old and first appears in the mediaeval poem Generydes - A Romance in Seven-line Stanzas, circa 1440: Butt as it hath be sayde full long agoo, Some bete the bussh and some the byrdes take. The poem is anonymous and only exists as a single handwritten manuscript in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, the early printed versions all having disappeared. Even at that early date the author's implication was clearly that 'beting the bussh' was considered a poor substitute for getting on with it and 'taking the byydes'. If it really was said 'full long agoo' in the 15th century then the English 'beat about the bush' must be one of the oldest non-biblical phrases in the language. The earliest version that I can find that adds 'about' to 'beat the bush' is in George Gascoigne's Works, 1572: He bet about the bush, whyles other caught the birds. As far as the relative global popularity of the two versions of the phrase goes, the US version is becoming the standard. According to this graph of instances of the two phrases in print, 'beat around the bush' overtook 'beat about the bush' around (or about, if you prefer) 1980.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-05-09 10:12:14

  Hard-hearted Meaning Lacking mercy; incapable of pity. Origin The first mention in print in English of the term 'hard-hearted' is in Geoffrey Chaucer's 1374 translation of Consolation of Philosophy, the 6th century treatise by the Roman philosopher Anicius Boethius: Ne no tere ne wette his face, but he was so hard-herted. The term reflects the mediaeval belief that the heart was the organ that controlled one's thoughts and feelings - there being no understanding of the functioning of the brain at that time. The belief was that the condition of the heart reflected the senses in a direct and literal way. We have retained several mediaeval expressions that we now see as entirely figurative but which were previously akin to a medical diagnosis: - Cold-hearted - Light-hearted - Broken-hearted - Half-hearted - Hard-hearted - Faint-hearted - Whole-hearted The last on that list, whole-hearted, is atypical in that it is a 19th century term and derives from a different meaning of 'hearted', i.e. 'courageous;spirited'. The transition from literal to figurative meaning is matched by the transition in the spelling of the terms. Initially, the two words were usually written separately, then later as a hyphenated pair and finally as a single word. Someone with a 'light heart' was initially 'light hearted', later 'light-hearted' and more recently 'lighthearted' - for example: John Palsgrave's dictionary Lesclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse, 1530: "Lyght herted or mery, alaigre." William Cowper's poem The Task, 1785: "He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch, Cold and yet cheerful." Wilkie Collins's novel Queen of Hearts, 1859: "Mrs. Knifton began to make jokes about it, in her lighthearted way." The 15th century literal way of thinking (and spelling) was resurrected in the 1920s in the popular Tin-Pan Alley song Hard Hearted Hannah: They call her Hard Hearted Hannah, The vamp of Savannah, The meanest gal in town; Leather is tough, but Hannah's heart is tougher, She's a gal who loves to see men suffer! Of course, to be 'hearted' these days we just need a T-shirt. The 'I heart NY' message began being used in the USA in the 1980s and, in January 2011, the OED defined a new meaning of the verb heart as "To love; to be fond of: - originally with reference to logos using the symbol of a heart to denote the verb 'love'", which is as close as we can get to an acceptance that the symbol is now part of the language. See also: the meaning and origin of 'half-hearted'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-05-09 10:13:04

  Eeny, meeny, miny, mo Meaning The first line of a popular children's counting rhyme. Origin Of all of the phrases and idioms in the English language 'eeny, meenie, miny, mo' must be the one with the widest variety of spellings. I've opted for 'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo' but there are many others - 'Eenie, meenie, miney, moe', 'Eany, meany, miney, mo' and so on. Added to that, as far back as the 19th century there have been variants of the rhyme which are so dissimilar to our current version as to be scarcely recognisable - 'Hana, mana, mona, mike' (from New York) and 'Eetern, feetern, peeny, pump' (from Scotland) and many of these now have local variants and words added from other languages. What lies behind this variability is that throughout the 19th century the rhyme spread from different parts of the UK to every playground in the English-speaking world, but by word of mouth rather than on paper. There never was an accepted definitive version, so the children who used the rhyme were very happy to substitute their own words as the mood took them. As adults, we might be curious as to whether the words mean anything and what their origin might have been. Children appear to have no such concerns. An example comes from the Danish region near Kattegat, where a rhyme arrived during the British occupation in the Napoleonic wars: Jeck og Jill Vent op de hill Og Jell kom tombling efter ...which makes as little sense in Danish as it does in English but, despite it being entirely meaningless to them, the children of the area still sing it. The best known version of the rhyme is the one that is now widely derided as insulting, especially in the USA, where the middle two lines originated: Eena, meena, mina, mo, Catch a ****** by the toe, If he hollers, let him go, Eena meena, mina, mo. [Note: the ****** replaces the 'n-word' which tends to be blocked by many email services] A more acceptable version has now established itself: Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, Catch the tiger/monkey/baby by the toe. If it hollers[USA]/screams[UK] let him go, Eeny, meeny, miny, mo. The rhyme is used by groups of children as a way of selecting someone to take a role that is different from the others. As difference is unwelcome to children, the formula had to be sufficiently unpredictable to be accepted as fair. A leader takes the counting role and, in the rhythm of the rhyme, points to each child in turn. The last line is often topped off with a short emphasized 'You are It!' or 'O, U, T spells out!', which all the children join in with. Sometimes the child pointed to at the end of one count is the one selected - to be 'It' in a game of hide and seek, for example. In more important choices - selecting who has to ask that grumpy man down the road for their ball back - the one pointed to last drops out and the formula is repeated several times until only one is left. [Note: UK residents who have voted in today's referendum might notice a parallel with the 'First Past the Post' and 'Alternative Vote' systems.] 'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo' is certainly a strange line, so does it mean anything and does curiosity about its origin lead us anywhere? Well, as is so often the case in etymology, yes and no. There is a similarity between the words of the phrase and some of the numerals in pre-English Celtic and Cumbrian languages. For example, the oral tradition of the English coastal town of Yarmouth voices 'one, two, three, four' as 'ina, mina, tethera, methera'. Also, the word for 'one' in Welsh, Cornish, Irish and Breton is, respectively, 'un' (pronounced 'een'), 'ouyn', 'aon' and 'unan' - all of them sounding not unlike 'een' or 'eeny'. The age of the phrase is uncertain. It first began to be written down in the 19th century - the scholarly journal Notes and Queries published this in the February 1855 edition: "The following are used in the United States for the selection of a tagger... Eeny, meeny, moany, mite, Butter, lather, boney, strike, Hair, bit, frost, neck, Harrico, barrico, we, wo, wack" This bears more than a passing resemblance to the English version recorded by Fred Jago in The Glossary of the Cornish Dialect, 1882: Ena, mena, mona, mite, Bascalora, bora, bite, Hugga, bucca, bau, Eggs, butter, cheese, bread. Stick, stock, stone dead - OUT." There's no doubt that the rhyme is older than the 19th century recorded versions, possibly very much older. The link to the names of numerals in ancient languages is also likely. Many farmers and fishermen on the fringes of Britain used such language for counting until quite recently and many natives of the north of England can still count from one to five in 'the old way' - 'yan, tan tehera, methera, pimp'. Ancient Celtic counting system or Victorian nonsense verse? American in origin or English? Your best bet is to put all the available theories in a circle and repeat this rhyme - Eeny, meeny...

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-05-25 10:21:06

  As daft as a brush Meaning Very foolish. Origin On the face of it, brushes wouldn't seem to be any more daft than anything else. As the source of the expression isn't obvious, various suggestions have been put forward as to what form of brush is being referred to; for instance: - The phrase originated as 'as soft as a brush' and that the brush is the tail of a fox. This is plausible in that 'soft' is a northern English term for stupid and foxes tails are in fact quite soft to the touch. - The brushes in the expression are the boys that were employed in the 18th/19th centuries to climb inside chimneys to sweep them. The theory here, which is somewhat less plausible, is that the boys were made into idiots by being repeatedly dropped on their heads when being lowered down the chimneys. Nevertheless, as we shall see, the 'brush' in this simile is neither of these; it is, as the dictionary would have it "A utensil consisting of a piece of wood or other suitable material, set with small tufts or bunches of bristles, hair, or the like, for sweeping or scrubbing dust and dirt from a surface.", that is - a brush. Are brushes daft? Not particularly, but then again I've never had a sensible conversation with one. When looking for early examples of 'daft as a brush' in print we find that it first starts appearing the 1950s. An example is in William Morgan Williams's The Sociology of an English Village: Gosforth, 1956: The wives of two members of a kin-group locally thought to be eccentric and extremely unsociable were pointed out by several people as 'gay queer' and 'daft as a brush'. [Gosforth is in Cumbria, UK] 1956 seems later than I would have expected and, as the word 'daft' has always been used more often in the north of England than in other places, a scan of some north country references seems in order. Voilà. 'Daft as a brush' it is in fact predated by an earlier variant 'daft as a besom'. The earliest citation of that that I can find is a listing in William Dickinson's A glossary of the words and phrases of Cumberland, 1859: Daft, without sense. "Ey, as daft as a besom." A 'besom' is of course a brush made from twigs and a corroboration that the phrase originated with 'besom' rather than 'brush' version comes in another glossary, from just a few years earlier and collected in the same area - John and William Brockett's A glossary of North country words, with their etymology, 1846: Fond, silly, foolish. An old Northern word. 'Fond-as-a-buzzom', remarkably silly. The use of 'fond' to mean foolish predated our current usage, which is 'to be fond of something or someone'. That present day meaning migrated from the earlier word, which in time came to mean 'display a foolish affection for'. In Richard Rolle's Psalter, 1339, the author refers to 'fonnyd maydyns' (foolish girls). The word appears in more contemporary language in John Lyly's Euphues: the Anatomy of Wyt, 1578: He that is young thinketh the old man fond. So remember, if you are visiting the English northern counties and some old codger says that you are 'as fond as a buzzom', isn't exactly a compliment.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-05-25 10:38:19

  Jack of all trades Meaning A man who can turn his hand to many things. Origin With any phrase that includes a name, it's natural to consider whether its the name of a real person. In this case, as was the case with many other literary Jacks - Jack the Lad, Jack Robinson, Jack Sprat, Jack Horner, Jack Frost, etc, Jack of all trades was a generic term rather than a living and breathing individual. In fact, the very long list of terms that include 'Jack' exceeds that of any other name in English and this reflects the fact that, as a derivative of the common name 'John', 'Jack' has been used just to mean 'the common man'. This usage dates back to the 14th century and an example is found in John Gower's Middle English poem Confessio Amantis, 1390: Therwhile he hath his fulle packe, They seie, 'A good felawe is Jacke'. We now use 'Jack of all trades, master of none' in a derogatory way. Originally, this wasn't the case and the label 'Jack of all trades' carried no negative connotation, the 'master of none' part being added later. Nevertheless, mediaeval Jacks were pretty much at the bottom of the social tree. The OED defines the generic meaning of the name Jack thusly: Jack - A man of the common people; a lad, fellow, chap; especially a low-bred or ill-mannered fellow, a 'knave' If 16th century commentators wanted to imply that a person was stretching their talents too thinly they resorted to the disparaging Latin term Johannes factotum ('Johnny do-it-all'). In 1592, the English writer and member of the literary establishment Robert Greene wrote a pamphlet entitled Groats-worth of Witte. In that he ventured the opinion that a new writer on the scene was: An upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you. Beeing an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. Sadly for Greene's ongoing reputation the 'Upstart crow' was William Shakespeare. Various trades were populated by Jacks - lumberjacks, steeplejacks for example, and sailors were Jack-tars. For no especial reason, I've included a picture of three of my uncles who were steeplejacks. For the record, none of them was a Jack outside of work; they were Gilbert, Frank and Verdon. The name Jack was also added to many utilitarian objects which in some way took the place of a lad or man, for example: Smoke-jack (a roasting spit) Jack-plane (a basic carpenter's plane) Jack-screw (a lifting winch) Jack-frame (a carpenter's sawing horse) Boot-jack (for pulling off boots) Jack-engine (a miner's winch) Jack-file (a coarse file) There can't have been any trades in the Middle Ages that didn't make use of a jack of some sort. 'Jack of all trades' entered the language in 1612 when Geffray Minshull wrote of his experiences in prison in Essayes and characters of a prison and prisoners: Some broken Cittizen, who hath plaid Jack of all trades. The 'master of none' addition began to be added in the late 18th century. The headmaster of Charterhouse School, Martin Clifford, in a collection of notes on the poems of Dryden, circa 1677 wrote: Your Writings are like a Jack of all Trades Shop, they have Variety, but nothing of value. In 1770, the Gentleman's Magazine offered the opinion that "Jack at all trades, is seldom good at any." The earliest example that I can find in print of the actual phrase 'Jack of all trades, master of none' is in Charles Lucas's Pharmacomastix, 1785: The very Druggist, who in all other nations in Europe is but Pharmacopola, a mere drug-merchant, is with us, not only a physician and chirurgeon, but also a Galenic and Chemic apothecary; a seller of druggs, medicines, vertices, oils, paints or colours poysons, &c. a Jack of all trades, and in truth, master of none. Maybe taking on 'all trades' wasn't wise but Jacks were often master craftsmen in their chosen trade. History books tell us that Cardinal Wolsey built Hampton Court Palace and that Charles Barry built the Houses of Parliament - don't believe it, it was Jack.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-05-27 14:02:59

  Man's best friend Meaning An animal that performs valuable service to humans, often with reference to dogs. Origin 'A dog is a man's best friend'? Well, if popularity is anything to go by, perhaps that's true; according to the American Kennel Club, there are more pet dogs in the USA than there are people in Britain. However, the affection that dogs are held in by many these days is a fairly recent development. How we used to think about dogs can be judged by looking at how they have been portrayed in language over the centuries. The first linguistic oddity to do with dogs is the where the word 'dog' came from. The name was preceded by the perfectly good Anglo-Saxon word 'hound', which was also used in other European languages. 'Dog', in common with several other animal names ending in 'g', like frog, hog, pig and stag, seems to have been coined around the 13th century for reasons that no one is at all sure about. Prior to the 18th century, dogs were kept for hunting and defence and not as pets. The only deviation from that rule was that of the derided 'lap-dog', which John Evelyn recorded in his Diary, circa 1684, as a dog fit only for ladies: Those Lap-dogs had so in delicijs [delight] by the Ladies - are a pigmie sort of Spaniels. Lap-dogs apart, the phrases used to refer to dogs in the 16th and 17th centuries indicate their image as vicious and disease-ridden: Hair of the dog that bit you, first used in 1546 as a reference to rabies Cast someone to the dogs, 1556 Dog in the manger , 1564 If you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas, 1573 The dogs of war, 1601 Go to the dogs, 1619 Also, phrases that indicate the treatment of dogs show that they were considered to be of little worth: Lead a dog's life (1528), Not fit for a dog (1625), As sick as a dog (1705), The unfortunate mutts were considered so beyond the pale that dog hangings, as punishment for chasing sheep or whatever else dogs did naturally, were commonplace. The phrase 'give a dog a bad name', 1705, was originally 'give a dog a bad name and hang him'. The language relating to canines took a turn for the better later in the 18th century. The first example in print of the term 'dog-basket' dates from 1768. The need for a name for a piece of furniture provided specifically for the comfort of dogs shows a clear turning point in attitudes towards them. This shift in outlook continued steadily and in 1823 we first find 'dog biscuits', followed in 1852 by 'dog show'. By the mid 20th century we find clear linguistic evidence that a dog was to be considered almost on a par with humanity - 'dog-sitter' (1942). The greatest claim to fame of Warrensburg, Missouri is that it is where the phrase 'a dog is a man's best friend' originated. In 1870, a farmer shot a neighbour's dog and, in the subsequent court case where the owner sued for damages, the lawyer George Graham Vest gave a tear-jerking speech that became known as the Eulogy to a Dog: "Gentlemen of the jury, a man's dog stands by him in prosperity and poverty, in health and sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow, and the snow drives fiercely, if only he can be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens." - And so on... A statue of Old Drum, as the deceased beast was called, stands outside the town's courtroom. Sadly for the Warrensburg Tourist Board, the Senator Vest didn't originate the phrase, but he may have read it in a US newspaper, as it appeared in print fifty years earlier in The New-York Literary Journal, Volume 4, 1821: The faithful dog - why should I strive To speak his merits, while they live In every breast, and man's best friend Does often at his heels attend. To paraphrase Harold Macmillan - 'Fido, you've never had it so good'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-06-07 10:51:58

  Rest on one's laurels Meaning To be satisfied with one's past success and to consider further effort unnecessary. Origin The laurels that are being referred to when someone is said to 'rest on his laurels' are the aromatically scented Laurus Nobilis trees or, more specifically, their leaves. The trees are known colloquially as Sweet Bay and are commonly grown as culinary or ornamental plants. The origins of the phrase lie in ancient Greece, where laurel wreaths were symbols of victory and status. Of course, ancient Greece is where history and mythology were frequently mixed, so we need to tread carefully. The pre-Christian Greeks associated their god Apollo with laurel - that much is historical fact, as this image of Apollo wearing a laurel wreath on a 2nd century BC coin indicates. The reason for that association takes us into the myth of Apollo's love for the nymph Daphne, who turned into a Bay tree just as Apollo approached her (anything could happen if you were a Greek god). Undeterred, Apollo embraced the tree, cut off a branch to wear as a wreath and declared the plant sacred. Their belief in the myth caused the Greeks to present laurel wreaths to winners in the Pythian Games, which were held at Delphi in honour of Apollo every four years from the 6th century BC. Following the decline of the Greek Empire, the use of wreaths of laurel as emblems of victory seems to have taken a long holiday and didn't re-emerge until the Middle Ages. Geoffrey Chaucer referred to laurels in that context in The Knight's Tale, circa 1385: With laurer corouned as a conquerour And there he lyueth in ioye and in honour . [With laurel crowned as conqueror There he lived in joy and honour] A 'laureate' was originally a person crowned with a laurel wreath. We continue to call those who are especially honoured laureates although the laurel leaves are usually kept for the kitchen these days. Nevertheless, laureates benefit in other ways; Nobel Laureates get a nice medal and 10 million Swedish Krona and Poets Laureate (in the UK at least) get a useful salary and a butt of sack (barrel of sherry). As to the phrase's meaning, to 'rest on one's laurels' isn't considered at all a praiseworthy strategy - it suggests a decline into laziness and lack of application. That's not the original meaning. When 'rest on one's laurels' or, as it was initially, 'repose on one's laurels' was coined it was invariably part of a valedictory speech for some old soldier or retiring official. An early example of that usage is found inThe Memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz, 1723: The Duke [of Orleans] was old enough to take his Repose under the Shadow of his Laurels. Of course, the 'repose' was figurative - no one was imagining someone sleeping on a bed of laurel leaves, although the citation above could be construed as referring to laurel trees rather than laurel wreaths. No such doubts with a slightly later citation from the London-based Gentleman's Magazine, 1733, on the retirement of a schoolmaster of Westminster School: So thou, paternal Sage, may'st now repose. Nor seek new Laurels to adorn thy Brows. As soon as we move into the energetic Victorian era, the meaning changes and the phrase is used with a distinctly disapproving tone. Victoria had barely gained the throne when we find this piece in the review magazine The Literary Chronicle, 1825, which praises the work of Maria Edgeworth: We do not affect to wish she should repose on her laurels and rest satisfied; on the contrary, we believe that genius is inexhaustible... For Miss Edgeworth there must be no rest on this side the grave. Tough audience the Victorians. We are hardly any more charitable these days. 'One-hit wonders' are sneered at and, with proper Anglo-Saxon earnestness, Anthony Burgess dismissed his fellow author Joseph Heller's inability to write a second book for 13 years following the success of Catch-22 by sniping that "Heller suffers from that fashionable American disease, writer's block".

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-06-15 17:30:41

  Purple patch Meaning An overly elaborate or effusive piece of writing. Also, a period of notable success or good luck. Origin 'Purple patches', which are also sometimes called 'purple passages' or 'purple prose', were originally a figurative reference to florid literary passages, added to a text for dramatic effect. They were the literary equivalent of adding a patch of purple material to an otherwise undecorated garment. Purple was chosen because, as well as being a distinctive colour, it was the colour reserved for emperors and other distinguished statesmen in imperial Rome. Most of the early references to 'purple patches' contain clear evidence of classical origins, many of them including Latin text. The first person I can identify as having used 'purple patch' in print in English was no less an author than Elizabeth I. In 1598, Queen Elizabeth translated Horace's Latin textDe Arte Poetica and this was published in 1899 as part of Queen Elizabeth's Englishings: Oft to beginnings graue and shewes of great is sowed A purple pace, one or more for vewe. [Note: 'Purple pace' was the translation of the original 'purpureus pannus'. 'Pace' meant 'passage'.] Many works of art and scholarship that are listed as the creation of various English monarchs weren't actually their own work, the attributions being merely a form of flattery. However, Elizabeth benefited from the Tudor notion that aristocratic women were suitable recipients of formal education and her mother, Anne Boleyn, made sure that "she wolde endewe her with the knowlege of all tounges, as Hebrue, Greeke, Latyne, Italian, Spanishe, Frenche". The queen became a noted Latin scholar and we can be assured that the translation (and wouldn't it be nice if we still used the Tudor word 'Englishing' for translations into English?) was by her own hand. The term 'purple patch' wasn't much used again until the 18th century, at which time literary critics valued evenness of pace and style in literary works. Unevenly written texts were singled out for censure and 'purple patch' was the ideal label for a passage that stood out as overly florid. This idea was expressed forcibly in the 1704 book of literary criticism The True Tom Double: All a Man writes should be proportion'd Even and of a piece; and one Part of the Work should not so far out-shine, as to Obscure and Darken the Other. The Purple Patches he claps upon his Course Style, make it seem much Courser than it is. It wasn't until the 20th century that 'purple patches' were used in relation to anything other than writing. The term then came to mean 'a period of good fortune or creativity'. An early example is cited in the newspaper The Westminster Budget, October 1900: True, it is hardly to be counted a purple patch of history, but a man must surely blame himself if he does not find something epic in the struggle. [of the common people] Purple patches took a turn back from the figurative to the literal in the 1960s when hippies took to wearing purple velvet and patching jeans with it. 'Hendrix purple' is now a recognised shade of dye in the fashion industry.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-06-20 16:25:17

  Up the pole Meaning Various meanings. Origin 'Up the pole' is an odd phrase, or rather, it is an odd collection of phrases, in that it has numerous meanings. These meanings have little to do with each other and, for the most part, little to do with poles. What is difficult to explain is how and why several different meanings for the same expression were all coined in the UK just a few years apart. Of course, poles are commonplace objects and instances of the expression 'up the pole' have abounded in print for centuries - bears/beans/monkeys climbing 'up the pole', people lifting/digging/staring 'up the pole' etc. Perhaps now would be a good time to list the various figurative meanings, in date order of their coinage: In favour or good repute; strait-laced - A. Barrère & C. G. Leland Dictionary of Slang, 1890: "Pole, up the, thought well of by your superiors. Also applied to strict, strait-laced people, who are or like to be considered goody-goody". These two slang meanings, which are of military origin, appear to be the first coinage of 'up the pole'. Given that source, the pole may have been a flagpole, but the citation above doesn't make that clear. In confusion or error - The Daily News, April 1896: "She remonstrated with the latter, and told him he was 'up a pole' - i.e. in the wrong". In trouble or difficulty - A. R. Marshall's Pomes from Pink 'Un, 1897: "He heard himself alluded to as being 'up the pole'". [Note: This book was a popular collection of poems. The Pink 'Un was a newspaper printed on pink paper - either the Sporting Times or the Financial Times.] Drunk - Daily Telegraph, December 1897: Plaintiff: but your little girl was frequently saying that you were 'up the poll'. Judge: Up the what? The High Bailiff explained that the term was a slang one for being intoxicated. This meaning is antiquated and now rarely used. Crazy; at one's wits' end - Westmoreland Gazette, March 1904: "Plaintiff's definition of the phrase 'up the pole' differed from that of her cousin who said it meant being drunk. Mrs. Frasier said that it meant being crazy". This version appears to have travelled from the UK to Australia and New Zealand, where it is still commonly used. In a classic example of folk etymology, 'up the pole' has been suggested to be named after De La Pole Psychiatric Hospital, Hull, UK - after the fashion of 'doolally' being taken from Deolali sanatorium, India. Inmates who were sent there were supposed to have been sent 'up De La Pole'. Inventive guess, but De La Pole Hospital was so named in 1936. Pregnant - James Joyce Ulysses, 1918: "That red Carlisle girl? Is she up the pole? Better ask Seymour that". As befits such a celebrated book as Ulysses, this is the version of the phrase that most people know. It is also the only one that appears to refer directly to any sort of pole - the alternate version of this 'pregnant' meaning are 'up the stick' and 'up the spout' leaving little doubt about what 'pole' was being referred to. All the early usages of this meaning in print come from the pens of Dublin based authors, so an Irish origin seems highly likely. The only thing tying the versions of the phrase together is that they (apart from the first) relate to some degree of difficulty. It may be that the people coining meanings for this expression were alluding to the apparent difficulty of being stuck at the top of a real pole - but we aren't ever likely to confirm that. There was a fad for 'pole-sitting' in the early 20th century, in which participants were certainly 'up the pole' and could be said to be in some difficulty, but that comes too late for it to have been the source of this phrase.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-06-24 14:16:03

  Turn of phrase Meaning A distinctive spoken or written expression. Origin 'Turn of phrase' is a commonplace but rather odd expression - in what sense can a phrase be 'turned'? Ladies are, or at least used to be, sometimes described as having 'well-turned' legs/thighs/ankles, but that derives from an allusion to the symmetry and precision of wood turning, which hardly seems appropriate for an abstract entity like a phrase. What is a phrase anyway? Well, there's no exact definition and so it depends on who you ask. Had you been around in 1530 when the word 'phrase' was coined, you would have been wise not to have asked the language scholar John Palsgrave. It was he who first the word into print but, confusingly, gave two differing examples of its meaning. Palsgrave's aim was to help Englishmen to learn to speak French and to that end he published Lesclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse, the first grammar of the French language. Palsgrave illustrated the meaning of the word 'phrase' by giving examples of phrases in English with their French equivalents. "Whan all is doone and sayd, pour tout potaige - a phrasis." In that illustration he was using the meaning of the word as we now understand it, that is, 'a small group or collocation of words expressing a single notion; a common or idiomatic expression'. That 'collection of words' definition of 'phrase' is hardly unambiguous and could just as well be used for 'idiom', 'saying' or 'expression'. There are also many other linguistic terms that, while they have specialised uses, can all lay claim to being phrases - 'proverbs', 'adages', 'maxims', 'clichés' and so on. Added to that, Palsgrave gave us an entirely different definition of what Tudor gentry understood by the word 'phrase', that is, not words at all but a 'manner or style of speech or writing'. In the same French/English grammar he remarked on "The differences of phrasys betwene our tong and the frenche tong". He went on to explain "The phrasys of our tong and theyrs differeth". By that he meant, not that the English and French use different expressions (which even the most untutored student would surely have known) but that the French have a different manner and style of speaking to the English. That 'style of speaking or writing' meaning gives us a lead in explaining how a phrase can be said to be 'turned'. Before the advent of printing the beauty of written texts was judged not only on their content but also on the quality of the writer's calligraphy - much as Japanese Haiku is appreciated today. The word 'style' derives from the tool used for writing, the stylus, and to the mediaeval mind writing style was as much about the craft of calligraphy as it was about the ideas conveyed in the text. An early handwritten example of Chaucer's Clerk's Tale, circa 1386, used 'style' with that meaning: Therfore Petrak writeth this storie, which with heigh stile he enditeth. So, a phrase was a style of speaking or writing, and style meant beauty of expression. We can now interpret a fine 'turn of phrase' as analogous to a skilfully-crafted piece of wood turned on a lathe. John Dryden referred to the 'turning' of words in this sense in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis, 1693: Had I time, I cou'd enlarge on the Beautiful Turns of Words and Thoughts; which are as requisite in this, as in Heroique Poetry. Benjamin Franklin - first with many things - appears to have been the first to use the precise expression 'turn of phrase' in his Letters, 1779: A new version [of the Bible], in which, preserving the sense, the turn of phrase and manner of expression should be modern.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-07-04 15:38:23

  Bean counter Meaning A disparaging term for an accountant, or anyone who one who is excessively concerned with statistical records or accounts. Origin When researching the expression 'bean counter' there is a difficulty - the term has several different meanings. The common usage these days is as a name for a rather pedantic accountant, the implication being that, while most of us are content to buy beans by the bag, fussy accountants want to know exactly how many they are paying for. Before the first hapless accountant was called a 'bean counter', the phrase was also used as the name of a place where beans were sold, especially in the USA where 'pork and bean counters' were commonplace in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Added to that, our inventive predecessors used machines to count beans - and there's no need to tell you what they called them. This variability can lead to some confusion when scanning old newspaper records and other references. Nevertheless, I'll plough on and try to sort the leguminosae from the chaff. Bean counters, that is, 'counters where beans were sold', came first. The US newspaper the Lewiston Evening Journal referred to these in June 1907: The Clerk, seeing himself worsted by numbers... walked over to the bean counter where he again busied himself putting up packages for the evening trade. This was followed by bean counters, that is, 'machines that count beans', which meaning is cited in the Pennsylvania newspaper The New Castle News, March 1916: City Registry Clerk Stanley Treser has invented a new device. It is known as the bean counter. Then, lastly, we get to bean counters, that is, 'accountants'. The earliest reference that I can find to the use of 'bean counter' with this meaning is in the US newspaper The Fort Wayne News And Sentinel, February 1919, in an article titled The Bean Counter: The son of Josephus has been promoted in the quartermaster's department. "I suppose," remarked the Gentleman at the Adjacent Desk "I suppose that somebody has to count the beans for Colonel Roosevelt's fighting sons." The 'fighting sons' were the US soldiers engaged in the latter part of WWI. The story alludes to the American politician Josephus Daniels who served in the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, who was himself a colonel during his military service and was a strong supporter of the US's involvement in WWI. The phrase appears in Australia soon afterwards, either by migration from the USA or by independent coinage. An example is found in The Parliamentary Debates of the Australian House of Representatives, 1928: It is not a bean counter's bill. There is no attempt to make any savings. This insinuation that 'bean counters' were penny-pinching accountants who could't see the bigger picture chimes in well with the no-nonsense reputation of Australian politicians. The phrase thrived down under during the 1930/40s before becoming commonplace throughout the English-speaking world later in the 20th century. 介个肿么好像许久前读过了？

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-07-09 00:06:15

  Fair to middling Meaning Slightly above average. Origin 'Fair to middling' comes to the party with two friends, fair to middlin' and fair to midland. Both of these gatecrashers derive from the original phrase, but in different ways. Fair to middlin' is just a colloquial version written in the way that the expression is often spoken, in mid-west America at least, which, as we will see, is where the expression originated. Fair to midland is an odder fish and comes from the mispronunciation of 'middling' as 'midland'. The question is, why would anyone do that? It could be just a simple mistake, although that seems unlikely as 'fair to midland' doesn't really mean anything. More likely is that it was the result of a deliberate jokey mispronunciation, along the lines of san fairy Ann, taking the Miguel etc. This could have originated in the English Midlands. It is widely used there and the English are inveterate 'accidentally on purpose' mispronouncers - Cockney Rhyming Slang is an entire dialect built along those lines. In the case of 'fair to midland', the origin is more likely to be the USA, specifically Texas, the reference being to that state's city of Midland. The earliest printed citation of 'fair to midland' that I can find comes from The New York Times, May 1935: Dr. William Tweddell, who is what might be called a fair-to-Midland golfer... The current usage of the expression is predominantly American and has been boosted by the popularity of the US hard rock band that has adopted it as its name. As to the original version of the phrase 'fair to middling', that is also of American origin. 'Middling' was and is a term used by farmers to describe the quality of farm produce, especially sheep. There were several loosely defined grades of produce: 'good', 'fair, 'middling', 'ordinary' and 'poor'. 'Middling' is an old Scots word and has been in use since at least the 15th century with the same meaning as now, that is, 'of medium or moderate size, strength, quality'. In around 1450, the Marquis of Bute wrote the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, which includes what appears to be the earliest example of 'middling' in print: 'The ynch sulde be with the thoum off midling mane nother our mikil nor our litil bot be tuyx the twa'. I interpret that Old Scots text as meaning 'The inch should be measured with the thumb near the middle, neither at the largest point nor the smallest but between the two' but, if there are any old Scots out there who know better, I would be happy to be enlightened. 'Fair' was used in the UK from the 18th century onward to describe farm produce. An example of that usage is found in John Mortimer's farming handbook The Whole Art of Husbandry, 1707: As you gather your Fruit, separate the fairest and biggest from the middling. These farming terms travelled to America with the early Scottish and English settlers. Like sailors who, when they needed finer designations of direction than North, East South and West, came up with South-west, North-east etc., farmers needed a name for 'not quite fair but better than average' and they opted for 'fair to middling'. The earliest uses of the expression all come from the USA, as does this example from an 1829 edition of John Stuart Skinner's farming journal The American Farmer: Two or three lots of good wethers [castrated rams] brought from $2.50 a 3 per head, and a few lots of fair to middling, $1.50 a 2. Farmers didn't stop there and came up with other intermediate grades, like 'good fair'. Needing finer and finer classifications of quality, they again followed the sailors' lead and copied their 'North-north-east' style. In 1873, Beeton's Dictionary of Commerce described a delivery of cotton as: Good fair to good saw-ginned Surat cotton.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-08-05 14:17:41

  Booby prize Meaning A prize given to make fun of the loser in a contest or game. Origin A Booby is a type of gannet. 'Boobies' has also been used as a slang term for breasts since around 1935. This booby is neither of those. The word has been used to mean dunce or nincompoop since at least the late 16th century and that's the 'booby' of 'booby prize' and 'booby trap'. The word probably derives from the Spanish word 'bobo' meaning 'fool' or 'dunce'. An example of that usage, as 'bobie', comes in The Pleasant Comodie of Patient Grissill, 1599: Let Gwenthyan see what bobie fool loves her... It is also found, as 'booby', in Fletcher and Massinger's comic play The Custome of the Countrey, circa 1640: Cry you great booby. Some etymological records have it that people were labelled as boobies because they were like the seemingly dim-witted seabirds. Actually, it was the other way about. The blue-footed avians were named boobies by the 17th century sailors who first came across them in the eastern Pacific because they didn't attempt to escape when approached. Thomas Herbert recorded this apparently stupid and 'booby-like' behaviour in the travelogue Relation Travails, 1634: One of the Saylers espying a Bird fitly called a Booby, hee mounted to the top-mast and tooke her. The foolish quality of which Bird is to sit still, not valuing danger. The phrase 'booby prize' originated as a term of disparagement for the person with the lowest score in a contest. It was probably coined in the USA. All the early printed references to 'booby prize' originate from there - the earliest that I can find is from a student newspaper from Oberlin, Ohio, The Oberlin Review, 1881: The gentlemen strove at skill in hemming aprons for the fair ones: the first prize was won by Mr. Jackson, the booby prize by Mr. Jones.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-08-08 09:34:52

  Between a rock and a hard place meaning In difficulty, faced with a choice between two unsatisfactory options. Origin This phrase originated in the USA in the early part of the 20th century. It is the American manifestation of a phrase that exists in several forms in other cultures. The dilemma of being in a position where one is faced with two equally unwelcome options appears to lie deep in the human psyche. Language always reflects people's preoccupations and there are several phrases that express this predicament. The first of these quite literally conveys the uncomfortable nature of the choice between two lemmas (propositions), i.e. 'on the horns of a dilemma'. Other phrases that compare two less than desirable alternatives are 'the lesser of two evils', 'between the devil and the deep blue sea', 'between Scylla and Charybdis', 'an offer you can't refuse' and 'Hobson's choice'. The earliest known printed citation of 'between a rock and a hard place' is in the American Dialect Society's publication Dialect Notes V, 1921: "To be between a rock and a hard place, ...to be bankrupt. Common in Arizona in recent panics; sporadic in California." The 'recent panics' referred to in that citation are undoubtedly the events surrounding the so-called US Bankers' Panic of 1907. This financial crisis was especially damaging to the mining and railroad industries of the western states. In 1917, the lack of funding precipitated by the earlier banking crisis led to a dispute between copper mining companies and mineworkers in Bisbee, Arizona. The workers, some of whom had organized in labour unions, approached the company management with a list of demands for better pay and conditions. These were refused and subsequently many workers at the Bisbee mines were forcibly deported to New Mexico. It's tempting to surmise, given that the mineworkers were faced with a choice between harsh and underpaid work at the rock-face on the one hand and unemployment and poverty on the other, that this is the source of the phrase. The phrase began to be used frequently in US newspapers in the late 1930s, often with the alternative wording 'between a rock and a hard spot'. A more recent example of the use of the expression, and one for which it seems gruesomely apt, is recounted in the 2010 film 127 Hours, which is based on Aron Ralston's book Between a Rock and a Hard Place. The memoir recounts the 127 hours that Ralston spent alone and trapped by a boulder in Robbers Roost, Utah, after a climbing accident in April 2003, eventually opting for the 'hard place' of freeing himself by cutting off part of his right arm.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-08-08 09:35:06

  Abracadabra Meaning An exclamation used by conjurors when performing a trick. Origin When stage conjurors and magicians come to the finale of a trick and exclaim 'Abracadabra!' the implication is that a mysterious power is being summoned to perform the required magic. In our information age, in which it is possible to look up how virtually any stunt is staged, we don't take the claims of magical powers too seriously. That wasn't the case when the word abracadabra was first in common use. Mediaeval folk believed in magic as an everyday fact and any unusual event that they couldn't explain was considered to be the result of some form of enchantment. They used the incantation 'Abracadabra' to ward off such bewitchment and as a remedy for poor health. The word was recited repeatedly, each time with the final letter being removed, until just 'a' remained. It was believed that the strength of the illness diminished as the word became shorter. The charm was also written out on paper and worn in an amulet or sewn into clothing. No one is sure as to the origin of the strange word 'abracadabra'. It is known to have been in use in 4th century Latin but there are several theories that place the derivation before that, including: Roman sages, notably Serenus Sammonicus, coined the word and devised the repeated word formula in the 2nd century AD. It being related to another magical word - 'abraxas'. In the Greek system of alphabetic numerology this word is significant in that it contains letters that add up to 365, the number of days in the year. The word is of Hebrew or Aramaic origin, being derived from the Hebrew words 'ab' (father), 'ben' (son), and 'ruach acadosch' (holy spirit) or the Aramaic for 'demon' respectively. Sadly, none of these theories stands up to close examination and actual documentary evidence is as insubstantial as those fragments of mediaeval paper. A reference in print to the use of the word in English that dates back to 1582 is found in Eva Rimmington Taylor's The Troublesome Voyage of Capt. Edward Fenton: Banester sayth yt he healed 200 in one yer of an ague by hanging abracadabra about their necks. The belief in the power of the word lasted well into the 18th century. In his Journal of the Plague Year, 1722, Daniel Defoe was saddened by the continuing superstition of the populace when faced with the threat of plague: People deceiv'd; and this was in wearing Charms, Philters, Exorcisms, Amulets, and I know not what Preparations, to fortify the Body with them against the Plague; as if the Plague was but a kind of a Possession of an evil Spirit; and that it was to be kept off with Crossings, Signs of the Zodiac, Papers tied up with so many Knots; and certain Words, or Figures written on them, as particularly the Word Abracadabra, form'd in Triangle, or Pyramid... How the poor People found the Insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the Dead-Carts. Over time, the belief in the power of 'abracadabra' receded and in the 19th century it came to mean 'fake magic'. Terms like 'legal abracadabra' were used to denote the flummoxing of juries by fast-talking lawyers. Stage conjurors then adopted it into their inventory of the 'magic' words they used to punctuate their acts and the first known usage of it in that context dates from 1819. Some of these words, like 'hocus-pocus' (1634), 'abraxas' (1569) and 'hey presto' (1732) have a long history and a link to supernatural beliefs. Others, like hey-presto's American form 'presto changeo' (1905) and 'shazam' (1940) are pure stage patter. Younger readers may be familiar with the 'killing curse' from the Harry Potter books - 'avada kedavra', which appears to merge 'abracadabra' and 'cadaver'. UK residents of a certain age will always prefer the 'magic' spiel of Sooty and Sweep's mentor Harry Corbett - 'Izzy, Wizzy, let's get busy'

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-08-08 09:35:20

  Forlorn hope Meaning A hopeless or desperate enterprise. Origin Lack of hope must have been a commonplace feeling amongst the English in the 19th century as they coined a variety of phrases to express it - 'not a hope in Hell', 'some hopes', 'what a hope' etc. To that list we might add 'forlorn hope'; but that would be an incorrect addition as it turns out. 'Forlorn' derives from 'forlese', which just means 'lose', so 'forlorn hope' just means 'lost hope', which is the way it was understood in the 19th century, as it is now. That's not how it was in the 16th century, when a forlorn hope wasn't a world-weary feeling but a robust and gung-ho band of soldiers. Each troop in the British Army had a hand-picked group of soldiers, chosen for their ferocity and indifference to risk (and occasionally by using that tried and tested army method of "I want three volunteers. That's you, you and you."). They were the army's 'attack dogs' who risked all in reckless death or glory raids on the enemy. The Anglo-Norman terms 'avant-garde' and 'reregard', were adopted into English as 'vanguard' and 'rearguard' in the 14th century. They were the names of the forces that attacked from the front and protected the rear respectively. It seems reasonable to expect a group called the 'avant-garde' to be the first into battle but before them came the 'Forlorn Hope'. These soldiers, also called the 'forlorn boys' or 'forlorn fellows', were given little hope of survival by their peers. Lord Byron summed up the mind-set of the troop in the epic poem The Siege of Corinth, 1816: The foremost of the fierce assault. The bands are rank'd; the chosen van Of Tartar and of Mussulman, The full of hope, misnamed "forlorn," Who hold the thought of death in scorn, The first mention of them in print is found in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, 1577: Fortie or fiftie forlorne boies. Soon afterwards, the method of attack was described in John Dymmok's A Treatise of Ireland, circa 1600: Before the vantguarde marched the forelorn hope consisting of 40 shott and 20 shorte weapons, with order that they should not discharge vntil they presented theire peeces to the rebel breasts in their trenches, and that sooddenly the shorte weapons should enter the trenches pell mell. The choice of the name 'Forlorn Hope' for a group of soldiers who had little chance of survival seems straightforward and intuitive. Again, things aren't as they seem. The term was originally Dutch and the equivalent combative groups in Holland were called the 'Verloren Hoop', literally 'lost troop'. A bit of impromptu mistranslation amongst the British military turned this into 'Forlorn Hope'. The British Navy went a step further and their wildmen were known as the 'Flowing Hope'. Added to the 'Forlorn Hope' was the 'Rearlorn Hope'. These performed the same task whenever the rearguard was called on to retreat. Although the original meaning of 'forlorn hope' is largely lost to us now, it was still in use in 1920 when John Galsworthy wrote in The Forsyte Saga: "And round Crum were still gathered a forlorn hope of blue-bloods with a plutocratic following". The figurative meaning of 'forlorn hope', which describes someone in a hopeless plight but without any mention of warfare, overlapped with the original meaning for some years. In 1768, in Narrative of Travels in Patagonia, John Byron described the predicament of being forced to leave a group of his colleagues behind to certain death on an inhospitable island: We saw them a little after, setting out upon their forlorn hope, and helping one another over a hideous tract of rocks. As time progressed, a forlorn hope was thought of as something one experienced rather than something one belonged to. The 'rearlorn hope' took no such linguistic journey and has stayed exclusively within the army.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-09-09 16:25:56

  For good measure Meaning As an additional extra. Origin 'Good measure' has been part of the language since the first English-speaking 'purveyor of fyne goodes' set up shop, and it just means 'an ample or generous quantity of that which is sold by measure'. The first instance of the expression in print is found where many other first coinages originated, in John Wyclif's Middle English translation of the Bible, circa 1384, in Luke 6:38: Thei schulen yyue in to youre bosum a good mesure, and wel fillid, and schakun togidir, and ouerflowynge; for bi the same mesure, bi whiche ye meeten, it schal be metun ayen to you. [They shall give into your bosom a good measure, and well-filled, and shaken together, and overflowing; for by the same measure, by which ye mete, it shall be meted again to you.] We might expect the extended term 'in good measure' to refer to an abundance of something. In fact, its rather the reverse. 'Measured' also means 'moderate; restrained' and if a person acts 'in good measure' they are being especially temperate in their actions. As it happens, Wyclif was also one of the first to put that meaning of 'good measure' into print, in a collection of sermons known as Controversial Tracks, circa 1400, which was directed at the clergy: Ye shulden lyue on ye puple in good mesure as Paul biddin. [You be sustained by the people in moderation, as St. Paul bids you.] It wasn't until much later that the use of the phrase 'good measure' returned to its original 'ample' meaning. In the 19th century people began to express the idea of things being 'thrown in for good measure', that is, added as a complimentary extra portion. In 1811, the British mathematician Patrick Kelly wrote The Universal Cambist, which was an exhaustive study of the weights and measures in use in different parts of the world and a method of converting from one to another. In the notes on Swedish measurement he included: Corn, and other dry commodities, are measured by Tunnor. The Tunne is divided into 32 Kappar. But to every Tunna of wheat 4 Kappar are allowed for good measure. Before long, the expression 'for good measure' began to be used figuratively, that is, in circumstances where no actual measurement was taking place. An example appears in the May 1850 edition of the American magazineLittell's Living Age, in a report of a public flogging in California: 'Give him another for good measure' - 'Hit him again' - were the sounds which greeted his ears. 'For good measure' might appear to be linked to the 'Baker's dozen', as both phrases express the notion of a little extra being added above the absolute requirement. In fact, the two phrases aren't connected, 'Baker's dozen' being much older. While the extra that was added 'for good measure' was added willingly, the extra that made up a Baker's dozen was added under threat of severe punishment. In mediaeval England, being light in the loaves was as risky as being 'light in the loafers' was prior to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the 1967 Sexual Offences Act.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-09-16 20:35:11

  May you live in interesting times Meaning May you experience much disorder and trouble in your life. Origin While purporting to be a blessing, this is in fact a curse. The expression is always used ironically, with the clear implication that 'uninteresting times', of peace and tranquillity, are more life-enhancing than interesting ones. 'May you live in interesting times' is widely reported as being of ancient Chinese origin but is neither Chinese nor ancient, being recent and western. It certainly seems to have been intended to sound oriental, in the faux-Chinese 'Confucius he say' style, but that's as near to China as it actually gets. Confucius's actual sayings are as elusive as those of his western counterpart Aesop - we have no written records from either of them. The phrase was introduced in the 20th century in the form 'interesting age' rather than 'interesting times' and appears that way in the opening remarks made by Frederic R. Coudert at the Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 1939, Some years ago, in 1936, I had to write to a very dear and honored friend of mine, who has since died, Sir Austen Chamberlain, brother of the present Prime Minister, and I concluded my letter with a rather banal remark, "that we were living in an interesting age." Evidently he read the whole letter, because by return mail he wrote to me and concluded as follows: "Many years ago, I learned from one of our diplomats in China that one of the principal Chinese curses heaped upon an enemy is, 'May you live in an interesting age.'" "Surely", he said, "no age has been more fraught with insecurity than our own present time." That was three years ago. This citation has to be treated with caution as Chamberlain didn't speak Chinese and never visited China, although he was in contact with diplomats stationed there during his time as British Foreign Secretary, that is, 1924-1929. We have the 1939 citation in print, so the 'interesting age' form must be at least that old. If we are to believe Coulson's assertion, the phrase dates from before 1936 and, if we trust in Chamberlain's recollection, we can push the origin back to pre-1929. As to the currently used 'interesting times' version, we can only date that to post WWII. In a speech to the 2nd session of the US Congress in August 1946, Senator Robert Byrd addressed a remark to Harry S. Truman: Mr. President, there is an old Chinese curse that says, 'May you live in interesting times.' Most generations think their times are especially troubling - now as ever. Senator Byrd probably had a better reason than many to call 1940s USA 'interesting', as it was less than a year after the US's use of atomic bombs and the surrender of Japan and Germany in WWII and only a month or two after Winston Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech, made in Fulton, Missouri, warning of the rise of Soviet power.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-10-02 13:40:31

  Bunny boiler Meaning An obsessive and dangerous female, in pursuit of a lover who has spurned her. Origin The expression 'bunny boiler' derives from the 1987 film Fatal Attraction, written by James Dearden and Nicholas Meyer. The plot centres around Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) obsessively pursuing her ex-lover Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas). The phrase comes from the plot device whereby Forrest, in a fit of frenzied jealousy, boils her erstwhile lover's daughter's pet rabbit. Gallagher's suspicions should have become aroused earlier, when Forrest was trying to persuade him to meet her, when she said "Bring the dog, I love animals... I'm a great cook." At the time that the phrase first came into general use it referred to someone unable to remain rational at the end of a romantic relationship. Very quickly that usage became moderated and it came to be used, often with some degree of irony, in much less extreme situations. Any needy, possessive or even just mildly annoying woman is now liable to be described as a 'bunny boiler'. The phrase is the modern equivalent of the woman referred to in the expression 'Hell has no fury like a woman scorned' which, in the competition for 'best-known phrases attributed to Shakespeare that were actually by someone else', runs 'music has charms to soothe the savage breast' into a close second place. Both these phrases were coined by William Congreve in 1697, in the play The Mourning Bride. For reasons that I'll leave others to explain, it is only women who are thought to become unhinged by being what is now graphically known as 'being dumped'. There's no male equivalent of 'a women scorned' or a 'bunny boiler'. As 'bunny boiler' is a recent phrase with such a clear source we are able to trace how it has found its way into popular use. It wasn't directly from the film, as the epithet isn't used in the dialogue, nor any of the advertising blurb used to promote it. As to who coined it, that's not clear, although it may well have been Glenn Close. The first use of it in print is from an interview Close gave to the US magazine the Ladies' Home Journal, reported in the Dallas Morning News on 6th December 1990: "There's nothing like portraying a psychopathic bunny-boiler to boost one's self-esteem, Glenn Close tells Ladies' Home Journal." Popular phrases that have found their way into the language since the emergence of the Internet appear first in online discussion groups, blogs and online newspapers. The earliest large archive of online colloquial messages is that of USENET groups, but Bunny boiler isn't found there until 1994, nor does it appear more than once or twice in the archives of US or British newspapers before that date. If the phrase were a commercial product then marketing people would say that it reached its target audience in 1994. It certainly saw a sudden and widespread use from then onwards and is now a commonly used phrase. Fatal Attraction was released in 1987 and Close referred to the phrase in 1990. Newly coined terms appear to spread in the community like viruses and, like flu viruses, they float around in the populace until they reach a threshold of infected cases, above which they spread rapidly. It appears that 'bunny boiler' got to that point sometime in 1994.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-10-02 13:46:05

  If the shoe fits, wear it Meaning If a description applies to you, then accept it. This expression is often used when something derogatory is said about a person who then complains to a third party. The third party, if they agree with the original negative comment, might suggest "If the shoe fits, then wear it". An example of that might be: Jack: Just because I've missed two or three sessions, my fitness trainer says I lack motivation. Jill: Well, if the shoe fits, wear it. Origin 'If the shoe fits, wear it' is often shortened to 'If the shoe fits...', leaving the listener to fill in the blank. The expression is the American version of the earlier British phrase 'If the cap fits, wear it', which is also still in general use. Daniel Defoe used the earlier phrase in the satirical poem The Dyet of Poland. Defoe had the work printed in London in 1705 but, as it was a rather vehement critique of the English parliament, Defoe used the flimsy pretence that it had been printed in Dantzig and was the work of 'Angliopoloski of Lithuania'. Defoe's point in the poem was that readers are responsible for their own opinions; he (or rather Angliopoloski) may have written the poem but that any conclusions drawn from it were owned by the reader, not him: Gentlemen, and if the Cap fits any Body let 'em wear it. 'If the cap fits' is itself a version of a yet earlier phrase 'if the cloak sitteth fit', that is, 'if the cloak fits well'. This expression dates from the 16th century and was used in print by Richard Hooker in Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, 1593: Which cloake sitteth no lesse fit on the backe of their cause, then of the Anabaptists. The 'cloak' version of the phrase does suggest that the later 'cap' was a variant of 'cape'. As to 'if the shoe fits', that began being used in the late 18th century. The earliest example that I have found in print is from the US newspaper the New York Gazette & Weekly Mercury, May 1773: Why should Mr. Vanderbeck apply a general comparison to himself? Let those whom the shoe fits wear it. The change from cap to shoe may well have been influenced by the Cinderella story, which has a snug-fitting slipper as the primary plot device. Versions of the tale that include the 'lost slipper' scenario were well known in the USA and Europe by 1773. In 1634, Giambattista Basile, published Il Pentamerone, a popular collection of Italian folk tales. One of the stories, Cenerentola, is the basis of the Cinderella story as we now know it, complete with wicked stepmother, ugly sisters and a missing slipper. Many expressions, for example, 'toe the line', 'get off your high horse' etc., were first used literally and their metaphorical meaning came later. 'If the shoe fits' is a rarity in that it has gone the other way - having been used for centuries in a figurative sense, its most common usage now is in shoe shop advertising slogans.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-10-07 10:21:00

  Fathom out Meaning To ascertain something; to deduce from the facts. Origin A fathom is one of those units of linear measurement that we learned at school (at least we did when I was at an English grammar school in the 14th century) and now can't quite remember just what length they refer to. There's the furlong (a 'furrow long', or the length of a mediaeval field - about 220 yards), the rod or pole or perch (all the same measurement - of five paces), the cubit (from the elbow to the fingertips). These peculiarly named units are matched in their imprecision by the fathom, which is the span encompassed by the outstretched arms from fingertip to fingertip - about six feet. Naturally, not everyone's arms were the same length and so the fathom wasn't an agreed distance. The woolliness over the definition of the term is illustrated in Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia, 1728: There are three kinds of Fathoms. The first, which is that of Men of War, contains six Feet: The middling, or that of Merchant Ships, five Feet, and a half; and the small one, used in Fluyts, Flyboats, and other Fishing-vessels, only five Feet. When we say that we fathom something now we mean that we grasp or understand it. In the Middle Ages to fathom something was, in keeping with the literal 'fingertip to fingertip' meaning of the word, to encircle it with the arms. From the 14th century onward, people who embraced each other were said to be fathoming. That meaning has now fallen out of use, which at least spares us from daily 'fathom and tell' stories in our tabloid newspapers. 'Fathoming out' refers to measuring by using the outstretched arms, a usage that dates back to at least the 16th century; for example, this piece from Richard Eden's The Decades of the Newe Worlde, 1555: Seuen men... with theyr armes streached furthe were scarsely able too fathame them [trees] aboute. As time went by 'to fathom' began to mean 'to get to the bottom of' or 'to take soundings about'. This probably derives from the most commonly believed derivation of 'fathoming out', which is the measuring of the depth of water beneath a ship by use of a weight fixed to a rope marked out in fathoms. This 'sounding out' was known both literally and figuratively by the early 17th century; for example, this literal usage, recorded in Sir William Brereton's Travels in Holland, 1634: Fathoming the depth of the water over against Brill, we found it there where the buoys are placed to warn all seamen of the danger of that passage, that we had not above two feet more water than the ship drew. Philip Massinger's comic play A New Way to Pay Old Debts, 1633, makes a figurative use of 'fathoming', that is, a usage that makes no explicit reference to distance but which moves the meaning of 'fathoming' from 'getting the measure of' to 'understanding': The Statesman beleeues he fathomes The counsels of all Kingdomes on the earth. Fathoms are so strongly associated with seafaring that it seems unecessary to look any further than the nautical measurement as the source of 'fathom out', especially as this form of measuring was still commonplace when the term was coined.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-10-14 10:34:19

  Pony up Meaning Pay money, especially a payment that is in arrears. Origin 'Pony up' is very much an American phrase and most people in the USA will know its meaning, whereas elsewhere in the English-speaking world the expression is rarely used. In the UK we are more likely to 'stump up' and in Australia and New Zealand money is 'fronted up'. So what have ponies got to do with paying money? A pony is of course a small horse and that meaning has been in use since the mid-1600s. The word has several other slang meanings, including: - A small measure of alcohol (British, first documented in 1708) - A short crib sheet or study aid (American, 1827) - Twenty-five pounds (British slang, 1797) - An abridged news report (American, 1877) In the 1950s, 'pony' was also adopted as Cockney Rhyming Slang for 'rubbish; nonsense'. The full version of the rhyme is 'pony and trap' - and I'll leave it to you to figure out what 'trap' rhymes with. The first use of 'pony up' in print that I can find is in the Connecticut publication The Rural Magazine, May 1819: The afternoon, before the evening, the favoured gentlemen are walking rapidly into the merchant-tailors shops, and very slowly out, unless they ponied up the Spanish [the money]. It is most likely that the expression was coined in the USA, but a claim can also be made for a British origin. 'Pony up' was recorded in the UK in the 19th century, in Thomas Darlington's glossary Folk-speech of South Cheshire, 1887: Pony, to pay. To 'pony out' = 'stump out'; a slang term. Clearly, that is later than the American first usage, but how long it had been in vernacular use in England before Darlington recorded it is difficult to say. It is unlikely that the term migrated to Cheshire from the USA; migrations, of people and of language, were largely in the other direction at that date. Whatever the location of the first use, it is clear from the 'pay money' meaning of 'pony up' that the pony in question is some form of currency or donation. The British 'twenty five pounds' meaning is a possibility, but seems rather too specific an amount; after all we can 'pony up' any amount. In fact, none of the numerous meanings of 'pony' appear to fit the bill and it may be that we are backing the wrong horse. Enter stage right, a dark horse of another colour. The English quarter day of March 25th was the day that debts were settled and payments were made. The first two words of the fifth division of Psalm 119, which was always sung at Matins on the 25th day of the month, are 'Legem pone'. The term became associated with the payment of debts and was used as an allusive expression for 'payment of money; cash down'. That meaning of 'legem pone' was recorded as early as 1570 by Thomas Tusser in Hundreth Good Pointes Husbandry: Use Legem pone to pay at thy day, Was that the source of the term 'pony up' and should we really be spelling it 'pone up'? Well, we don't know for certain but, in a two-horse race, it seems a better place for your money than the eponymous pony.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-10-21 14:50:40

  'Jack' phrases The origin of the many phrases that contain the name Jack If it is true, as I'm sure it is, that the phrases in a language define a culture's interests and preoccupations then the English-speaking world must be fascinated by people. English phrases frequently include names. Some of these refer to actual individuals, for example, 'Gordon Bennett!', 'Sweet Fanny Adams' and the numerous people referred to in Cockney rhyming slang, but more often than not the person referred to is imaginary. Examples of phrases that include invented names are 'the life of Riley', 'heavens to Betsy' and 'moaning Minnie'. Jack appears in more phrases than does any other name. That might be expected as Jack is a colloquial form of John and, for the period in which the majority of these phrases were coined, John was the most common boy's name amongst English speakers. Jack was the generic name for the common man; a lad, a fellow, a chap, but also with the hint of knave or likeable rogue. 'John' appears in our phrases and sayings hardly at all and this is probably because 'Jack' was considered the more interesting character. The use of 'Jack' with the meaning of 'young rogue' dates back to the 16th century and examples are known from Nicholas Udall and others in Middle English. An early example in a form of English that is easily accessible to us now is found in Shakespeare's Taming of Shrew, circa 1616: A mad-cap ruffian and a swearing Jacke. Some well-known linguistic Jacks are: - Jack the Lad - a self-assured young man who is a bit of a rogue. This is the archetypal Jack; young, roguish and male. See more about Jack the Lad... - Jack Tar - sailors coated their clothes and the ropes of their ships to make them weatherproof. They even smeared their hair and beards to avoid stray wisps getting caught in the rigging. What better name for sailors than Jack Tar? - Jack of all trades - the common man, who will turn his hand to any form of work. See more about Jack of all trades... - Jack Robinson - in the phrase 'Before you can say Jack Robinson'. Possibly a rare example of a Jack that was a real person. See more about Jack Robinson... - All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy - this proverbial expression has been known since 1670. Jack was the name given to many of the sprites, imps and supernatural creatures that were imagined to have human form, for example, Jack Frost (an imp that nips our ears and toes with cold), Jack o' lantern (a fairy that lives in hedges), Jack-in-irons (a malevolent giant). Jacks, being typically young and mischievous, feature strongly in nursery rhymes, for example, Little Jack Horner, Jack Sprat and Jack and Jill. The latter two of these pre-date their appearance in nursery rhyme. Jack Sprat was the name given to any dwarf from the 16th century onward and Jack and Jill was used as the name of any young couple as early as the 1450s. Cockney Rhyming Slang has an association with roguish street trading and is another linguistic area where Jacks flourish. Examples are: Jack Palancing (dancing), On your Jack (Jones > alone), Jack-in-the box (pox), Jack Randle (candle). I've not listed every man Jack as there are so many - the OED includes over hundred of them. Time to jack it in I think.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-10-31 14:52:30

  Double Dutch Meaning Nonsense; gibberish - a language one cannot understand. Origin There are a host of phrases in English that include the word 'Dutch'; that's hardly surprising as The Netherlands is just a few miles across the sea from England. We don't have anything like as many expressions that include 'French', so why the interest in 'Dutch'? Two reasons: trade and war. Both England and Holland (which is what most people call The Netherlands), have a vigorous and wide-ranging maritime trading tradition that dates back to the 16th century. England imported many commodities from Holland and gave them 'Dutch' names. The first of these imports was 'Dutch sauce', which we now call Hollandaise. Claudius Hollyband referred to this in the French Schoole Maister, 1573: Will you eate of a Pike with a high dutche sauce? Many other examples followed: Dutch cheese - first used in 1700. Dutch barn - 1742. Dutch hoe - 1742. Dutch oven - 1769. The Anglo-Dutch wars of the 17th and 18th centuries were acrimonious even by the usual standards of war. Following the conflicts the English came to hold the Dutch in very low regard and as a consequence there are numerous English phrases which portray them in an unflattering light, often as skinflints or drunkards. The common strand in all of these disparaging 'Dutch' expressions is that anything Dutch is the opposite of what it ought to be. Examples of these expressions are: Dutch bargain - a bargain made when one is debilitated by drink - first recorded in 1654. Dutch defence - a legal defence in which the defendant seeks clemency by deceitfully betraying others - 1749. Dutch comfort - cold comfort; only good because things could have been worse - 1796. Dutch metal/Dutch gold - a cheap alloy resembling gold - 1825. Dutch courage - brash bravery induced by drink - 1826. Dutch treat - no treat as such; each person pays for their own expenses - 1887. Added to that list is 'double Dutch'. The Anglo-Dutch wars were a very long time ago and we are all friends now, but at this point we can introduce another reason for the English to have held on so long to hostile stereotyping of the Dutch, that is, the link with the UK's 20th century military rivals, the Germans. 'Dutch' was originally the generic name for both Germans and, as they were formally called, Hollanders. High Dutch was the language of southern Germany and Low Dutch the language of The Netherlands. Double Dutch is in fact a synonym for High Dutch and as such is a slur on the Germans rather than the Dutch, although the distinction may not have been apparent to the average 18th century English sailor. Charles Dibdin was the first to allude to the incomprehensibility of the language, in Collected Songs, 1790: Why, I heard our good chaplain palaver one day, About souls, heaven, mercy and such; And, my timbers! what lingo he'd coil and belay,- Why, 'twas just all as one as High Dutch. The earliest example of 'double Dutch' that I have found is in John Davis' Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America, 1803, in which the author spoke to a colleague in Welsh: "Mr Adams - What devil language is that? Is it double Dutch coiled against the sun?" The coiling that was referred to in both the above citations was the winding of rope. Sailors called anti-clockwise winding 'coiling against the sun'. This was generally disparaged and an indication that 'double Dutch' was the linguistic equivalent of a badly coiled rope. Most of the early citations of 'double Dutch' are in their full form 'double Dutch coiled against the sun'. We can safely assume that what was meant by 'double Dutch' was 'Dutch that is malformed and twisted' rather than 'Dutch, twice over'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-11-07 12:14:02

  What you see is what you get (wysiwyg) Meaning A computer screen display which appears on screen as it will be seen when printed on paper. Origin 'Wysiwyg', pronounced 'whizzywig', is one of the best-known of all acronyms. It is generally supposed that the phrase 'what you see is what you get', the acronym 'wysiwyg' and the computer interface that they referred to emerged in close succession. This isn't the case; each of those elements has its own independent genesis. Firstly, the phrase. 'What you see is what you get' is widely reported as being coined by Flip Wilson in performances as his drag character Geraldine in Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in the late 1960s and then later on The Flip Wilson Show. Wilson certainly popularized the expression but it was already in general use before he adopted it as a catchphrase. A form of the phrase had been used by advertisers in the USA since at least the 1940s to indicate a straightforward, no-fuss form of trading. An advert for a Filmo Sportster camera in The Charleston Gazette came close to 'what you see is what you get' in November 1949: You just sight, press a button and what you see, you get! The precise phrase came into print some years later. For instance, this text from an advert for a house sale, in The Oakland Tribune, May 1966: "So with the exception of landscaping and decorator furnishings, what you see is what you get." Next comes the acronym 'wysiwyg'. This is generally thought to have been coined from the phrase and in reference to the graphical computer user interfaces that were emerging from Xerox PARC in the 1970s, but it isn't known who first used the acronym in that context. The first such reference that I can find comes surprisingly late, in Byte magazine, April 1982: 'What you see is what you get' (or WYSIWYG) refers to the situation in which the display screen portrays an accurate rendition of the printed page. However, he first citation I have found of the acronym in print comes several years earlier in a non-computer related context. In January 1972, a student business competition was organised in Victoria, Texas and an account of it published in the local newspaper the Victoria Advocate on the 23rd January. Each team of students chose a name for the dummy businesses that they were going to manage. They were clearly encouraged to use acronyms, as the names they chose were: SPOT - Selling Products of Tomorrow LIFE - Lets Insure Future Existence WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get So, unless earlier computer related citations are found - which would that seem unlikely as the first wysiwyg software didn't emerge until after 1972 - the prize for coining 'wysiwyg' goes to a bunch of Texan high school kids, not to the boffins of Palo Alto. 'What you see is what you get' later came to be used in a general context, often by individuals - like Flip Wilson's Geraldine - to describe themselves. It is shorthand for 'I may be a plain-speaking rough diamond, but I have no hidden agenda - let my reputation precede me', in the same way that people used to say 'take me as you find me'. The British entrepreneur Sir Alan Sugar is known for such an attitude and used 'What You See Is What You Get' as the title of his autobiography.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-11-14 09:24:37

  A norange Origin In 1914, the Danish grammarian Otto Jespersen coined the term 'metanalysis'. That's rather a dry start to a piece on what is a lively and intriguing facet of the English language. To find out what prompted Jespersen to believe that we needed a new word, let's bring in a stage prop - the humble orange. Many sources will tell you that oranges were originally called noranges and that 'a norange' migrated to being called 'an orange'. Well, like so much folk etymology, that's not true, but there is a germ of truth in it. There never has been a word 'norange' in English, although there very nearly was. The climate in England doesn't qualify it as a specialist orange-growing area and the fruit were first imported there in the 14th century. Oranges originated in South-east Asia and when they arrived in Persia and Spain they were given the names 'narang' and 'naranja' respectively. As they got nearer to England, and hence nearer to requiring a name in English, they lost the 'n'. This on happened their journey through France, where they were known as 'pomme d'orenge'. In English, the indefinite article may be 'a' or 'an', depending on whether it is followed by a word which starts with a consonant or a vowel. When the consonant is an 'n', we may run into the 'a norange'/'an orange' confusion. It was this displacement of a letter from one word to another that Jespersen took an interest in and named 'metanalysis'. Mediaeval words like 'a napperon', 'a nuncle' and 'a nadder' could easily be confused in everyday speech with 'an apron', 'an uncle' and 'an adder' - and they were. The earlier forms aren't now used. The misaligning of word boundaries can go the other way too, with the 'n' being added rather than lost. The best-known examples of that are 'nickname' and 'newt', which were originally 'an eke-name' and 'an ewt'. It's easy for us to see these examples now as obvious errors, but bear in mind that the changing of words based on confusion about where words start and end took place before dictionaries or even printing and reading were commonplace. When we come across new words now it is just as likely that we see them in print as to hear them spoken. If we had to rely on speech alone we might now be coining mutations like 'an erd' or 'a Niphone'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-11-19 12:41:37

  Pig's ear Meaning As 'pig's ear' - Cockney rhyming slang for beer. As 'in a pig's ear' - an expression of disbelief. As 'make a pig's ear of ' - make a mess or muddle. Origin The Cockney rhyming slang version of 'pig's ear' is easiest to explain. It's one of the earliest examples of the form and appears in D. W. Barrett's Life & Work among Navvies, 1880: "Now, Jack, I'm goin' to get a tiddley wink of pig's ear." That's easy enough to decipher as "I'm going to get a drink of beer", although you would need a Cockney for an explanation of why 'tiddley wink of pig's ear' was thought to be an improvement on 'drink of beer'. 'Pig's ear' rhymes with 'beer' and that's usually enough for rhyming slang. Franklin's Dictionary of Rhyming Slang lists several alternatives for 'beer' - 'Charlie Freer', 'far and near', 'never fear', 'oh my dear', 'red steer', 'Crimea', and 'fusilier' but 'pig's ear' has always been the most popular. The version 'in a pig's ear' is also perplexing. It originated in the USA in the 1850s as a variant of 'in a pig's eye'. Both phrases were used as expressions of incredulous disbelief and have the same meaning as 'tell it to the marines'. They may possibly be related to 'pigs might fly'. See this link for more on 'in a pig's ear'. 'Make a pig's ear' is a mid 20th century phrase and means 'completely botch something up; make a complete mess of it'. This is first found in print in a 1950 edition of the Reader's Digest: "If you make a pig's ear of the first one, you can try the other one." The expression derives from the old proverb 'you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear', which dates from the 16th century. The English clergyman Stephen Gosson published the romantic story Ephemerides in 1579 and in it referred to people who were engaged in a hopeless task: "Seekinge too make a silke purse of a Sowes eare." 'Make a pig's ear of' alludes to what might be the result if someone did try to make something from a sow's ear - not a silk purse but a complete mess.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-11-25 15:02:29

  The writing is on the wall Meaning Imminent danger has become apparent. Origin 'The writing is on the wall' is also sometimes expressed as 'the handwriting is on the wall' or as 'mene mene'. The first of those variations is an obvious synonym but what does 'mene mene' mean? This is a shortening of 'mene mene tekel upharsin', which is of Aramaic origin. If your Aramaic isn't that strong you can get some guidance from the Bible, Daniel 5, in the story of Belshazzar's feast. To cut a long Old Testament story short, Belshazzar was indulging in a drunken revelry and debasing sacred temple vessels by using them as wine goblets when a disembodied hand wrote 'mene mene tekel upharsin' on the palace wall. On the face of it, and using a literal translation, this appeared meaningless. The expression seemed to mean 'two minas, a shekel and two parts' or alternatively 'numbered, weighed, divided'. None of this meant much to Belshazzar, who decided that he needed further interpretation and sent for the Jewish exile Daniel. It then became clear that the phrase was an elaborate wordplay, relying on the fact that each word can denote a different coin, and the third word can be interpreted as 'Persia'. Daniel's interpretation, as recorded in the first easily understood English version of the Bible, the King James Version, 1611, was: And this the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. The point of the moral tale was that Belshazzar couldn't see the warning that was apparent to others because he was engrossed with his sinning ways. The subtlety of the biblical wordplay is now somewhat lost on those of us that don't speak ancient Aramaic. Perhaps a flavour of the style can be conveyed by comparing it to the lyrics of the popular World War II novelty song Mairzy Doats: Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy diveya A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe? Literally, that's meaningless but a wartime Daniel could have translated it into its actual meaning: Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you? 'Writing on the wall' began to be used figuratively, that is providing warnings where no actual writing or walls are involved, from the early 18th century; for example, Jonathan Swift's Miscellaneous works, 1720: A baited Banker thus desponds, From his own Hand foresees his Fall; They have his Soul who have his Bonds; 'Tis like the Writing on the Wall.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-12-07 16:23:33

  The whole nine yards Every now and then I feel the urge to go back to the Holy Grail of etymology - 'the whole nine yards'. I was prompted to take another look at it this week by the unveiling of the British Library Newspaper Archive. This gives online access to a vast store of British newspapers, which will eventually include the majority of all newspapers printed in Britain since the early 1700s. Just the place to try a search for an early printed example of 'the whole nine yards' n'est-ce pas? Well, yes and no. If you aren't familiar with the search for the origin of that elusive expression, here's the story so far... •For reasons that aren't clear, 'the whole nine yards' provokes more speculative derivations than any other phrase. Many people are convinced they know the origin but aren't able to provide documentary evidence to support their chosen belief. •The earliest known citation of the phrase in print is from 1962. 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 surely cried out for this headline: "Boston jumps the whole nine yards" If the phrase was in circulation before 1961, it wasn't known to that most slang-aware troop, newspaper journalists, and no one came up with that line, which is missing from all newspaper archives. The absence of the expression in print prior to the 1960s argues strongly against any of the supposed mediaeval, Victorian or even World War II origins. •The weight of circumstantial evidence is that the phrase originated in America in the early 1960s but it isn't known who coined the term. Sadly, the new archive yielded no results. That's not altogether surprising, as it is reasonably certain that the phrase is of 20th century American origin. The British Library database did come up with a story from 1821 of a stagecoach toppling off a cliff and falling 'full nine yards', but that doesn't carry the current meaning of the phrase and appears to be a straightforward literal report. Nevertheless, the digitisation of old manuscripts provides etymologists with a gateway to sources that were previously inaccessible. The American academic Stephen Goranson recently found this piece in a newly digitised copy of Michigan's Voices: A Literary Quarterly & Arts Magazine, Fall 1962: ... real civilized living in the modern urban home - then the dog would catch on and go ki-yi-yi-ing from one to the other of the shouting pyjama clad participants - mad, mad, mad, the consequence of house, home, kids, respectability, status as a college professor and the whole nine yards, as a brush salesman who came by the house was fond of saying, ... Also in late 1962, this passage appeared in a letter to the editor in an issue of Car Life, also now available in online format: Your staff of testers cannot fairly appraise the Chevrolet Impala sedan, with all nine yards of goodies, against the Plymouth Savoy. The meanings of the word 'yard' are many and varied. We have linear, square or cubic yards, also yard-arms, steelyards etc. This is the source of the variability of the many guesses at the phrase's origin. These include: •The nine cubic yards capacity of US concrete trucks. Widely circulated, although clearly nonsense as even the largest concrete mixers were smaller than 9 cubic yards in the 1960s. •World War II aircraft. There are several aircraft-related theories: •The length of US bombers' bomb racks. •The length of the RAF Spitfire's machine gun bullet belts. •The length of ammunition belts in ground based anti-aircraft turrets, etc. •The amount of material used in making top quality suits. Supporters of this theory sometimes relate it to 'dressed to the nines'. •The derivation is naval and the yards are shipyards. Another naval version is that the yards are the spars of sailing ships. The name for the spar that hold the sails is a yard. Large sailing ships had three masts, often with three yards on each. The theory goes that ships in battle can continue changing direction as new sails are unfurled. Only when the last sail, on the ninth yard, is used do the enemy know in which direction the ship is finally headed. Despite the certainty of the proponents of each of these explanations, at best only one of them can be correct. The evidence argues against any of them being the origin of the phrase. What the above digitised documentary evidence actually points to is that the phrase in its earliest incarnations refers to a 'laundry list' of items. Speculation will of course continue until a definitive source for the phrase is found. I'm not holding my breath but, if an origin is found, I've no doubt that it will be as the result of a search of a digitised archive.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-12-19 05:52:55

  As different as chalk and cheese Meaning Two things that are very different from each other. Origin We have hundreds of phrases to indicate the similarity of one thing with another and similes like 'as alike as two peas in a pod' are commonplace in everyday speech. However, there are very few phrases that do the opposite and refer to the difference between things, and prominent amongst these is is 'as different as chalk and cheese'. This is an old expression and the earliest citation of it is in John Gower's Middle English text Confessio Amantis, 1390: Lo, how they feignen chalk for chese. Tourist boards in several of the chalkland areas of the UK try to place the phrase's origin in their locality and allude to vague connections between chalk and the local cheese. None of these are convincing and they clearly owe more to marketing than to etymology. So, how did the phrase come about? There must have been a time in the development of English when we had no standard phrase to express the idea that two things were 'as different as X and Y'. When someone coined such a phrase, and that someone may well have been Gower in 1390, clearly he needed candidates for the roles of X and Y. That doesn't sound difficult, after all most things are different from most other things. "Maybe, 'as different as a cormorant and a lamp-post'", thinks our coiner, "or 'as different as floorboards and greengrocers'". "No, 'as different as chalk and cheese' sounds better". Why? For no better reason that the fact the 'chalk' and 'cheese' are short and snappy words that alliterate. The English language is packed full of phrases that contain pairs of rhyming or alliterating words - often just because the person who coined them liked the sound of them; for example, hocus-pocus, the bee's knees, riff-raff etc. A modern-day spin-off of 'chalk and cheese' is 'chalk and talk'. This refers to the traditional teaching method where the teacher stood at the front to address the class while writing on the blackboard with a stick of chalk (which those of a certain age will well remember). The phrase emerged in the UK in the 1930s but had a shortish run as a widely used expression as classrooms began to be equipped with whiteboards in the 1960s. 'Dry-wipe marker pen and talk' never caught on.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-01-07 02:17:37

  Second-guess Meaning 1. To criticize and offer advice, with the benefit of hindsight. 2. To foresee the actions of others, before they have come to a decision themselves. Origin A commonly used meaning of 'to second-guess' is to criticize the actions of others, after the event. The event in questions was, and often still is, a sporting event. The term is derived as what is known as a back-formation. As back-formations loom large in etymology I'll break off to explain what they are. New words are usually created from existing words. For example, we all know what 'fishing' means and, armed with that knowledge we could easily coin the word 'fisherman' and a phrase like 'fishing for compliments'. Sometimes though, the order that words and phrases are derived in isn't so obvious. For example, people who rob from houses have been called 'burglars' since the 13th century and it might be supposed that they got their name from being engaged in 'burglary'. However, it wasn't until the 19th century that the legal profession decided that 'that thing that burglars do' needed to be given a name and hence 'burglary' was coined as a back-formation from 'burglar'. Likewise, 'narration' and 'scavenge', which were coined centuries after 'narrator' and 'scavenger'. The same back route was taken by the phrase 'second-guess'. The umpire in a baseball game used to be called, rather unkindly, 'the guesser'. People who were continually telling the guesser, the manager or the players what they were doing wrong were known as 'secondguessers' and were so defined in the Sporting News Record Book, 1937: Secondguesser, one who is continually criticizing moves of players and manager. Another meaning of 'to second-guess' is to anticipate what others might do in a particular situation. This is also of American origin but, somewhat more impressively, refers to a guess made before rather than after the event. An early example of its use comes from Broadcasting magazine, December 1941: Do not try to second-guess or master-mind our military officials. Leave this for established military analysts and experts, who are experienced enough to await the facts before drawing conclusions.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-01-07 02:22:30

  Security blanket Meaning 1. A small familiar blanket or other soft fabric item carried by a child for reassurance. 2. A form of harness for a baby's crib. 3. All-encompassing military and political security measures. Origin The term 'security blanket', also known as 'comfort blanket', was coined by Charles Shulz for his Peanuts cartoon strip. That's what most references will tell you. It's always a pleasure to swim against the tide and here's an opportunity. In fact, the term 'security blanket' wasn't coined by Charles Shulz for his Peanuts cartoon strip. The derivation of 'security blanket' involves a rather meandering tale, which goes like this: Security blankets were known to Americans in the 1920s and were at that date overblankets which were clipped into babies' cribs to stop the occupants falling out. The accompanying advert is from the New York newspaper The Republican Press, November 1925, advertising fasteners for such a blanket for 59 cents. The tale now moves on to World War II. The term 'security blanket' was then used to refer to strict security measures that were taken to keep Allied military plans from falling into the hands of the Germans. The term was coined in that context by the US military while fighting in Europe. For example, this report from the Alabama newspaper The Dothan Eagle, September 1944: Reports being issued at Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters sometimes were as much as 48 hours behind the armies because of a security blanket thrown over the operations. Incidentally, another article from the same page as the above is titled 'British Take Brussels', which is timely as this [28th December] is the only week of the year that the headline could be recycled. For those of a non-British persuasion, many in Britain pile their Christmas dinner plates with brussels sprouts with some enthusiasm but reject them with distaste for the rest of the year. The emergence of the military use of 'security blanket' about twenty years after the use of the term in a domestic setting does suggest the possibility that those coining a new meaning for it were the babies that were tucked up under security blankets a generation earlier. Now we move on another step, to the use of the expression as 'a small familiar comforter for babies and toddlers'. Now we get to Charles Shulz, right? Not quite. Shulz drew the character Linus van Pelt with a comfort blanket in the Peanuts cartoon strip in June 1954. It wasn't until 1956, in Good Grief, More Peanuts, that the item was given a name by Linus: "This is a 'security and happiness' blanket. All little kids carry them." By that date the term had been in use elsewhere. The November 1954 issue of the California newspaper The Daily Review included this piece by a staff writer, under the name of 'Bev': 'Security blanket. My younger child is one year old. When she finds a fuzzy blanket or a fleecy coat she presses her cheek against it and sucks her thumb.'

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-05-11 17:31:42

  A square meal Meaning A substantial, nourishing meal. Origin It is frequently repeated, by tour guides and the like, that the expression 'a square meal' originated from the Royal Navy practice of serving meals on square wooden plates. Such plates did exist so that is a plausible story, but there's no other evidence to support it. In fact, the lateness of the first printed record (see below) pretty well rules this out as a credible theory. The Royal Navy's records and many thousands of ship's logs are still available and, if the phrase came from that source, it would surely have been recorded before the mid-19th century. This 'square plate' theory is one of the best-known examples of folk-etymology. The phrase exists, the square plates exist, and two and two make five. To be more precise, what we have here is a back-formation. Someone hears the phrase 'square meal' and then invents a plausible story to fit it. The word square has many meanings, including 'proper, honest, straightforward', and that's the meaning in 'square meal'. This isn't a rectilinear meal on right-angled crockery, but a good and satisfying meal. The phrase is of US origin. All the early citations are from America, including this, the earliest print reference I have found - an advertisement for the Hope and Neptune restaurant, in the California newspaper The Mountain Democrat, November 1856: "We can promise all who patronize us that they can always get a hearty welcome and 'square meal' at the 'Hope and Neptune. Oyster, chicken and game suppers prepared at short notice." William Brohaugh, in the usually reliable 'English Through the Ages', dates the saying as having entered the language in 1840, although no supporting evidence is provided. There certainly was a spate of coinages of 'food words' in the USA around that date. The terms below all originated in the 1830s and 40s: Chili con carne Clambake Cottage cheese Cupcake Gazpacho Jerky Restaurant Tea cake Tenderloin Tutti-frutti Seafood The use of 'square' to mean honest and straightforward goes back to at least the 16th century; for example, in 1591, in Robert Greene's Defence of Conny Catching: "For feare of trouble I was fain to try my good hap at square play." Soon after that, Shakespeare used it in Anthony and Cleopatra, 1606: "She's a most triumphant Lady, if report be square to her." Other phrases use the word with that same meaning, for example, 'fair and square', 'square play', square deal' etc. but these haven't had spurious derivations invented for them. Coincidentally, another phrase - the opposite of 'fair and square' - also has a false derivation relating to plates in the Royal Navy. The story goes like this. The square wooden plates that sailors received their food on had raised edges called 'fiddles'. If they took too much they were 'on the fiddle'. Perhaps 'story' is being too kind; invention might be more accurate. The evidence for the prosecution is: - There is no record of the edges of sailors' plates having any name, let alone a fiddle. No dictionary I can find lists that meaning. - Despite searching high and low, I've not been able to find any citation of the phrase 'on the fiddle' from before the 20th century, apart from those that clearly mean 'playing the violin'. There are several old 'fiddle' phrases - 'fiddle faddle', 'fiddling while Rome burns', 'second fiddle' etc., but no 'on the fiddle'. In support of the story there is - well, nothing. It's never possible to prove a negative so, if you hear that derivation from a tour guide and ask for evidence they might just provide it. Don't bet the mortgage on it though; you're more likely to spot Elvis playing tiddlywinks with Lord Lucan.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-06-17 10:09:42

  A frog in the throat Meaning Temporary hoarseness caused by phlegm in the back of the throat. Origin 'A frog in the throat' is an American phrase that entered the language towards the end of the 19th century. The expression doesn't have a fanciful derivation (see more on that below) but comes directly from the fact that a hoarse person sounds croaky - like a frog. The earliest reference I can find to the expression is from How to be Man, which was an improving 'book for boys', written by the American clergyman Harvey Newcomb in 1847. Newcomb encouraged the youngsters to resist the temptation of 'improper diversions' [the nature of which I will leave to your imagination]: Now let me beg of you to learn to say NO. If you find a 'frog in your throat,' which obstructs your utterance, go by yourself, and practise saying no, no, NO! The expression must have been in popular use in the USA by 1894, when it was used in an advertisement as the name of a proprietary medicine for sore throats, inThe Stevens Point Journal, November 1894: "The Taylor Bros. say that 'Frog in the Throat' will cure hoarseness. 10 cents and box." Interestingly, a reference to the phrase was printed just four weeks later in the English newspaper The Hastings and St Leonards Observer, in an article about 'Yankee advertising'. The Observer journalist describes how a local chemist had adopted an American advertising window display in order to sell the imported 'Frog in Your Throat' lozenges. The display consisted of artificial frogs dressed up as English peasants and arranged in a variety of tableaux entitled 'Merrie England in Ye Olden Time'. In order to lend some zest to the sales campaign, the advertising agents for the importers invented a back story which claimed that 'a frog in the throat' was 'an old English expression, once in common use, but now forgotten here'. That story is as fake as the stuffed frogs - the expression is certainly American and only became widely used in England when Taylor Bros. began selling their lozenges. That 'old English' story, which is often elaborated with the explanatory text 'in medieval times physicians thought that the secretions of a frog could help heal a sore throat', is one of the pieces of folk etymology that appear to float around the Internet and enjoy apparent immortality, despite having no basis in truth and no supporting evidence. As a general rule, any explanation of the origin of a phrase that begins with 'In medieval times...' should be treated with suspicion.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-06-17 10:22:55

  A tissue of lies Meaning A story invented in order to deceive. Origin If you use a search engine to search for 'tissues' you will find many pictures of paper handkerchiefs and of human skin - that's what 'tissue' means to us these days. So, whence the phrase 'a tissue of lies'? It might be thought that the meaning derives from the filmy nature of tissue and that this had been taken up as a metaphor for lies that were easy to see through and would readily break down on examination. That's not an unreasonable assumption but is in fact completely wide of the mark. For the correct meaning of 'tissue of lies' we have to go back to the 14th century meaning of 'tissue', that is, 'an intricately woven ornamental cloth'. That meaning is first recorded in the Middle English allegorical poem The Romaunt of the Rose, circa 1366: The barres [decorative straps] were of gold ful fyne, Upon a tyssu of satyne. The defining characteristic of tissues was the complexity of their weaving. A 'tissue of lies' is a complex, interwoven series of lies, not a flimsy and unconvincing one. The figurative meaning of the intermingling of characteristics, usually of a bad kind, began to be used in the 18th century. From then onward, any combination of 'a network/web/fabric/tissue of absurdity/error/falsehood' can be found somewhere in literature. Of these, only 'tissue of lies' has withstood the test of time. The phrase began to be used in the early 19th century, as in this example from the London journal, The Monthly Review, January 1800: The ingenuity and cunning of politicians are not infrequently employed to conceal or misinterpret facts; and venal writers are easily found, ready to construct a tissue of lies to serve the purposes of their employers. By the way, there's no truth that the word 'atishoo' derives from the handkerchief meaning of 'tissue' - that's just atishoo of lies.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-06-22 09:29:24

  Fob off Meaning To put off deceitfully; to attempt to satisfy with something of inferior quality or something less than one has been led to expect. Origin In 1980, Margaret Thatcher's government introduced the Community Charge in Britain. This highly unpopular tax, which was known colloquially as the Poll Tax, was firmly rejected by the British populace and initiated Thatcher's political demise. Step back 600 years to England's first Peasants' Revolt, also instigated by a clumsy attempt to install a Poll Tax by an unpopular government - the advisers of the 14-year-old King Richard II. On a pleasant May morning in 1381, the king's tax collector John Brampton rode into the Essex village of Fobbing to collect the poll tax of 3 groats from each of the local villagers. The villagers gathered together, Brampton was sent packing and the Peasants' Revolt had begun. Ask anyone in the village today and they will tell you that Brampton wasn't just turned away, he was 'fobbed off' - "...and that's how the expression 'fobbed off' originated". As is often the case with phrases that a local tourist office would like to appropriate for their neighbourhood (like 'Paint the town red' and 'Cock and bull story' for example), the link between the language and the place is spurious. Nice village it may be and the peasants there may be revolting, but 'fobbing off' has nothing to do with Fobbing. 'Fob' is known in English as a verb meaning 'to delude or impose upon' only since the 16th century - 200 years after Brampton was given the bum's rush out of Fobbing. The word is probably an import from Germany, where the earlier term 'foppen' has the same meaning. The English playwright Robert Greene used the term in the romantic prose poem Mamillia, a mirrour or looking glasse for the ladies of England, 1583: I will not... fobbe you with fayre wordes, and foule deedes. Greene is best known as a contributor to the pamphlet A Groats-Worth of Wit, which is widely interpreted as an attack on Shakespeare. Nevertheless, Shakespeare was happy to pick up 'fobbed' (as 'fubd' in his original manuscript) and used it in a speech by Mistress Quickly in Henry IV Part II: I have borne, and borne, and borne, and have been fubbed off, and fubbed off, and fubbed off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on. So, if you want phrase derivations we are here for you, don't be fobbed off with tour guide stories.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-07-03 13:12:08

  Halcyon days Meaning Calm, peaceful days. Origin The Halcyon is a bird of Greek legend and the name is now commonly given to the European Kingfisher. The ancients believed that the bird made a floating nest in the Aegean Sea and had the power to calm the waves while brooding her eggs. Fourteen days of calm weather were to be expected when the Halcyon was nesting - around the winter solstice, usually 21st or 22nd of December. The Halcyon days are generally regarded as beginning on the 14th or 15th of December. The source of the belief in the bird's power to calm the sea originated in a myth recorded by Ovid. The story goes that Aeolus, the ruler of the winds, had a daughter named Alcyone, who was married to Ceyx, the king of Thessaly. Ceyx was drowned at sea and Alcyone threw herself into the waves in a fit of grief. Instead of drowning, she was transformed into a bird and carried to her husband by the wind. The myth came to the English-speaking world in the 14th century, when, in 1398, John Trevisa translated Bartholomew de Glanville's De proprietatibus rerum into Middle English: "In the cliffe of a ponde of occean, Alcion, a see foule, in wynter maketh her neste and layeth egges in vii days and sittyth on brood ... seuen dayes." By the 16th century the phrase 'halcyon days' had lost its association with the nesting time of the bird and had taken on the figurative meaning of 'calm days'. Shakespeare used the expression that way in Henry VI, Part I, 1592: Assign'd am I to be the English scourge. This night the siege assuredly I'll raise: Expect Saint Martin's summer, halcyon days, Since I have entered into these wars. Note: Saint Martin's summer is what we now know as an Indian summer. The kingfisher is associated with other powers relating to the weather. In mediaeval times it was thought that if the dried carcass of a kingfisher was hung up it would always point its beak in the direction of the wind [don't try this at home]. Shakespeare also refers to this belief, in King Lear, 1605: Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods; Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks With every gale and vary of their masters Our current use of 'halcyon days' tends to be nostalgic and recalling of the seemingly endless sunny days of youth - despite the fact that the original halcyon days were in the depths of winter.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-07-06 15:22:16

  On the fiddle Meaning Engaged in a fraud. Origin 'Fiddling' is usually meant to mean 'cheating in a petty way', perhaps falsifying one's expenses or not declaring all of one's taxable income. Of course, a fiddle is also a slang term for violin. There are a couple of proposed derivations of the 'cheating' meaning of the phrase 'on the fiddle', each of them having supporters who are firm in their belief. Let's take the oldest first. The expression is said by some to derive from the Emperor Nero, who famously 'fiddled while Rome burned' and was a byword for corruption and dishonesty. The second suggestion is that the 'fiddle' was the name of the raised edge of the square wooden plates used by sailors. If a sailor took a normal amount of food he was said to have a 'square meal' and if his plate was overflowing he was said to be 'on the fiddle'. As is often the case, I only set up those suggestions in order to knock them down. The Nero story is mere fancy. It may be a nice play on words that he was 'on the fiddle' in both senses, that is, he was both corrupt and a violinist (actually he wasn't even a violinist, there being no such instrument in Nero's lifetime, but let's not get sidetracked) but that's all this tale has going for it. The culinary procedures on board sailing ships don't offer much of an explanation either. The idea that sailors' plates had raised edges and that these were called fiddles is quite incorrect. There were fiddles in sailing ships' galleys but those were arrangements of small posts and strings arranged around the edges of tables that were used to stop plates falling on the floor in rough weather. If the above isn't enough to convince then the fact that 'on the fiddle' in the 'acting fraudulently' meaning is a mid-20th century idiom should clinch it. The expression wasn't known in the age of sail and certainly not in ancient Rome. A good place to look for a phrase like 'on the fiddle', with its association with minor crime, would be court records, and if the expression were in common use in English it might be expected to be found in the database of cases provided by the Central Criminal Court in England and Wales, commonly known as the Old Bailey. This is a comprehensive record of all the criminal cases brought to the court between 1674 and 1913, and no one was accused in The Bailey of being 'on the fiddle' during all that time. The term 'fiddle' appears to have originated in America. It is recorded in an 1874 edition of John Hotten's Slang Dictionary: Fiddle... In America, a swindle or an imposture. Hotten also included this entry: Fiddler... A sharper, a cheat; also one who dawdles over little matters, and neglects great ones. 'On the fiddle' was taken up by the British forces in WWII. It was well enough established in popular slang in the UK by 1961 for it to have been used as the title of a Sean Connery film and that is the first example of it that I've found in print. The plot involved a young Connery playing a streetwise rough diamond who runs various street scams while serving in the British army.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-07-25 10:18:53

  A bigger bang for your buck Meaning More for your money. Origin Generals and political leaders have argued over the costs of the military since Adam was a lad. Their conversations have probably not changed much: General: "Caesar/My Liege/Mr President, we need more triremes/cannons/nuclear weapons." Emperor/King/President: "The people need more olives/bread/iPads. Can't you manage with what you've got?" Dwight D. Eisenhower faced something of a dilemma in 1953. He was a military man to his socks and was inclined to augment defence in the face of the perceived 'reds under the bed' threat, but he was also a Republican US president and, as such, politically wedded to cutting state spending. His solution was simple - increase the armed forces but decrease their budget. In ordinary circumstances that circle would be difficult to square. The solution that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff came up with, which they titled the 'New Look', was a policy of using nuclear weapons in any conflict bigger than what they called 'a brush-fire war'. That allowed them to radically reduce the numbers of servicemen and replace them with the comparatively inexpensive atomic bombs. All of the above was described in a story in The Winona Republican Herald on 21st December 1953. The story also reports Admiral Arthur Radford as describing the policy as the 'bigger bang for your buck' theory. This was an adaptation of Pepsi-Cola's 'More Bounce to the Ounce' slogan, which was introduced in 1950. Most sources credit US Defense Secretary Charles Wilson as the source of the expression 'a bigger bang for your buck'. These invariably point to him having used the phrase in 1954. Wilson could be the person who coined the phrase but 1954 is clearly too late and, until a pre-December 1953 source is found, the phrase has to be logged as 'coined by Anonymous'. The current form of the phrase, in which the 'bang' has become plural now that it has lost its nuclear connotations, is 'more bangs for your buck'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-07-25 10:20:22

  Old chestnut Meaning A story that has been told repeatedly before, a 'venerable' joke. Hence, in extended use, anything trite, stale, or too often repeated. Origin The phrase 'old chestnut' has only an indirect association with chestnut trees or with their fruit. The derivation of the expression turns out to be a contender for old chestnut status itself. The story goes like this: in 1816, a melodrama called Broken Sword, by the playwright and theatrical manager William Dimond, was performed at the Royal Covent Garden Theatre, London. The play contained this exchange: Zavior: I entered the wood at Collares, when suddenly from the thick boughs of a cork tree... Pablo: (Jumping up.) A chesnut, Captain, a chesnut... Captain, this is the twenty-seventh time I have heard you relate this story, and you invariably said, a chesnut, till now. Despite a drubbing from the critics, the play was a success and later transferred to theatres in the USA. So far, so factual. Here's where we move from fact to plausibility. In the 1880s, many American newspapers began using 'chestnut' in the way we do now, to refer to hoary, oft-repeated stories, and the term became established in the common lingo thereafter. The 'old' was added later as an intensifier. In April 1896, the Ohio newspaper The Daily Herald took it unto itself to explain the phrase's origin. It published a story about the actor who had played Pablo in early productions of Broken Sword: William Warren, who had often played the part of Pablo, was at a 'stag' dinner when one of the gentlemen present told a story of doubtful age and originality. 'A chestnut,' murmured Mr. Warren, quoting from the play. 'I have heard you tell the tale these 27 times.' The application of the line pleased the rest of the table, and when the party broke up each helped to spread the story and Mr. Warren’s commentary. The play itself, although popular in its time, was 80 years old by 1896 and Warren was long dead, so the Daily Herald story was (at best) based on Chinese whispers or (at worst) pure invention. However, even if that stag dinner wasn't the first use of the 'chesnut' expression and Warren didn't originate it, someone else could easily have used the same source. The gist of the tale, that 'old chestnut' derives from the play Broken Sword, hovers somewhere between plausibility and fact and many choose to believe it.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-07-27 12:24:14

  Young turk Meaning A young person, full of new ideas and impatient for change. Origin The figurative expression 'young turks' meaning 'the new breed, impatient for change' began to be used in the early 20th century. William Safire, in The new language of politics: an anecdotal dictionary of catchwords, slogans, and political usage, 1968, referred to a group of US politicians who, in 1929, were called the 'Young Turks': These new Republican warriors were called the Young Turks, a band of about 20 who had mutinied against the feeble leadership of the Old Guard. For Senators they were young men (average age: 56). Safire also included a quotation, which states that Winston Churchill used the phrase during the Bermuda Conference of 1953. Churchill digressed from the agenda to discuss imperialism with Dwight Eisenhower, expressing his doubts about the wisdom of self-government for peoples not yet ready for it. When the American President disagreed with a portion of the Prime Minister's argument, Churchill smiled and said: "You're just like the Young Turks in my government." Neither the US Senate of 1929 nor the British government of 1953 contained anyone of Turkish nationality, so where did the expression come from? It could hardly be simpler. Unusually for a figurative expression the meaning is literal; the first 'young turks' were exactly that - young Turks. Selim III was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1807. He made the first major attempts to modernize the army along European lines and to rejuvenate the Turkish empire. These reforms were supported by a band of youthful followers who favoured modernisation but opposed by the more conservative older generation. There are many newspaper reports from around that time that refer to the modernists as 'young Turks' in a purely literal sense, that is, they were young and they were Turkish. For example, this piece from The Salisbury and Winchester Journal, January 1828: The young Turks, of all classes, are exercising themselves in the use of arms in the European manner. The enthusiasm for the Sultan has risen to the highest pitch. This dispute rumbled on for over a century and eventually a Turkish nationalist party that supported the reformation of the absolute monarchy of the Ottoman Empire was formed and started the Turkish revolution of 1908. It was led by The Three Pashas - Mehmed Talaat (aged 34 in 1908), Ismail Enver (27) and Ahmed Djemal (36), who were widely known as the 'Young Turks'. Soon after that and, as we have seen above, as early as 1929, any group of people passionate for change became known as 'young turks'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-08-06 14:37:26

  Damp squib Meaning Something that fails ignominiously to satisfy expectations; an anti-climax, a disappointment. Origin The first thing to say about the expression 'damp squib' is that is is 'squib', not 'squid'. Squid are a species of cephalopod. In their natural environment squid are usually damp but that's as near to this phrase as they are likely to get. Having mentioned squid I ought also to get the other notable squiddish play on words out of the way - the old joke "Hey, where's that sick squid you owe me?". Having done our linguistic duty with squid, we can now move on to 'damp squib'. A squib is a form of firework, usually cylindrical in shape with a paper fuse at one end, which provides a mild explosion - think 'dynamite lite'. Clearly, fireworks work best when they are dry. Anyone who, at a backyard bonfire, has lit the blue touch paper and retired only to see the firework phut and fizzle out will know the disappointment of a damp squib. In the 16th century, 'squibs' were also short, sharp literary compositions of a satirical or sarcastic character. Both the 'firework' meaning and the 'satire' meaning are first found in print in the 1520s and it isn't entirely clear which came first. The first use that I can find of the expression being used figuratively certainly derives from the 'firework' meaning. That is in the London newspaper The Morning Post, March 1837, in a complimentary article about the British parliamentarian George Grote: Mr. Grote is a nice man. We rather like Mr. Grote. Mr. Grote does not vote black white; or fiz and splutter, after the fashion of a damp squib. 'Squib' isn't a word that we find ourselves using very often, hence the erroneous 'damp squid' isn't difficult to find in print, for example, this piece from the Trinidad & Tobago Express, June 2005: I imagine the excitement will last for another few weeks before it peters out into a damp squid...

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-08-10 09:53:21

  The Real McCoy Meaning The real thing - not a substitute. Origin The Scottish racing cyclist Sir Chris Hoy won the sixth Olympic gold medal of his career at the London Games on 7th August 2012, making him the most successful British Olympian and elevating him even higher in the sporting firmament in the UK than he was before. This is far from the first time that Hoy has made news here and the red-top newspapers strained themselves to come up with new headlines - 'Medals Ahoy', 'Hoy Joy', 'Six Machine', 'The Hoy Wonder', 'Knight Rider', and so on. They couldn't do better than the line on the banner that his proud parents unfurl each time he wins - 'The Real McHoy'. This is of course a paraphrase of the expression 'the real McCoy' (or 'real mackay', 'real macoy', 'real mackoy'...), which rivals 'the whole nine yards' and 'the full Monty' for pre-eminence in the 'I know where that phrase comes from' stakes. As usual, plausibility and frequent retelling are considered enough for absolute certainty. With that in mind, please read on... There are several sources that are suggested as being the origin of 'the real McCoy', for example: •McCoy is derived from Mackay, referring to Messrs. Mackay, Edinburgh, who made a brand of fine whisky from 1856 onwards that they promoted as 'the real MacKay' from 1870. The expression could have derived from the name of the branch of the MacKay family from Reay, Scotland, i.e. 'the Reay Mackay'. •After Kid McCoy (Norman Selby, 1872-1940), American welterweight boxing champion. The story goes, and there are various versions of it, that a drunk challenged Selby to prove that he was McCoy and not one of the many lesser boxers trading under the same name. After being knocked to the floor the drunk rose to admit that 'Yes, that's the real McCoy'. •Elijah McCoy, the Canadian inventor educated in Scotland, made a successful machine for lubricating engines that spawned many copies, all inferior to the original. He patented the design in 1872. •The feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families, of West Virginia and Kentucky respectively, in the 1880s. The list goes on to include several other versions but none is supported by any evidence and they carry little credibility. Given that there's no hard evidence, the favourite has to be the earliest example to be found in print. That's a close call, as many of the sources date back to the second half of the 19th century. The earliest known printed citation is from 1856, in the Scottish poem Deil's Hallowe'en: "A drappie o' [drop of] the real McKay." This clearly refers to the McKay (or MacKay) whisky. The 'real MacKay' expression occurs in Scottish newspapers quite frequently in the 1860s and must have been in common use in Scotland at that date. There's no proof (no pun intended) that MacKay's whisky is the source of this phrase but we can say for sure that Elijah McCoy, Kid McCoy and the Hatfields and McCoys weren't involved in its coinage as their respective supposed involvements all come years after the expression was already widely used in print. The 'Real McCoy' variant, which is essentially the same phrase, comes later and the earliest examples that I have found come from Canada. James S. Bond's novel The Rise and Fall of the Union Club, 1881, contains this: By jingo! yes; so it will be. It's the 'real McCoy,' as Jim Hicks says. Nobody but a devil can find us there. A December 1891 edition of the Canadian newspaper The Winnipeg Free Press also includes the expression. Given that Elijah McCoy and the phrase 'the real MacKay' both moved from Scotland to Canada, it is possible that the adaption from 'real MacKay' to 'real McCoy' was done by him or on his behalf, but the real 'real MacKay', like the 'real McHoy', is Scottish.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-08-17 15:52:36

  Be enthralled Meaning To be captivated; to be held spellbound by pleasing qualities. Origin Who was the first person to be found enthralling? Strange as it may seem for such a destructive and belligerent race, it was a Viking. The Vikings were stalwart ravagers and pillagers but didn't put much effort into housework. They didn't need to; they had the Thralls. The Thralls weren't a race as such but a category of people who were at the absolute bottom of the pile in Scandinavian society in the Dark Ages. They were captives of war who were held as slaves, often passing their bondage on to their children. The harshness of the treatment of the Thralls by the Vikings was uncompromising. Thralls weren't allowed to speak in the presence of their masters nor to own property. Anyone captured by the Vikings was said to be 'in thrall' (later enthrall) and was in for a very bad time indeed. Things didn't get much better for the Thralls when Viking dominance faded around 1100 AD. The Catholic Church decreed that enslavement of Christians was sinful, whereas heathens were fair game. This brought about an increase in demand for non-Christian slaves and the Thralls, being mostly Pagans, continued in slavery. The Lindisfarne Gospels, circa 950 AD, makes a mention (in Old English) of a Thrall in the context of 'one whose liberty is forfeit'. By the 17th century the literal meaning of 'enthrall' had been forgotten and the word began to be used in the way we use it now. Shakespeare used it that way in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1600: So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape. Many Norse words have retained their original negative meanings in modern English - anger, berserk, Hell, irksome, rotten, ugly and troll, for eaxample. It is odd that 'enthralled', a word now associated with pleasure and charm, meant virtually the opposite when it was coined a thousand years ago.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-08-24 11:38:21

  Meaning Become agitated or angry. Origin It is often reported that 'it gets my dandruff up' is one of Samuel Goldwyn's celebrated Goldwynisms. When it comes to having aphorisms that he didn't coin attributed to him, Goldwyn is up there in the big league with Oscar Wildeand Yogi Berra. Whether he made that quip is open to doubt. What is clear is that, like those other supposed Goldwyn coinages - 'statue of limitations' and 'stiff upper chin', the 'dandruff' alternative is repeated now for its comic effect. Dander is an informal term for the skin that is shed from the bodies of animals - dandruff in fact. So, perhaps the Goldwynism may not be all that far from the mark. If 'get one's dander up' is synonymous with 'get one's dandruff up' we need to explain how dandruff can be 'up' exactly - not an intuitive picture to visualise. The earlier phrase 'get one's hackles up', which has the same meaning as 'get one's dander up', may help. Hackles are the hairs on the back of the neck, especially of foxhounds when excited by an imminent kill, but is also applied more generally. As dandruff may be attached to hair, it is possible that 'get one's dander up' derived as a jokey alternative to the 'hackles' version. As is often the case with the etymology of old phrases, there's another possible derivation. 'Dander', also means 'ferment', that is, the froth created in the fermentation of yeast in brewing or baking. The word may have been borrowed to form the expression 'get one's dander up' in order to convey the imagery of a frothing or agitated uproar - similar to the associated phrase 'get oneself into a stew'. There's also a speculation that the phrase was originally 'get one's dandruff up' and that it followed the imagery of a violent and agitated scuffle in which the participant's dandruff might be expected to fly into the air. That one is easily dismissed as the 'dandruff' version post-dates the others. The earliest citation I can find for that version is in The Wisconsin Tribune, April 1853: "Well, gosh-all Jerusalem, what of it?' now yelled the downeaster, getting his dandruff up." As we shall see, the 'dander' version is earlier than that. So, 'get one's dander up' derives from either dander meaning hackles or dander meaning ferment. Both are plausible. Dander did certainly have the meaning of ferment by the time the phrase was coined, as recorded in Sir John Dalrymple's Observations on his Yeast-cake, circa 1796: "The season for working molasses lasts five months, of which three weeks are lost in making up the dander, that is, the ferment." Likewise, the 'hackles' meaning was coined at around the same date, as is seen in this entry in the 1786 edition of The Sportsman's Dictionary: "Some horses have neither scales, dander, or scabs." The first reference that I can find to 'dander' being 'up' (or raised), that is, being used with the meaning of excitement or annoyance, is from an story in the 1831 edition of The American Comic Annual, by Henry J. Finn, in which a character is teased for his small stature: " A general roar of laughter brought Timmy on his legs. His dander was raised... straining up to his full height" It would be nice to provide a clear assurance as to the origin of the phrase but, frankly, both meanings of dander have a reasonable claim and your guess is as good as mine. One thing I can say with certainty is that Samuel Goldwyn didn't coin 'get my dandruff up'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-09-04 16:53:01

  On tenterhooks Meaning In a state of uncomfortable suspense. Origin Tenterhooks aren't directly connected with tents, nor are they the hooks used by butchers, as the common misspelling 'tenderhooks' might suggest. A tenter is a wooden frame, often in the form of a line of fencing, used to hang woollen or linen cloth to prevent it from shrinking as it dries. The tenterhooks are, not surprisingly, the hooks on the tenter used to hold the cloth in place. Tenters are no longer everyday objects but a hundred years ago, in wool weaving areas like the North of England, they were a common sight on the land around the many woollen mills, called 'tenter-fields'. It is easy to see how the figurative expression 'on tenterhooks', with its meaning of painful tension, derived from the 'tenting' or stretching of fabric. The expression was originally 'on the tenters'. The English West Country playright John Ford was the first to record that expression in the play Broken Heart, 1633: Passion, O, be contained. My very heart strings Are on the Tenters. Towards the end of the century the more accurate 'on the tenterhooks' began to replace the earlier phrase. This first example that I have found of it in print is in the 1690 edition of a periodical that was published annually between 1688 and 1693, The General History of Europe: The mischief is, they will not meet again these two years, so that all business must hang upon the tenterhooks till then.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-09-08 17:52:31

  Fine words butter no parsnips Meaning Nothing is achieved by empty words or flattery. Origin This proverbial saying is English and dates from the 17th century. It expresses the notion that fine words count for nothing and that action means more than flattery or promises. You aren't very likely to come across 'fine words butter no parsnips' as 20th century street slang - you are more liable to hear it in a period costume drama. Potatoes were imported into Britain from America by John Hawkins in the mid 16th century and became a staple in what established itself as the national dish - meat and two veg. Before that, various root vegetables were eaten instead, often mashed and, as anyone who has eaten mashed swedes, turnips or parsnips can testify, they cry out to be 'buttered-up' - another term for flattery. Indeed, the English were known for their habit of layering on butter to all manner of foods, much to the disgust of the French who used it as evidence of the English lack of expertise regarding cuisine and to the Japanese, who referred to Europeans in general and the English in particular as 'butter-stinkers'. This butter habit is evidenced in the various forms of the expression that are found in print in the 1600s - 'fine/fair/soft words butter no parsnips/cabbage/fish/connie[rabbit]'. A typical example is this verse from John Taylor's Epigrammes, 1651: Words are but wind that do from men proceed; None but Chamelions on bare Air can feed; Great men large hopeful promises may utter; But words did never Fish or Parsnips butter.. The earliest version that I know of in print is in John Clarke's Latin/English textbookParoemiologia, 1639: Faire words butter noe parsnips, verba non alunt familiam. [words, no family support]

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-09-08 17:52:56

  The author seemed depressed. What's wrong?

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-09-14 13:08:29

  Meaning Showy, but of poor quality. Origin Why should the derivation of a single word like 'tawdry' be listed on a site that specialises in the etymology of phrases? Two reasons: one, it is short for the phrase 'tawdry lace' (of which more later) and another, I like the derivation so decided to sneak it in. For the explanation of the word tawdry we have to go back to 7th century England and the story of Etheldrida, the daughter of the king of East Anglia, who was otherwise known as Saint Audrey. Audrey died in 679 AD of a tumour of the throat. It was recorded by the Venerable Bede in Ecclesiasticall History, 731 AD, that her fate was considered just retribution as she had "for vain show adorned her neck with manifold splendid necklaces". In the 16th century Nicholas Harpsfield, the Archdeacon of Canterbury, published his own ecclesiastical history Historia Anglicana Ecclesiastica and commented that: "Our women of England are wont to wear about the neck a certain necklace, formed of thin and fine silk." These silks were known as Saint Audrey's laces. As time went by, 'St. Audrey's lace' became shortened to 'taudrey lace'. That comes as little surprise to those of us who live in Yorkshire, where expressions like 'the other' and 'down the hole' have long been replaced by 't'other' and 'down t'ole'. In his 1579 poem The Shepheardes Calendar, Edmund Spenser referred to 'tawdrie lace', in a warning to shepherd's daughters: See, that your rudenesse doe not you disgrace: Binde your fillets faste, And gird in your waste, For more finesse with a tawdrie lace. 'Tawdry' hadn't by that date developed the 'showy/poor quality' meaning that we now use but had started on its route there. What began as a name for fine lace ribbon became a disparaging term for the poor quality lace bought by country wenches at rural fairs. When Shakespeare wanted to establish Mopsa, the country bumpkin girlfriend of the Clown in A Winter's Tale, as less than sophisticated, he portrayed her as interested in frivolous showy dress and gave her this line: Come, you promised me a tawdry-lace and a pair of sweet gloves. 'Tawdry' has long departed from any association with saints or expensive necklaces and is now entirely a negative description. To all the Audrey's out there, sorry but, as they would say around here, you're just t'Audrey.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-09-21 13:17:45

  Batten down the hatches Meaning Prepare for trouble. Origin In his recent (September 2012) song Tempest, which recounts the story of the Titanic's sinking, Bob Dylan uses the lines: They battened down the hatches But the hatches wouldn't hold This has caused a couple of correspondents to write to me asking what 'batten down' means. Many people may know what 'batten down the hatches' means, but some clearly don't, so here goes... 'Hatch' is one of those words with dozens of meanings in the dictionary. In this case we are looking at the 'opening in the deck of a ship' meaning. Ships' hatches, more formally called hatchways, were commonplace on sailing ships and were normally either open or covered with a wooden grating to allow for ventilation of the lower decks. When bad weather was imminent, the hatches were covered with tarpaulin and the covering was edged with wooden strips, known as battens, to prevent it from blowing off. Not surprisingly, sailors called this 'battening down'. The misspellings 'battern down the hatches' and 'baton down the hatches' are sometimes found in print. 'Batons' are sticks or staffs, which makes that particular misspelling plausible. 'Batterns' are a form of stage lighting. The earliest reference to this practice that I know of is in William Falconer's An Universal Dictionary of the Marine, 1769: The battens serve to confine the edges of the tarpaulings close down to the sides of the hatches. The first citation of the explicit use of the phrase 'batten down the hatches' is from the 1883 Chambers Journal: "Batten down the hatches - quick, men."

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  [已注销] 2012-09-21 23:03:50

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-09-29 06:27:29

  Slush fund Meaning Money put aside to be used to bribe or influence, especially in a political context. Origin The word 'slush' was coined in 17th century England as the name for half-melted snow and is first referred to in print with that meaning in Henry Best's Rural Economy in Yorkshire, 1641. Of course, that's where the nameSlushies, the part-frozen flavoured drinks, came from. A century later, there was an alternative meaning of 'slush', or 'slosh', which was the fat or grease obtained from meat boiled on board ship. That invaluable guide The Gentleman's Magazine, 1756, referred to it like this: He used much slush (the rancid fat of pork) among his victuals. William Thompson made it sound even less appetising in The Royal Navy-men's Advocate, 1757: Tars whose Stomachs are not very squeamish, can bear to paddle their Fingers in stinking Slush. Despite it not being the apex of culinary delight it was considered a perk for ships' cooks and crew and they sold the fat that they gathered from cooking meat whenever they reached port. This perquisite became known as a 'slush fund' and the term joins the numerous English phrases that first saw the light of day at sea. The author William McNally didn't think much of the practice and included a description of it in Evils & Abuses in Naval & Merchant Service, 1839: The sailors in the navy are allowed salt beef. From this provision, when cooked nearly all the fat boils off; this is carefully skimmed and put into empty beef or pork barrels, and sold, and the money so received is called the slush fund. In the same year, The Army and Navy Chronicle suggested that a ship's slush fund would be a suitable source of money to buy books for the crew: To give men the use of such books as would best suit their taste, would be to appropriate what is their own, (viz.) the slush fund for the purchase of such works. This is the beginning of the meaning we now have for 'slush fund', i.e. money put aside to make use of when required. The use of such savings for improper uses like bribes or the purchase of influence began in the USA not long afterwards. The Congressional Record for January 1894 printed this: [Cleveland] was not elected in 1888 because of pious John Wanamaker and his $400,000 of campaign slush funds. Into the 20th century and we head straight for one of The Simpsons' many cultural references and back to the original meaning of 'slush fund'. In the 1998 episode Lard of the Dance, Homer and Bart instigate a scheme to make money by collecting and selling grease. They try to siphon Groundskeeper Willie's stashed vat of rancid fat from the school kitchen. A fight breaks out over what is clearly Willie's slush fund or, in 20th century cartoon parlance, his 'retirement grease'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-10-05 10:52:34

  Worse for wear Meaning Shabby or worn through use; drunk. Origin The expression 'worse for wear' is something of a linguistic oddity in that it has endured a variety of different meanings, versions and spellings during its lifetime. Let's start with the spelling indignities. 'Worse for wear' or 'worst for wear'? Both of these are found in print but, of course, the phrase is 'worse for wear', the alternative being a simple but sadly commonplace muddling of 'worse' and 'worst'. 'Worse for ware' and 'worse for where' are also sometimes seen, again occasionally using 'worst' rather than 'worse', and there's little better explanation for them other than that some people can't spell 'wear'. Anyone familiar with etymology will have come across the redoubtable John Heywood's glossary A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue. 'Worse for wear' is one of the older phrases in the language and Heywood included it in the book's first edition in 1546: Al thyng is the wors for the wearyng. The meaning there is clear - 'as things are used they deteriorate'. As it became established in the language 'worse for wear' developed into a synonym for 'worn out'. At this stage the variant 'none the worse for wear' was coined, meaning 'used but not worn out' and also dragging along its misspelled 'worst/ware/where' versions. The English poet Charles Churchill used that expression, in a rather backhand compliment to his wife, in the poem The Ghost, 1794: Some, in my place, to gain their ends, Would give relations up and friends; Would lend a wife, who, they might swear Safely, was none the worse for wear. Into the 20th century and the phrase took on another meaning, that is, 'drunk'. This was taken up by the UK tabloid press in the 1960s and has now superseded 'tired and emotional' as the euphemism of choice when describing some young wag falling out of a taxi at 3am.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-10-05 11:04:23

  A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue Al thyng is the wors for the wearyng. 矮油～ －yng ~~~

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-10-14 11:21:58

  Badger to death more like this... ...other phrases about: Animals Conflict Death Meaning Harass or persecute. Origin The phrase 'badger to death' alludes to the nocturnal burrowing mammal Meles meles, that is, the badger. At first sight it would seem intuitive that the expression refers to the fate of badgers in badger-baiting, an erstwhile so-called sport in which badgers were pitted against dogs and the protagonists tore each other apart. However, those fights weren't as one-sided as we may now suppose. Badgers were chosen for this entertainment as they are extremely tenacious when cornered and have the ability to bite their prey until their teeth meet. This fact has led to the alternative view that 'badgering to death' originally referred to the fate of the dogs and meant 'killed by a badger'. We aren't ever likely to know which of these derivations is correct, although most etymologists favour the former explanation. 'Badgering' has been used as a verb to denote persecution for some time. Francis Grose gave a definition of it in the 1785 edition of his invaluable glossary A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: Badger, to confound, perplex, or teaze. The first record that I can find of 'badgered to death' in print doesn't refer directly to badgers, nor to fighting dogs, but is a metaphorical reference to theatrical performers. This reference is found in Charles Dibdin's journal of the dramatic arts The By-stander; or, Universal Weekly Expositor, 1790, in which he gives the following advice: It is always worth a manager's while to engage a performer for three years. The first he is a drudge; the second he is a servant of all work; the third badgered to death, and at length dismissed. Badger baiting was made illegal in the UK in 1835 and instances of it are now rare, but it still does go on and prosecutions are occasionally brought. Despite that decline, the phrase has been given a new lease of life in recent years. Many UK dairy farmers claim that badgers, which are carriers of Bovine TB, are responsible for spreading the disease and killing their cattle. Of course, tabloid newspapers usually report TB outbreaks with the headline 'cows are badgered to death'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-10-19 13:44:14

  Under the thumb Meaning Completely under someone's control. Origin Few fields of endeavour have as much false etymology associated with them as falconry. 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush' derives from hunting with birds of prey and this has seemingly led to a spate of supposed derivations along the same lines. 'Hoodwinked' is said to derive from putting a cloth cap over the eyes of a falcon to calm the bird by simulating nighttime and 'old codger' is said to derive from the carrier of the cadge or cage that held the birds. Neither of these has any basis in fact. We can add to the list 'under the thumb', which was recently presented on the BBC's Alan Titchmarsh Show as originating from the handler's use of his thumb to trap the bird in his hand when he didn't want it to fly. Again, that's pure flight of fancy. Being 'under one's thumb' is just a figurative expression that alludes to being completely under another's control. The allusion was to a protagonist so powerful and a victim so insignificant that even the former's thumb was strong enough to control them. None of the early references relates to falconry, or to any other specific origin. The phrase was always used to refer to a powerful person, like a king or lord, exercising control over a subject. The earliest reference I can find to the expression in print is from the 18th century English politician Arthur Maynwaring in The Life and Posthumous Works of Arthur Maynwaring, 1715, which, as is strongly hinted at in the title, was printed after his death: The French King having them under his Thumb, compell'd them to go at his Pace. The phrase was well enough established by the 19th century for it to spawn the verb form 'thumbing'. This was defined in James Halliwell's Dictionary Of Archaic And Provincial Words, 1847, as: Thumbing: A Nottingham phrase, used to describe that species of intimidation practised by masters on their servants when the latter are compelled to vote as their employers please. 'Under the thumb' is still used today with much the same meaning as when it was coined in the 18th century. It's not entirely clear what meaning Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had in mind when they wrote the eponymous 'Under My Thumb' in 1966, but it probably wasn't falconry. See also: Under your hat Thumbs up

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-11-09 10:21:13

  Spring forward, fall back Mnemonic relating to Daylight Saving Time, indicating that clocks are moved forward an hour in spring and back an hour in autumn. Origin Autumn is the time of year for English wrinklies like me to bemoan the creeping Americanization of our culture, as we see Bonfire Night being steadily superseded by Halloween. The 'penny for the guy' of our youth has gone and been replaced by trick or treat and green-faced ghouls at our doors demanding sweets. While finishing off the left-over sweets and transporting myself back to Olde England when reading Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's excellent novel set in Tudor England, I groaned again at her use of the American 'fall' to mean autumn. It's always advisable to have a stack of reference books nearby when reading the esteemed Hilary's work and I checked the OED nestled inside my iPad. I need not have grumbled; 'fall' is indeed a pukka Tudor word, deriving from the phrase 'fall of the leaf', which is first found in print in Toxophilus, 1545, an archery instruction manual by Queen Elizabeth's tutor Roger Ascham, in which he lists the seasons as: Spring tyme, Somer, faule of the leafe, and winter. This became shortened to 'fall' a century or so later, as in this example in the first known text on forestry, John Evelyn's Sylva, 1664: His [the Oak] leaves becoming yellow at the fall, do commonly clothe it all the winter. 'Fall' travelled to North America with the early settlers and established itself there as the common name for autumn. The word died out in the UK but has begun to re-colonize now due the the take-up of the US expression 'spring forward, fall back' which we all use toward the end of October when, using the old English parlance, 'the clocks go back'. Daylight Saving Time, or Summer Time as it is called in the UK, is a European innovation. Some claims are made for it being an idea that Benjamin Franklin had while staying in Paris. That's not quite correct. Franklin did wake one morning at six o'clock to be surprised to see his room in full sun. He scorned idleness and, in the guise of Poor Richard, was the first to publish the proverb 'early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise'. His industrious mind set to work and calculated that Parisians, by being active in the evening when it was dark and in bed in the morning when it was light, spent 96,075,000 livres tournois [the French currency of the day] more than they need to on candle wax. His suggestion wasn't to change the clocks, he proposed reducing the use of candles. This was to be achieved by: taxing shuttered windows, putting police guards on candle shops, banning the use of carriages after sunset and firing cannons at sunrise. The French in general and Parisians in particular aren't famous for embracing change suggested by foreigners and none of Franklin's improving ideas were taken up. The idea of changing the clocks to provide longer evening sunshine was put forward by the New Zealander George Hudson in 1895 but his notion was never implemented. The first person to carry the idea through to fruition was the London builder William Willett. He wrote the pamphlet,Waste of Daylight in 1907. Daylight Saving Time was, and has remained, a controversial contrivance but Willet's proposal was taken up in England in the First World War and is now used in many countries, especially those in the Northern Hemisphere. England sent the word 'fall' and the idea of Daylight Saving Time to the US and they sent back the phrase 'spring forward, fall back'. The first example of it that I can find in print is in an article by Walter Winchell in an October 1957 edition of the Pennsylvania newspaper The Derrick, who credits the coining to a rival newspaper: New Yorkers and other easterners who enjoy Daylight Savings Time until October’s end are recommended to the Los Angeles Examiner’s clever and simple four-word memo to put the clock ahead or back..."Spring forward, Fall back.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-11-16 13:01:25

  The toast of the town A person who is widely admired. Origin As we know, toast is browned bread. People began eating toast, or at least they began writing about it, in the 15th century. The first reference to it in print is in a recipe for a ghastly sounding concoction called Oyle Soppys (flavoured onions stewed in a gallon of stale beer and a pint of oil) that dates from 1430. Toast wasn't part of the recipe as such; the instructions were to serve the oyle soppys as "hote as tostes". Actually, to say that our mediaeval ancestors ate toast isn't quite correct. Like the batter on fried fish and the pastry on Cornish pasties, which were originally just casings that were thrown away, toast was discarded rather than eaten after it was used as a flavouring for drinks. Lodowick Lloyd's text The Pilgrimage of Princes, 1573, describes this: Alphonsus tooke a toaste out of his cuppe, and cast it to the Dogge. As well as being a flavouring, toast was used to warm drinks and most of the early citations refer to toast being warm or hot. One of our oldest proverbs, as listed in John Heywood's invaluable A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, 1546, gives toast as a synonym for hotness: Love had appeerd in hym to her alwase Hotte as a toste. Even as late as the 17th century people didn't eat toast but put it into drinks. Shakespeare gave this line to Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1616: Go, fetch me a quart of Sacke, put a tost in 't. [In Shakespeare's day, as now, sack was fortified wine similar to sherry, so a quart seems a generous measure even for the notorious trencherman Sir John Falstaff.] It isn't difficult to imagine the scene in which some 18th century culinary innovator, having a piece of toast and a drink served together, decided to eat the toast rather than submerging it. Jonathan Swift appears to be the first to have recorded this novelty in print in the poemPanegyrick on Dean, 1735: Sweeten your Tea, and watch your Toast. As to the phrase 'the toast of the town', this came about at the exclusively male drinking clubs of the early 18th century. The 'toast' was the woman who was regarded as the reigning belle of the season. The chaps were invited to flavour and heat their wine with hot spiced toasts and drink to 'the toast of the town'. The English Poet Laureate Colley Cibber wrote about 'toasting' in the comic play Careless Husband, 1705: Ay, Madam, it has been your Life's whole Pride of late to be the Common Toast of every Publick Table. Later in the 1700s it became the norm for any celebrated person, male or female, to be applauded by a toast. Coming more up to date the term toast has taken a 180 degree change of direction. To 'be toast' is now hardly a state to be desired. The usage 'you're toast' = 'you're as good as dead' derives from the 1984 film Ghostbusters. The scriptwriters wrote the line 'I'm gonna turn this guy into toast' but what Bill Murray, in his role as Dr. Peter Venkman, said was "This chick is toast". It is quite likely that the expression was US street slang that was taken up by the Ghostbusters' writers, but the film is what propelled it into the popular consciousness.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-11-23 16:37:24

  Gussied up Smartened up, in a showy or garish way. Origin If you were to tell anyone in the UK that they were 'gussied up' you would probably get back a blank stare - the term is little known there. In the USA you might get a less welcome response, as it is at best a back-handed compliment, referring as it does to a somewhat lurid 'trying too hard' appearance. It would be nice at this juncture to be able to point to some grande dame famous for her kitsch apparel who was the source of the expression. Sadly, the plot is thicker than that and this phrase's origin is uncertain. There are some clues though, so I'll itemize the evidence and leave you to make what you can of it. First, the word 'gussie'. This was first used in Australia in the early 20th century as a name for a foppish dandy. The Australian feminist novelist Miles Franklin used it in her best-known work My Brilliant Career, 1901, to describe a soppy Lothario to whom she gives the unambiguous but mocking name of Everard Grey: "I'll show him [Everard] I think no more of him than of the caterpillars on the old tree there. I'm not a booby that will fall in love with every gussie I see. I hate and detest men!" 'Gussie' was a contraction of the name Augustus, which was the generic name for Roman emperors. In some contexts the name might conjure up thoughts of imperial grandeur, but not so here. It wouldn't have been a name commonly given to horny-handed Australian cobbers and 'gussie' was clearly meant to denote effeminacy, just as 'jessie' does now in Australia and the UK. The New Zealand lexicographer Sidney Baker helpfully removes the need for speculation by defining the word in the Popular Dictionary of Australian Slang, 1941: Gussie, an effeminate or affected man. 'Gussie' is also found in US publications, from a slightly later date, with the same meaning. Onward, to 'gussie up'. This appears to be of American origin and, as I've mentioned, has largely stayed in the US. The first example that I can find of it in print is in the July 1945 edition of The Rotarian magazine: The sky is a giddy blue, gussied up with flounces of billowy white clouds. How, why, or even if 'gussied up' evolved from 'gussie' we don't now know. It could be as simple as the expression just derived as meaning 'dressed like an effeminate man'. Also playing a part in this is the US tennis player Gertrude Augusta "Gussie" Moran. Known as Gorgeous Gussie, she was a top player in the late 1940s but, after appearing at Wimbledon and other tournaments in frilly knickers, she is now better remembered for her underwear than her overarm. She wasn't the source of the phrase but if anyone could be said to have 'gussied up' the previously staid tennis uniform it was she and the correspondence of her name and appearance without doubt brought the expression into wider use.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-12-01 21:15:17

  An arm and a leg more like this... ...other phrases about: Parts of the body Meaning A large, possibly exorbitant, amount of money. Origin 'It cost and arm and a leg' is one of those phrases that rank high in the 'I know where that comes from' stories told at the local pub. In this case the tale is that portrait painters used to charge more for larger paintings and that a head and shoulders painting was the cheapest option, followed in price by one which included arms and finally the top of the range 'legs and all' portrait. As so often with popular etymologies, there's no truth in that story. Painters certainly did charge more for large pictures, but there's no evidence to suggest they did so by limb count. In any case the phrase is much more recent than the painting origin would suggest. It is in fact an American phrase, coined sometime after WWII. The earliest citation I can find is from The Long Beach Independent, December 1949: Food Editor Beulah Karney has more than 10 ideas for the homemaker who wants to say "Merry Christmas" and not have it cost her an arm and a leg. 'Arm' and 'leg' are used as examples of items that no one would consider selling other than at an enormous price. It is a grim reality that, around that time, there were many US newspaper reports of servicemen who had lost an arm and a leg in the recent war. It is possible that the phrase originated in reference to the high cost paid by those who suffered such amputations. A more likely explanation is that the expression derived from two earlier phrases: 'I would give my right arm for...' and '[Even] if it takes a leg', which were both coined in the 19th century. The earliest example that I can find of the former in print is from an 1849 edition of Sharpe's London Journal: He felt as if he could gladly give his right arm to be cut off if it would make him, at once, old enough to go and earn money instead of Lizzy. The second phrase is American and an early example of it is given in this heartfelt story from the Iowa newspaper the Burlington Daily Hawk-Eye, July 1875: A man who owes five years subscription to the Gazette is trying to stop his paper without paying up, and the editor is going to grab that back pay if it takes a leg.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-12-07 16:37:24

  That's all she wrote An articulation of a sudden and unforeseen end to one's hopes or plans. Origin This is very much an American expression so let's begin with a clarification for readers in the UK where it isn't in common use. The phrase is used to convey the meaning of 'it's all over; there's no more to be said'. When seeking the expression's origin it would help to know who 'she' was and what exactly it was that she wrote. As we shall see, and as so often with etymology, that's not entirely clear. The popular version of the origin of this expression is that it is the punch line of a mournful tale about an American GI serving overseas in WWII. The said sad serviceman is supposed to have received a letter from his sweetheart. He reads it to his colleagues: "Dear John". Well, go on, they say. "That's it; that's all she wrote". The story is plausible; 'Dear John' was the standard cipher amongst the US military for the kind of letter that has now been replaced by a 'you're so dumped' text message. The 'Dear John' usage came into being at about the time of WWII. There are several references in 1940s newspapers to 'Dear John' letters that were sent by Franklin Roosevelt, who is sometimes credited with originating the term. These appear to be red herrings in the search for the origin of the phrase and merely allude to letters that FDR sent to prominent public figures who happened to be called John - John Lord O'Brian and John Maynard Keynes for example. The earliest example I can find that refers to 'Dear John' letters with the commonplace meaning is from the Florida newspaper the St. Petersburg Times, March, 1944: The things that brought tears to their eyes included... the downcast GI about whom another told them "He just got a Dear John letter." Those citations give us an approximate date for the emergence of the expression but not the actual source. We may choose to believe the tale about the GI whose letter consisted of just "Dear John" but there's no evidence of any sort to support it. A more likely derivation is a country music song entitled 'That's All She Wrote', recorded by Ernest Tubb and published in sheet music form in 1942: I got a letter from my mama, just a line or two She said listen daddy your good girl's leavin' you That's all she wrote - didn't write no more She'd left the gloom a hanging round my front door. [If you want to hear it, and it is a classic of the country music genre, follow this link to YouTube.] Tubb may have picked up the expression from popular usage but there aren't any examples of it from before 1942 and his version makes no reference to the military setting. Another explanation, and this seems very likely, is that GIs heard the Tubb song on the radio and adapted it to their circumstances. That's All Folks!

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-12-16 10:45:56

  'Silly' phrases Phrases that contain the word 'silly' I have been watching the 30th cricket Test series between England and India and musing about the oddly named field positions 'Silly mid-on', 'Silly point' etc. I've watched enough cricket to know that these are positions close to the batsman, but wondered why they are labelled 'silly' and whether there might be an archaic 'near to' meaning of the word. As it turns out, there isn't. 'Silly' in this context means what we normally mean by the word, that is, 'foolish or empty-headed'. Anyone who has been hit on the knee (or elsewhere) by a cricket ball will understand that standing about six feet away from the batsman is just plain silly. 'Silly' may never have meant 'near to' but it did take something of a journey to get to its present meaning. In the 15th century, when the word first began to be used in Middle English it meant 'deserving of pity, compassion, or sympathy'. A 'sylyman' wasn't stupid, just unfortunate. Into the 16th century and into modern English and the meaning migrated to mean 'weak, feeble, insignificant'. The naturalist John Maplet, in the natural history A Greene Forest, 1567, referred to a hedgerow bird like a sparrow as: A smal sillie Bird Later that century 'silly' began to be used with its current meaning. In the English/Italian dictionary Worlde of Wordes, 1598, the Italian linguist John Florio described the Italian word for idiot as: A sillie Iohn [man], a gull, a noddie. I'm not sure what it says about us but there is a large number of words in English that denote stupidity. 'Silly', perhaps because it conveys a form of good-humoured foolishness, appears to be a particular favourite amongst the coiners of phrases. Here are a few, with their derivations: Silly Season The months of August and September, when newspapers make up for the lack of real news by publishing articles on trivial topics. This expression is older than one might think. The US magazine The Saturday Review was amongst the first to make use of it, in July 1861: We have, however, observed this year very strong symptoms of the Silly Season of 1861 setting in a month or two before its time. Ask a silly question... ... and you will get a silly answer, of course. This appears to be an American phrase. The first mention that I can find of it in print is from the Minnesota newspaper The Brainerd Daily Dispatch, Tuesday, April, 1945: If you want to ask a silly question and get a silly answer, just ask Mona Roth whom she refers to as El Dorado. If any US readers can help me out as to who Mona Roth was or what that citation is all about, please do. Play silly b***ers [Note: I've blanked out the word above, otherwise many ISP's email filters, careful of your welfare, wouldn't deliver this message.] The esteemed lexicographer Eric Partridge both defined and dated this British slang expression in the 1961 edition of the Dictionary of Slang: Silly b***ers, play, to indulge in provocative horse-play; hence, to feign stupidity: low: since ca. 1920. As is usually the case with Partridge, he gives no supporting evidence for the date and I can't find any actual examples of the phrase in print before the 1960s, even in its bowdlerised form of 'play silly beggers'. Silly Billy It isn't often the case that a name used in a phrase refers to a real person, but this one does. Silly Billy was the 18th century nobleman Prince William Frederick, the second Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh. The diarist Joseph Romilly wrote of him in Romilly's Cambridge Diary, 1834: He was in a towering passion for a minute but soon got into a good humour by laughing at the D. of Gloster. "Did you see silly Billy squirted on last night? it was worth £5." What the Duke did to earn the nickname I'm not entirely sure, although we can get a glimpse of his character from a line in his biography - "He was an enthusiastic and brave, if not terribly professional, soldier... renowned for his lack of intelligence". Appearances can be deceptive but in all the paintings of him the eponymous Duke doesn't look to be the sharpest knife in the box. It would be fitting if the squirting referred to in the above quote was done with Silly String. Sadly not, that was patented in the USA 1970.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2012-12-24 08:50:37

  Necessity is the mother of invention Meaning Difficult situations inspire ingenious solutions. Origin The author of this proverbial saying isn't known. It is sometimes ascribed to Plato, but no version of it can be found (by me at least) in his works. It was known in England by the 16th century, although at that point it must have been known to very few as it was then documented in its Latin form rather than in English. Many well-known proverbs appeared first in Latin and were transcribed into English by Erasmus and others, often as training texts for latin scholars. William Horman, the headmaster of Winchester and Eton, included the Latin form 'Mater artium necessitas' inVulgaria, a book of aphorisms for the boys of the schools to learn by heart, which he published in 1519. Roger Ascham came close to an English version of the phrase in his manual on how to use a longbow, which is by the way the first book ever written about archery, Toxophilus, 1545: "Necessitie, the inuentour of all goodnesse." George Chapman also had a 'close but no cigar' moment with his tragic play The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron, 1608: "The great Mother, Of all productions (grave Necessity)." The earliest actual usage of 'necessity is the mother of invention' that I can find in print is in Richard Franck's 'Northern Memoirs, calculated for the meridian of Scotland'. Originals of this text are difficult to locate, but it was republished in 1821, with a foreword by Sir Walter Scott. The frontispiece of the reprint states that the original was "writ in the year 1658". It contains this: Art imitates Nature, and Necessity is the Mother of Invention. 1658 seems the best date we have as the birth of the phrase in English. Frank Zappa gave this phrase an extra lease of life when he chose the name of his inventive jazz/rock band in 1964 - The Mothers of Invention. His use of 'mothers' clearly had a ribald meaning that Erasmus wouldn't have approved of but Zappa did at least keep the expression from dropping into 'granny phrase' obscurity.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-01-07 08:55:48

  Union Jack Meaning The popular name of the national flag of the United Kingdom. Origin Two subjects that arouse passion more than most are language and national identity and here in the UK these collide at the name of the national flag. Spare a thought for my welfare as I wade gingerly into a muddy pond teeming with crocodiles with a particular taste for etymologists. What's the flag called? It's the Union Jack of course. Pause for an intake of breath amongst purists; "No, it's the Union Flag!". Whether you prefer 'flag' or 'jack', most agree on the union part of the name. I say 'most' as even calling the place I live the United Kingdom will raise some hackles. I often get mail along the lines of "You live in England! England, geddit, not the UKay!". Nevertheless, let's press on and try to explain the oddly named standard, the Union Jack. The 'union' part is straightforward. The flag originated as a visual representation of the various political unions of the countries that formed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northen Ireland, the present design being established in 1801. (An aside for those who aren't quite sure what Great Britain is. Britain is the little green island to the north of France, originally called 'great' to distinguish it from what is now called Brittany, which was in the Middle Ages also called Britain. Brittany is now sometimes called Little Britain, which can be confusing as the popular TV show, Little Britain was about Great Britain not Brittany ...and this little tangent was supposed to clarify things. Let's get back to the plot.) The flag was formed by photoshopping the crosses of the patron saints of England, Scotland and Ireland - St. George, St. Andrew and St. Patrick. Wales was already a principality of England by this point so didn't get visual respresentation on the flag. So, that's 'Union'. Now to the tricky part - 'jack' or 'flag'. To be quite proper about it, it's the Union Flag. However, both Union Flag and Union Jack are widely accepted and referring to the flag as the Union Jack has the advantage that everyone around the world will know what you are talking about. The 'jack' designation came about when the national flag was flown from the 'jack-staff' of sailing ships. The jack-staff is a spar on the bow of a sailing ship and purists will say that the only time that the flag should be called the Union Jack is when it is flown from a ship's jack-staff. If you like you can opt for uber-pedantry and call it the Union Jack Flag. Now, I'd just better check that image of the national flag is the right way up or I'll really be in trouble.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-01-21 08:49:21

  Lily-livered Meaning Cowardly. Origin I suppose it is the job of idioms to provide richness to the language by creating meaning that is different to the literal meaning of the idiom's individual words. Almost any idiom serves as an example - 'cloud cuckoo land', 'fancy-free', 'hat trick' and so on, but 'lily-livered' must seem especially opaque to non-English speakers endeavouring to learn the language. Why would that mean cowardly? One clue is that our Middle Ages predecessors believed the liver to be in control of our emotions. It was thought to be the organ that created blood and that a poorly functioning liver was the cause of mental or physical weakness. Anyone who was choleric, bilious or irritable was labelled 'liverish'. There were numerous 'livery' conditions: liver-hearted, or lily-livered - craven, cowardly liver-faced - mean spirited liver-lipped - pale and feeble liver-sick - suffering from dropsy, or the diseases we now call cirrhosis and hepatitis. By contrast, a robust liver supplying ample blood was thought to create rosy cheeks glowing with ruddy good health. References to 'ruddy' meaning 'healthy' date from the 14th century. The second part of the explanation is that the lily was synonymous with whiteness. The White or Madonna Lily seems to have a whiteness that is whiter than other whites and the plant was grown in mediaeval gardens as a symbol of purity. In William Turners Herball, 1562, the author referred to it like this: The Lily hath a long stalk... The flour is excedyng white. In the same way as 'liver', 'lily' has been used as a prefix in several descriptive terms, in this case describing conditions that exemplfy purity or paleness - lily-cheeked, lily-fingered, lily-handed, lily-wristed and so on. So, putting the two adjectives together we get 'lily-livered', that is, 'having a pale and bloodless liver'. Shakespeare appears to have coined the phrase and, in Macbeth, 1623, when the Bard needed to emphasize the fear and cowardice of a servant who was bringing the king news of a military attack, he described the servant as 'a white-faced loon' and gave Macbeth the line: Go pricke thy face, and over-red thy feare, Thou Lilly-liver'd Boy.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-01-21 08:50:25

  As thick as thieves Meaning Close friends with; sharing confidences. Origin We might expect 'as thick as thieves' to be a variant of the other commonly used 'thick' simile 'as thick as two short planks'. The fact that the former expression originated as 'as thick as two thieves' gives more weight to that expectation. As you may have guessed from that lead in, the two phrases are entirely unconnected. The short planks are thick in the 'stupid' sense of the word, whereas thieves aren't especially stupid but are conspiratorial and that's the meaning of ' thick' in 'as thick as thieves'. 'Thick' was first used to mean 'closely allied with' in the 18th century, as in this example from Richard Twining's memoir Selected Papers of the Twining Family, 1781: Mr. Pacchicrotti was at Spa. He and I were quite 'thick.' We rode together frequently. He drank tea with me. Like all 'as X as Y' similes, 'as thick as thieves' depends on Y (thieves) being thought of as archetypally X (thick). The thieves had some competition. Earlier versions were 'as thick as'... 'inkle weavers', 'peas in a shell' and 'three in a bed', all of which were examples of things that were especially intimate (inkle-weavers sat at looms that were close together). These variants have now pretty much disappeared, leaving the way clear for 'as thick as thieves'. The association of thieves with conspiratorial and secretive language was well established in England in the 18th century. Many of those on the fringes of society, for example poachers, homosexuals, street hawkers and thieves, used secret words and phrases to converse furtively amongst themselves. Backslang was one example of this, the best known survival of backslang being 'yob' for 'boy'. Several lexicographers had published dictionaries used by those on the wrong side of the law, notably the New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, 1698. The 'canting crew' were the various vagabonds and coney-catchers (conmen) that inhabited the streets of British cities. The dictionary explained how to decipher the language of "the tribes of gypsies, beggars, thieves, cheats etc.", so that people could "secure their money and preserve their lives". Given that thieves were established as being 'thick' by the late 17th century it is surprising that 'as thick as thieves' didn't emerge until a century or so later. The records of the Old Bailey, which list transcripts of cases held there since 1674 and which might be just the place to find this phrase, don't list it until 1874. The first example that I can find of it in print is from the English newspaper The Morning Chronicle, in a letter dated March 1827, published in February 1828: Bill Morris and me are as thick as two thieves. So there you have it; proverbially at least, planks are stupid but thieves (unless you include bankers) aren't.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-01-30 17:20:34

  Fair dinkum Meaning Honest; genuine; fair play. Origin There could hardly be a more Southern Hemisphere expression than 'fair dinkum'. The phrase, which is hardly used outside Australia and New Zealand, conjures up images of horny-handed ranchers with corks on their hats. A 'fair-dinkum Aussie' is indeed what the locals call someone who embodies the nation's values. So, where did the phrase originate? Alice Springs? Auckland? No, Lincolnshire in England. That claim will take a little justifying, especially to readers down under, so here goes. Firstly, let's get out of the way the folk-etymological tale that the phrase derives from the expression 'din gum', used by Chinese miners with the meaning ‘real gold’. My Chinese is less than perfect and I can't comment on whether or not 'real gold' is a correct translation, but I can say that there's no evidence to link the phrase to China. There is, however, a mining connection in the phrase's background. 'Dinkum' is a slang term that appears to have grown up with two meanings, 'work' and 'fair play'. These may in fact be drawn from one original meaning, that is, 'honest toil'. The 'work' meaning of dinkum is found in print in documents from both Australia and the UK in the late 19th century, the earliest being in the classic Australian novel Robbery under Arms, published by Thomas Alexander Browne, using the pseudonym Rolf Boldrewood, in 1888. It also appears in Sidney Addy's Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Sheffield, 1891: ‘I can stand plenty o' dincum.’ This word is used by colliers at Eckington. [Eckington is in East Derbyshire] The 'honesty' or 'fair play' meaning is what people now mean by the phrase. The 'fair' was added to dinkum for emphasis, much in the same way that it was added to 'square' to make 'fair and square'. The 'fair play' meaning was known in England from at least 1882, as in this example from a report of a political meeting in Lincoln, reported in the Nottingham Evening Post, February 1882. The paper reports the opinions of Richard Hall, a local magistrate who was complaining about the unfair policies of the Gladstone government, which he believed favoured the wealthy: In all of these things he thought there should be fair 'dinkum' to all classes of people. 'Fair dinkum' also appeared in Australia, in the Sydney newspaper The Bulletin, in 1894. 'Fair dinkum' was used by the colliers of the UK's East Midlands from the 1880s and by Australians from a few years later. In the late 19th century, in addition to the numerous criminals who were transported, many mine workers migrated from England to Australia, taking their working language with them. Significantly as far as the derivation of this phrase is concerned, the direction of migration was very much one way and few migrants ever came back.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-02-07 12:47:28

  Meaning Chaotic and disorderly; in jumbled confusion Origin Reduplicated phrases are those that use the partial repetition of a word, often a nonsense word, for verbal effect. 'Higgledy-piggledy' is one of a number of such phrases that refer to chaos and disorder. Other examples are 'helter-skelter', 'harum-scarum', pell-mell', 'raggle-taggle', hobson-jobson' and 'hurly-burly'. Why reduplication, especially of words beginning with 'h', suggests jumble and disorder isn't clear. Most reduplicated terms involve the rhyming of words of two syllables - hanky-panky, namby-pamby, mumbo-jumboand so on. 'Higgledy-piggledy' is an unusual example that uses three-syllable words. In fact, it's a little more unusual still - it's an example of a grammatical form called a 'double dactyl'. A dactyl is a three-syllable word with the stress on the first syllable and, not surprisingly, a double dactyl is a word made from two dactyls put together. An example of such is 'idiosyncrasy'. 'Higgledy-piggledy' is considered such a good example of a double dactyl that it has given its name to a form of structured, some might say tortured, poetic verse that uses double dactyls. I'll spare you a reprint of one of those here; they aren't at the apex of the poet's art. The first time that 'higgledy-piggledy' appears in print is in the first edition of John Florio's English/Italian dictionary A Worlde of Wordes, 1598: Snatchingly, higledi-pigledie, shiftingly. The jury is out as to whether the expression derives as a reference to pigs, but there's certainly a pretty good case to be made for a porcine origin. The variant form of the phrase, 'higly-pigly', although not found in print until 1664, seems to suggest that 17th century authors linked the phrase to pigs. If anything epitomises 'higgledy-piggledy' it's a herd of pigs. If I said I could actually prove that the person who coined 'higgledy-piggledy' had pigs in mind I would be telling porkies, but it seems highly likely.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-02-09 10:56:25

  A whip round Meaning An impromptu collection of money from a group of people, in order to fund some joint enterprise. Origin The sad spectacle of the alcoholic ex-footballer Paul Gascoigne was reported in the UK press in February 2013, with the accompanying reports that his celebrity friends had organised a 'whip round' to fund his stay in a rehab clinic. So, why is the collection of funds called a whip round? This expression is very much 'made in England' as it derives from fox hunting, the British Army and parliament. In 19th century foxhunts, people were employed to stop the hounds from straying by using whips to keep them in place. Such people became known as 'whippers in' or simply 'whips'. This term has been perpetuated in the British House of Commons where the word 'whip' again does double duty, as it is both the name of the officers whose job it is to guide straying MPs into the voting lobbies, that is, to 'whip up' enthusiasm for a particular vote, and is also the name of the coercion process itself, which is called 'the whip'. Later in the 19th century, the term began to be used in military officers' messes. John Camden Hotten described this in the 1864 edition of The Slang Dictionary: Whip, after the usual allowance of wine is drunk at mess, those who wish for more put a shilling each into a glass handed round to procure a further supply. It doesn't take much imagination to see how the process became known as a 'whip round'. Although the process began in officers' messes, it was used more widely whenever a request for group funding was made. The first use of 'whip' in this wider context that I can find is in Thomas Hughes' novel Tom Brown at Oxford, 1861: If they would stand a whip of ten shillings a man, they might have a new boat. The early use of 'whip round' was almost coincident with that of 'whip', as is found in this piece from a March 1863 edition of The Hampshire Advertiser, which gives a nice illustration of the use of the term to mean 'a joint contribution to meet a small debt': In our last week's impression we stated that the balance in the hands of the committee for carrying out the Royal wedding festivities amounted to 30 shillings; it should have been threepence. Two or three bills were overlooked at the time, so that instead of a balance in hand it will require a 'whip round' to settle these bills. [Note: the wedding being referred to was the marriage, at Windsor, of Edward Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark.] It is perhaps a mark of social change in the UK that, although the expression originated in the English upper classes, it is now footballers rather than princes who merit a 'whip round'. I can find no record of any collection to fund festivities when the present Prince of Wales was married at Windsor in April 2005.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-02-15 21:12:22

  Lick into shape Meaning To transform a faulty object or venture into something that works effectively. Origin You don't need to watch many 1950s B-feature westerns before you come across some hapless cowpoke getting a 'licking'. That use of 'lick', i.e. 'thrash in a fight', is pretty much restricted to the USA, although it did actually originate in England in the 1500s. Beating someone into shape sounds as though it might be the source of 'lick into shape' but it is in fact the common use of 'lick', i.e. 'pass the tongue over', a meaning that dates from a few centuries earlier, that the phrase alludes to. The first example I can find of the figurative use of the phrase is in Gilbert Burnet's An Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, 1699: "Men did not know how to mould and frame it; but at last it was licked into shape." 'Lick into shape' sprang from the belief held in mediaeval Europe that bear cubs were born shapeless and had to be made into ursine form by their mother's licking. This belief is recorded in a translation of Guillaume de Deguileville's The Pylgremage of the Sowle. The fact that we have a printed recorded of this expression is something of a close call as de Deguileville's text was one of the very first books printed, by William Caxton, around 1480. Caxton's print suggests that the translation was made in 1413. "Beres ben brought forthe al fowle and transformyd and after that by lyckynge of the fader and the moder they ben brought in to theyr kyndely shap." [Bears are born misshapen and are subsequently formed into their natural shape by the licking of their father and mother.] That belief seems rather naive to us now, but it isn't all that surprising in the context of the Middle Ages. The general populace were uneducated and belief in supernatural forces of all sorts was rife. The credence of stories of fabulous animals was strengthened by the printing of bestiaries. These were books that showed pictures of both real and imaginary creatures, so that the common people would know what they looked like. One such bestiary was the Aberdeen Manuscript, circa 1542, which was made in order to: "improve the minds of ordinary people, in such a way that the soul will at least perceive physically things which it has difficulty grasping mentally: that what they have difficulty comprehending with their ears, they will perceive with their eyes." However, the writers of the books had little more knowledge than their audience. To them, a zebra was no more real than a unicorn. The authors merely lifted their pictures and explanations from earlier works without checking the facts.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-02-26 13:09:57

  Meaning Dead, devoid of life (when applied to people, plants or animals). Finished with, unusable (when applied to inanimate objects). Origin This is old - at least 14th century. There's a reference to it in print in 1350, a translation by William Langland of the French poem Guillaume de Palerne: "For but ich haue bote of mi bale I am ded as dorenayl." Langland also used the expression in the much more famous poem The Vision of William Concerning Piers Plowman, circa 1362: Fey withouten fait is febelore þen nouȝt, And ded as a dore-nayl. [Faith without works is feebler than nothing, and dead as a doornail.] The expression was in widespread colloquial use in England by the 16th century, when Shakespeare gave these lines to the rebel leader Jack Cade in King Henry VI, Part 2, 1592: Look on me well: I have eat no meat these five days; yet, come thou and thy five men, and if I do not leave you all as dead as a doornail, I pray God I may never eat grass more. There are several 'as dead as...' idioms, amongst the most notable examples being 'as dead as a dodo' and 'as dead as mutton'. Dodos and mutton are unquestionably dead, but why doornails are cited as a particular example of deadness isn't so obvious. Doornails are the large-headed studs that were used in earlier times for strength and more recently as decoration. The practice was to hammer the nail through and then bend the protruding end over to secure it. This process, similar to riveting, was called clenching. This may be the source of the 'deadness', as such a nail would be unusable afterwards. Doornails have been top of the 'as dead as' pops since the 1300s. Perhaps it's time for a 21st century upgrade? Given the ubiquity of digital downloads, I'll put in an early bid for 'as dead as a DVD'. See other 'as x as y similes'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-03-01 13:56:35

  Swing the lead Meaning To shirk one's labour; to malinger. Origin I can recall that, as a child, I was attracted to an explanation of the phrase 'swinging the lead' that went like this: Sailors used to use lines weighted with lead in order to check how deep the water was beneath their ships. The lazier mariners skimped on the task and just swung the lead in the air, calling out a fictitious depth. Many years on and, as an etymologist, my heart doesn't exactly sing when I receive yet another email starting with "I've always believed that...". It seems time to revisit that explanation of 'swinging the lead' that I took on trust in my formative years and to check the facts. A good place to start with research into nautical language is Admiral W. H. Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book, 1867. This is a glossary of the terms and expressions used by British sailors, most of which date from when 'Britannia ruled the waves', the 18th and 19th centuries. It is clear that sailors did indeed measure the depth of water by dropping in lines weighted with lead. The weights were called 'sounding leads' and Smyth includes this entry: Lead, Sounding : An instrument for discovering the depth of water; it is a tapered cylinder of lead, of 7, 14 or 28 lbs. weight, and attached, by means of a strop, to the lead-line, which is marked at certain distances to ascertain the fathoms. Deep-sea Lead: A lead of a larger size, being from 28 to 56 lbs in weight, and attached to a much longer line. To Heave the Lead: to throw it into the sea as far ahead as possible, if the ship is underway. The leads were sometimes hollow and filled with tallow wax, so as to bring up particles of whatever was on the sea floor, this being useful information to the ship's helmsman. The ropes were knotted at six-foot (fathom) intervals and sounding was also known as 'fathoming', that is. measuring in fathoms. This may be the source of the term 'fathoming out'. The depth of water is crucial to sailors and, before the development of mechanical depth-sounders and, in the 20th century, SONAR echo-location, 'heaving the lead' was the only way of determining it. [Another bane of etymology is the false acronym. SONAR is a genuine example of an early acronym, meaning 'SOund NAvigation and Ranging'.] The leadsmen's role was important and physically demanding - they were called on to throw weights of up to 56 lbs into the sea and then haul them up at frequent intervals. The notion that they might have avoided the exertion of their task seems easy to believe. Counting against it is the fact that they would have had little opportunity for deception as they were supervised by officers and had to show the material that adhered to the tallow to the ship's navigator. You may have noticed that, while Admiral Smyth mentions 'heaving the lead', he makes no mention of 'swinging the lead'. Indeed, until the early 20th century, nor did anyone else - the phrase is first recorded during WWI. In 1917, the magazine To-Day published this:1 "It is evident that he had 'swung the lead' (using Army phrase) until he got his discharge." It's possible that the phrase was coined by soldiers in allusion to a supposed form of malingering by sailors. It may also be that 'swing the lead' was a corruption of 'swing a leg', which was a term previously used in both the British Army and Navy, with the same meaning. What is certain is that 'swinging the lead' wasn't used by sailors themselves in the days of sail. And I had 'always believed that'.... At least my childish belief, although it appears now to have been overly gullible, did initiate an abiding curiosity about phrase origins.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-03-11 12:56:30

  Sayings and phrases about March The idea of March... March. That means spring is round the corner in the UK and, as is usual here at this time of year, the weather is madly changeable. Yesterday, we had a beautifully sunny spring day; today as I look out of the window I can see nothing but freezing grey fog. These days, changes in the weather are taken care of by a click of the central heating thermostat. In earlier times the weather meant much more and, as a consequence, featured heavily in our language. Nothing expresses people's feelings better than the proverbs they coin. As it happens, I am currently transcribing John Ray's monumental glossary A Compleat Collection of English Proverbs 4th Edition, 1768 [...and it is pretty much 'compleat' - pity the poor transcriber] and I had a look to see what the English had to say about March in the 16th and 17th centuries. It seems that the turning of the year from winter to spring and the unreliability of March weather was much on their minds. Proverbs of the day include: - March in Janiveer, [January] Janiveer in March I fear. - March hack ham, comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb. [Hack ham is a version of hackande, meaning 'annoyingly'] - A bushel of March dust is worth a King's ransom. - March grass never did good. - March winds and May fun, makes clothes white and maid's dun. [Interpret this as you will. It appears to be one that Ray was referring to in this disclaimer - "some Proverbs have given offence to sober and pious persons, as favouring too much of obscenity, being apt to suggest impure fancies to corrupt minds."] - March many weathers. Other 'March' phrases that we are still familiar with are 'Beware the Ides of March' and 'the mad March hare'. Knowing that March is generally accepted to be derived from Mars, the Roman god of war, I wondered if 'March' had anything to do with 'marching'. It turns out that it doesn't, but it is connected to another of the many meanings of 'march', that is 'border country'. The English borders with both Scotland and Wales were known as the Marches, and this wasn't because they were marshy. There appears to have been some 'lost in translation' business going on when 'march' was adopted into English from French. The Old French for 'Mars' (Marz) and the Old French for 'boundary' (marche) were thought to be the same word and came into English as 'March' and 'march'. That could also have been influenced by March being the boundary between winter and spring. It's cold enough here today to be the March of the penguins. Anyway, time marches on; back to transcribing...

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-04-03 13:29:55

  In a nutshell Meaning In a few words; concisely stated. Origin The meaning of the phrase 'in a nutshell' is fairly easy to deduce. Anything that could be written in so few words that it would fit into a nutshell would have to be brief and to the point. The first text that was supposed to be enclosed in a nutshell was far from small. Pliny the Elder recorded an event, which he apparently believed to be genuine, in Natural History, the original of which was written in AD 77 and was translated into English in 1601 by Philemon Holland, who included explanatory notes, like this: We find in Histories almost incredible examples of sharpness of the eyes. Cicero hath recorded, that the poem of Homer called the Iliad, written on parchment, was enclosed within a nutshell. The same writer maketh mention of one who could see to the distance of 135 Miles. Almost incredible? The Iliad is about 700 pages of A4 text and in Homer's day would have been written on clay tablets. This story seems to be an early example of Chinese whispers, long before that term was invented. Holland was translating a piece by the Roman author Pliny the Elder, who had been told by someone that Cicero had seen a minutely written version of a text by the Greek author Homer. Shakespeare, who often took themes from the classics, alluded to the 'something compact' idea of 'nutshell' when he gave Hamlet the line: I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. The figurative use of 'in a nutshell' to mean specifically 'in few concise words' didn't emerge until the 19th century. Thackeray used it in print in The Second Funeral of Napoleon, 1841: Here, then, in a nutshell, you have the whole matter. Squeezing books as long as the Iliad into a nutshell was beyond the capability of an ancient Greek with a stylus, but modern nanotechnology has made it straightforward. The Bible seems to be the book that people favour these days for microminiaturization. Many versions exist that would fit inside a walnut shell, and some readable (with a microscope) texts can fit on a pinhead.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-04-03 13:31:17

  Bob's your uncle Meaning 'Bob's your uncle' is an archetypally English phrase and is so familiar here for it to have spawned jokey variants. As 'take the Mickey' has an extended alternative 'extract the Michael', 'Bob's your uncle' is sometimes extended to 'Robert's your auntie's husband'. People in other English speaking countries won't be so familiar with the phrase, so I'll give some examples that may explain the meaning. 'Bob's your uncle' is an exclamation that is used when 'everything is alright' and the simple means of obtaining the successful result is explained. For example, "left over right; right over left, and Bob's your uncle - a reef knot" or, "she slipped the officer £100 and, Bob's your uncle', she was off the charge". Origin 'Bob's your uncle' is one of those phrases that keep etymologists off the street corners. Despite its having been the subject of considerable research, no one is sure of its origin. As with all such mysteries there are plenty of suggestions, but I'll limit things here to the most plausible three - the favourite, the second favourite and an outsider: 1. Like many Victorian aristocrats, the 20th British Prime Minister didn't lack for names and Viscount Cranborne's name - Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, was as full as his beard. For our purposes here, we can cut that down to just 'Robert'. 'Bob's your uncle' is often said to derive from the supposed nepotism of Lord Salisbury, who appointed a favourite nephew, Arthur Balfour, to several political posts in the 1880s. Balfour went on to become Prime Minister after his uncle, but his early political appointments were considered inappropriate as he had shown no prior interest in public work. It is unlikely that Arthur Balfour would ever have become a celebrated politician without the patronage of his influential uncle. Piers Brendon, in Eminent Edwardians, 1979, writes: "In 1887, Balfour was unexpectedly promoted to the vital front line post of Chief Secretary for Ireland by his uncle Robert, Lord Salisbury." The link here between an uncle Bob who was Prime Minister and a 'Bob's your uncle' passport to a cushy life is easy to make.The fact that the word 'nepotism' derives from 'nephew' makes the link seem all the more neat. Such neatness is often the mark of a back-formation, that is, an explanation that is made up after the event. 2. A second interpretation has it that the phrase derives from the slang term 'all is bob', meaning 'all is well'. That term is listed in Captain Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785: A shoplifter’s assistant, or one that receives and carries off stolen goods. All is bob; all is safe. The slang word 'bob', meaning 'shoplifter's assistant', had been in circulation for some years at that time and is defined as such in Nathan Bailey's Dictionary of Canting and Thieving Slang, 1721. More generally, 'bob' was used as a generic name for 'person', like 'Jack', 'Jill', 'Joe' etc. For example, public schoolboys who indulged in land sports like cricket or rugby were called 'dry bobs' and those who preferred boating were called 'wet bobs'. 3. The third potential source is the music hall. The earliest known example of the phrase in print is in the bill for a performance of a musical revue in Dundee called Bob's Your Uncle, which appeared in the Scottish newspaper The Angus Evening Telegraph in June 1924. The expression also formed part of the lyrics of a song written by John P. Long, and published in 1931 - Follow Your Uncle Bob. The lyrics include: Bob's your uncle Follow your Uncle Bob He knows what to do He'll look after you The song was sung and recorded by Florrie Forde, the celebrated music hall artiste of the early 20th century. Eric Partridge lists it in A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 1937. He states it as dating from circa 1890, although he presents no evidence for that. The difficulty with the first two suggested origins is the date. The phrase itself isn't recorded until the 1920s. It would seem odd for a phrase to be coined about the nepotism of an uncle for his nephew well after both Prime Ministers were out of office. The 'all is bob' origin is from a century or so earlier and appears to have little reason to be connected to 'Bob's your uncle' other than that they both contain the word bob. This isn't the first time that an etymological outsider romps home when the favourites have fallen at the first fence. We don't know for sure but, based on current knowledge, this classically English expression may well prove to be Scottish and derive not from 10 Downing Street but from the King's Theatre, Dundee.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-04-03 13:33:06

  Forlorn hope Meaning A hopeless or desperate enterprise. Origin Most of the phrases that are explained via these mails are idioms - the expressions that make English so rich and enjoyable to converse in and, to the frustration of students of it as a second language, so difficult to learn. Idioms can be defined as those phrases that can't be understood from knowing what their constituent words mean. For example, English learners might know what skeletons and closets are, but still scratch their heads over 'a skeleton in the closet'. Alternatively, 'keep off the grass' isn't an idiom as, if you know what 'keep off' and 'grass' mean, you understand the expression. 'Forlorn hope' appears not to fit the definition of idiom but, as we'll see, it turns out to be one. Lack of hope must have been a commonplace feeling amongst the English in the 19th century as they coined a variety of literal phrases to express it - 'not a hope in Hell', 'some hopes', 'what a hope' etc. To that list we might expect to add 'forlorn hope' as, using the above rationale, its meaning is defined by the literal meaning of 'forlorn' and 'hope'. 'Forlorn hope' now just means 'lost hope'. That's not how it was in the 16th century, when a forlorn hope wasn't a world-weary feeling but a robust and gung-ho band of soldiers. Each troop in the British Army had a hand-picked group of men, chosen for their ferocity and indifference to risk (and occasionally by using that tried and tested military method of "I want three volunteers. You, you and you."). They were the army's 'attack dogs' who risked all in reckless death or glory raids on the enemy. The Anglo-Norman terms 'avant-garde' and 'reregard' were adopted into English as 'vanguard' and 'rearguard' in the 14th century. They were the names of the forces that attacked from the front and protected the rear respectively. It seems reasonable to expect a group called the 'avant-garde' to have been the first into battle but, before them, went the 'forlorn hope'. These soldiers, also called the 'forlorn boys' or 'forlorn fellows', were given little hope of survival by their peers. The first mention of them in print is found in Raphael Holinshed'sChronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, 1577: Fortie or fiftie forlorne boies. Soon afterwards, the method of attack was described in John Dymmok's A Treatise of Ireland, circa 1600: Before the vantguarde marched the forelorn hope consisting of 40 shott and 20 shorte weapons, with order that they should not discharge vntil they presented theire peeces to the rebel breasts in their trenches, and that sooddenly the shorte weapons should enter the trenches pell mell. That's the militaristic side of things, now back to the idiomatic. The equivalent group of combative soldiers of the Dutch army were called the 'verloren hoop', literally 'lost troop'. A bit of impromptu mistranslation amongst the British military turned this into 'Forlorn Hope'. The British Navy took the mistranslation a step further and their wildmen were known as the 'flowing hope'. The phrase was tortured still further and those who were sacrificed whenever the rearguard was called on to retreat were called the 'rearlorn hope'. Although the original meaning of 'forlorn hope' is largely lost to us now, it was still in use in 1920 when John Galsworthy wrote in The Forsyte Saga: "And round Crum were still gathered a forlorn hope of blue-bloods with a plutocratic following". As time progressed, a forlorn hope was thought of as something one experienced rather than something one belonged to. The 'rearlorn hope' took no such linguistic journey and has stayed exclusively within the army.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-04-12 14:13:42

  Scot free more like this... ...other phrases about: Money Meaning Without incurring payment; or escaping without punishment. Origin Dred Scott was a black slave born in Virginia, USA in 1799. In several celebrated court cases, right up to the USA Supreme Court in 1857, he attempted to gain his freedom. These cases all failed but Scott was later made a free man by his so-called owners, the Blow family. Knowing this, we might feel that we don't need to look further for the origin of 'scott free'. Many people, especially in the USA, are convinced that the phrase originated with the story of Dred Scott. The etymology of this phrase shows the danger of trying to prove a case on circumstantial evidence alone. In fact, the phrase isn't 'scott free', it is 'scot free' and it has nothing to do with Mr. Scott. Given the reputation of Scotsmen as being careful with their money we might look to Scotland for the origin of 'scot free'. Wrong again, but at least we are in the right part of the world now. 'Scot' is a Scandinavian word for tax or payment. It came to the UK as a form of redistributive taxation which was levied as early the 10th century as a form of municipal poor relief. 'Scot' as a term for tax has been used since then in various forms - Church scot, Rome scot, Soul scot and so on. Whatever the tax, the phrase 'getting off scot free' simplyrefers to not paying one's taxes. No one likes paying tax and people have been getting off scot free since at least the 11th century. The first reference in print to 'scot free' is in the Writ of Edward the Confessor. We don't have a precise date for the writ but Edward died in 1066, which is a long time before Dred Scott. The use of the figurative version of the phrase, that is, one where no actual scot tax was paid but in which someone escapes custody, began in the 16th century, as in this example from John Maplet's natural history Green Forest, 1567: "Daniell scaped scotchfree by Gods prouidence." Scotchfree was a variant based on a mishearing. An example of the currently used form, that is, 'scot free', comes a few years later, in Robert Greene's The Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia, 1588: These and the like considerations something daunted Pandosto his courage, so that hee was content rather to put up a manifest injurie with peace, then hunt after revenge, dishonor and losse; determining since Egistus had escaped scot-free.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-04-21 21:34:01

  Clog up Meaning To become obstructed. Example use: The leaves clogged up the drain. The extra traffic made the roads clog up. Origin People often send me suggestions of the origins of phrases to add here. These range from the interesting and erudite to the frankly bonkers. A recent proposition was 'clog up the works', which was said could have derived from Luddite Dutch workers throwing their clogs into machinery to wreck it. That sounded like classic folk-etymology but I decided to look closer when I read that the French for clog is 'sabot' and that was how 'saboteur' derived. That was certainly at the interesting end of the scale and worth investigating. The above story circulates in various forms; the workers are either Dutch or French and the sabotage is said to have taken place in either the 16th or the 17th century. As it turns out, 'sabotage' is a 20th century invention. The earliest known example of the word in print is in a Reuters' report of a labour dispute in Paris in June, 1907, published in the UK in the Manchester Courier: M[onsieur] Bousquet solemnly declared on oath that he had never recommended sabotage or pillage. The French word 'saboter' is a verb meaning 'make a noise with sabots' and was generally applied to anyone who clattered around like a bull in a china shop and generally fouled things up. The original saboteurs were French dissidents, but they wore clogs rather than threw them. The 'damaging machinery with footwear' source of the idiom 'clog up' gets a close but no cigar award. So, how did 'clog up' originate? To 14th century English peasants a clog was a heavy block of wood. Oxen were 'clogged up' by fixing the blocks to their feet to stop them straying. When shoemakers first hollowed out blocks of wood to make footwear, 'clog' was the obvious name to go for. John Trevisa's translation of de Glanville's Latin text De Proprietatibus Rerum, 1398, includes: He feedeth and nourisheth oxen and bindeth their feet ... and cloggeth them while they be in pasture and leas. That form of clogging developed into our current use of the verb 'to clog' via several words of similar sound and meaning. In the early 16th century 'clogged up' meant to be stuck in sticky clay, literally 'clayed up'. This was a muddling of 'clog', 'clay' and 'clag'. In this part of the world, that is Yorkshire, and I believe in other parts too, sticky clay soil is called 'claggy'. Later in the 16th century, 'clog up' was used as we now use it, as a general term for 'impede/choke up'. This came about by means of other muddlings, of 'clogging', 'clotting' and 'cloying'. We might have opted for any of 'clay up', 'clag up', 'clot up' or 'cloy up' but 'clog up' got the nod. Going back to the oxen, it's clear that a 'clog' and a 'log' was the same thing, so the beasts might just as well have been said to be 'logged up'. The change of language didn't happen in the fields but it did inside the house. At Christmas we now burn (or more often these days, eat) yule logs. When the first reveller decided to give a name to the large block of wood burned at Christmas, it was a clog not a log. Henry Bourne recorded this in The Antiquities of the Common People, 1725: Our Fore-Fathers were wont to lay a Log of Wood upon the Fire, whlch they termed a Yule-Clog, or Christmas-Block. Hereabouts we have 'clog dancing'. That might easily have turned into 'log dancing', which sounds much more fun.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-04-26 10:32:09

  Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater Meaning Don't discard something valuable along with something undesirable. Origin Proverbs are intended to pass on popular wisdom and are frequently expressed as warnings - 'don't count your chickens', 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth' and so on. To that list of don'ts we can add the odd-sounding 'don't throw the baby out with the bathwater'. Sadly, any discussion of the origin of this proverb has to refer to the nonsensical but apparently immortal email that circulates the Internet 'Life in the 1500s' (or 1600s, as some variants have it). One of the claims in one version of that mail is that "in mediaeval times" people shared scarce bathwater and by the time that the baby was bathed the water was so murky that the baby was in danger of being thrown out unseen. Complete twaddle, of course. What is unusual about this phrase is that, quite by chance, the mischievous author of 'Life in the 1500s' hit on a correct date - the proverb did originate in the 1500s. 'Throw the baby out with the bathwater' is a German proverb and the earliest printed reference to it, in Thomas Murner’s satirical work Narrenbeschwörung (Appeal to Fools), dates from 1512. Murner wrote in German of course, but we hardly need a translator as he was good enough to include a woodcut illustrating the proverb. The expression was part of everyday German language from then onward (as 'Schüttet das Kind mit dem Bade aus') but didn't emerge in English until the 19th century. The Scottish philosopher and German scholar Thomas Carlyle was well acquainted with German proverbs and translated it in an essay denouncing slavery entitled Occasional Discourse on the [N-word, see below] Question (written in 1849 and published in 1853): And if true, it is important for us, in reference to this Negro Question and some others. The Germans say, “you must empty-out the bathing-tub, but not the baby along with it.” Fling-out your dirty water with all zeal, and set it careering down the kennels; but try if you can to keep the little child! Despite going against the establishment view on slavery that was held in his day, Carlyle wasn't quite the freedom fighter we might imagine. His analogy compared the dirty bathwater to slavery (to be discarded) and the 'little child' to the useful service provided by the slave (to be kept). He suggested that "the Black gentleman is born to be a servant and is useful in God's creation only as a servant". What he in fact proposed was that servants should be hired for life, not sold as slaves. The proverb, in the form of 'do not empty out the baby with the bath water', was in general use in English from the late 19th century onward.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-05-13 14:00:56

  Joined at the hip Meaning Inextricably linked; inseparable. Origin The evocative expression 'joined at the hip' derives from the situation of conjoined twins. Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874) were a celebrated pair of conjoined twins and, being from Siam (as Thialand was then called), they are the source of the expression Siamese twins. The pair were internationally known in their day and their celebrity has led many to assume that the term 'joined at the hip' also originated with them. This seems unlikely as the Bunker brothers were joined at the sternum, not the hip. The figurative use of the phrase is American and dates from as recently as the 1960s. The earliest printed record of it that I can find is from the Californian newspaper the Pasadena Star-News, March 1963: "The two organizations [Caltech and the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce] were so closely knit ... they were practically joined at the hip." While it is clear that the expression derives from conjoined twins, we don't really know whether they were real or imagined and, if real, who they were. A pair of contenders from England are The Biddenden Maids. In the English village of Biddenden, Kent, an annual dole of food and drink is made to the poor every Easter. Accounts vary on how long this has been going on but claims are made that it began after the death of conjoined twin sisters, who were born in Biddenden in 1100. Records show that the annual distribution is known to have taken place since at least 1605 and that, since at least 1775, the dole has included Biddenden cakes. These are hard biscuits that contain an image of twins, joined at the hip and shoulder. As with many old English folk traditions, it is impossible to separate fact from folklore and almost every aspect of the Biddenden Maids story is a source of dispute. Nevertheless, they are a pair of well-known twins who were 'joined at the hip'. Whether they were well-known in Pasadena in 1963 is a moot point. All the early figurative uses of the phrase are American and whoever coined it may just have been making a general, non-specific reference to conjoined twins. Sadly, until more evidence emerges, this is one of those phrases where we have to say, 'we just don't know'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-05-18 15:51:10

  Hobson's choice Meaning No real choice at all - the only options being to either accept or refuse the offer that is given to you. Origin Two options: take it or leave it; that's 'Hobson's choice'. There is a story that this expression comes from a Mr. Hobson who hired out horses and gave his customers no choice as to which horse they could take. This has all the credentials of a 'folk etymology' myth but, in this case, the derivation is correct. A search of Google returns several thousand hits for 'Hobbesian choice'. The mistaken uses of that phrase, in place of the correct 'Hobson's choice', originate from a confusion between the celebrated philosopher Thomas Hobbes (who, incidentally, was the originator of another commonplace phrase - 'nasty, brutish and short') and the less well-known carrier Thomas Hobson, to whom the phrase refers. Thomas Hobson (1545–1631) ran a thriving carrier and horse rental business in Cambridge, England, around the turn of the 17th century. Hobson rented out horses, mainly to Cambridge University students, but refused to hire them out other than in the order he chose. The choice his customers were given was 'this or none'; quite literally, not their choice but Hobson's choice. The phrase was already being described as proverbial less than thirty years after Hobson's death. The Quaker scholar Samuel Fisher referred to the phrase in his religious text, The Rustick's Alarm to the Rabbies, 1660: "If in this Case there be no other (as the Proverb is) then Hobson's choice ... which is, chuse whether you will have this or none." The Spectator, No. 509, 1712, explained how Hobson did business, which shows clearly how the phrase came into being: "He lived in Cambridge, and observing that the Scholars rid hard, his manner was to keep a large Stable of Horses, ... when a Man came for a Horse, he was led into the Stable, where there was great Choice, but he obliged him to take the Horse which stood next to the Stable-Door; so that every Customer was alike well served according." After his death in 1631, Hobson was remembered in verse by no less a figure than John Milton, saying "He had bin an immortall Carrier". That seems rather a strange thing to say just after he had died. Eighty-six was a very good innings in the 17th century, but hardly immortality. The phrase was still well enough known in the 20th century for 'hobsons' to be adopted then as Cockney rhyming slang for 'voice'. It has no connection with the similar sounding 'Hobson-Jobson', which derived as a corruption by British soldiers in India of the Arabic street cry 'Yā Ḥasan! Yā Ḥusayn!' = 'O Hasan! O Husain!'' (Hasan and Husain were grandsons of Muhammad). The most celebrated application of Hobson's choice in the 20th century was Henry Ford's offer of the Model-T Ford in 'any colour you like, so long as it's black'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-05-26 12:39:28

  Bronx cheer Meaning A sound of contempt or derision, made by blowing through closed lips. Origin The Bronx is a borough of New York City, named after the 17th century Jonas Bronck, who was the first recorded European settler in the area. I don't usually resort to circumstantial evidence for the origin of a phrase, as all phrases and sayings have definitive origins and speculation doesn't have a place in etymology. Nevertheless, in this case it seems legitimate to bend the rule and make an informed guess, as it is hard to imagine how the expression 'Bronx cheer' might have originated other than as a reference to The Bronx. 'Bronx cheer' originated as a slang term in the USA in the early years of the 20th century and began appearing in newspapers from around 1920. The earliest example that I can find is in a newspaper report of an [American] football game between Princeton and Stagg's universities, written by no less a luminary that the US author Damon Runyon, in the Bridgeport Telegram, October 1921: ...if Chicago lose the east will grin and give western football the jolly old Bronx cheer. Princeton is but a few miles from the Bronx and that early piece helps to legitimate the widely held view that 'Bronx cheer' originated at sporting events in the area. The New York Yankees stadium is most often said to have been the birthplace of the phrase. Other sources suggest it originated in Bronx theatres. At that date England and America were two countries separated by a common language (as George Bernard Shaw never said) and in England a report like the one above would have surely substituted the word 'raspberry'. 'Bronx cheer' was included in an English-American Dictionary column that was printed in the English newspaper The Daily Mail in 1924, which was part of the Mail's regular attempts to keep their readers up to date with Americanisms, but the phrase never established itself over here. 'Blowing a raspberry' is essentially the same action as making a Bronx cheer. That expression is a little earlier and was coined at the end of the 19th century. It also has a popularly believed derivation, which may or may not be true. It is generally thought that the expression is a shortened version of the Cockney rhyming slang 'raspberry tart' and, as the sound is an imitation of flatulence, I'll leave it to you to decide what 'tart' is supposed to rhyme with. Other explanations are that a raspberry comes from the shape of the lips when making the sound, or simply that it is a rasping sound.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-06-10 21:58:42

  Heavy metal Meaning Hard rock music, usually electric guitar-based and always loud. Origin 'Heavy metal' seems at first a strange label to apply to a form of music. However, a little investigation into the symbolism behind the name reveals it to be a rather obvious choice. 'Heavy' was coined in the beatnik era of the 1950s to mean serious or profound and the term 'heavy music' was then and later applied to music in that vein. It's clear to see this meaning of heavy is derived from the usual meaning, that is, weighty or massive. Okay, that's 'heavy' explained but why should a form of music be called metal? Well, most metals are heavy, especially the metals favoured by the bands who played that genre and used metals in their names, for example Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly and Quicksilver Messenger Service (quicksilver is mercury). Also, the term 'heavy metals' in the chemical sense includes mercury, lead and cadmium, which have just the right image of toxicity to suit the musical style. So, both 'heavy' and 'metal' are suitable candidate words for this genre. Add to that the fact that heavy metal had already been widely used as a military term for heavily fortified tanks/guns etc. and it starts to look like an ideal choice as a label. The first heavy metal bands, notably Black Sabbath/Ozzy Osbourne, Led Zeppelin and Judas Priest, hailed from Birmingham, which was then (sadly no longer) a principal centre of metal goods manufacturing in the UK. With the decline of that manufacturing tradition, most of the 'metal bashing', as it was known, is now done by these bands rather than by men with big hammers. Birmingham was the first industrialised city in the world and this industry was centred around the factories and furnaces of the aptly named Black Country, described by the US Consul to the city in 1868 as "Black by day, red by night". Many of the members of the above groups worked in factories by day (Ozzy Osbourne was, for example, a horn tester in a car factory) and played in hard rock bands by night. It's hardly surprising that the music reflected the sights and sounds that the band members were surrounded by. Black Sabbath are generally accepted to be the first heavy metal band. They were originally called Earth after J. R. R Tolkien's mythical Middle Earth. Tolkien was a local boy and is thought to have based the region of Mordor on the Black Country. All in all, it's clear where the musical form heavy metal originated. Although Ozzy and friends were playing heavy metal in the late 1960's/early 1970s, they didn't use that expression to describe it - for that we need to cross to the USA. The term 'heavy metal' first appears in print in William Burroughs' 1962 novel The Soft Machine. His character Uranian Willy is described as "the Heavy Metal Kid". Burroughs later re-used the term in his 1964 novel Nova Express: "With their diseases and orgasm drugs and their sexless parasite life forms - Heavy Metal People of Uranus wrapped in cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes - And the Insect People of Minraud with metal music." It isn't clear who first appropriated the term to refer to loud rock music, although several lay claim to it. The widely quoted description of Jimi Hendrix's music as 'like listening to heavy metal falling from the sky', while being a fairly accurate assessment, isn't the earliest use of the phrase. Some claim that the US rock music critic Lester Bangs, while working for Creem magazine, used the expression in 1968 to describe a performance of the band MC5 (Motor City Five), but I've been unable to find documentary evidence of that. Creem magazine themselves attribute the term to Mike Saunders, in an article about the 'Kingdom Come' album, by Sir Lord Baltimore, in the May 1971 edition of the magazine: "This album is a far cry from the currently prevalent Grand Funk sludge, because Sir Lord Baltimore seems to have down pat most all the best heavy metal tricks in the book." This has the benefit of being a traceable citation, as copies of the edition are still extant. So, until other hard evidence is found, that has to be the current strongest claim. It would be surprising if the term had never been used in the musical context before 1971 though - after all Steppenwolf used it in the lyric of their 1968 song Born to be Wild: "I like smoke and lightning Heavy metal thunder Racin' with the wind And the feelin' that I'm under" The phrase may be American but the music was born, like my good self, in the 'jewel of the English Midlands' - the Black Country.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-07-08 06:52:44

  Dumb blonde Meaning A conspicuously attractive but stupid blonde woman. Origin I had it in mind that the expression 'dumb blonde' originated in the silent movies of the early days of Hollywood, where female actors like Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish looked on in mute adoration while male heros saved the day. It didn't take much thought to realise that this notion made little sense; all the characters in those films were 'dumb', not just the women, and neither of the above mentioned were blonde. Nevertheless, my initial guess turns out not to have been too far wide of the mark. The expression was first used, in the USA, in the 1920s. The 'stupid' meaning of the word 'dumb' has been more popular in America than in other parts of the English-speaking world, but it was first so used in England. 'Dumb blonde' is a disparaging term directed at a woman but the first 'dumb' people were men. The expression 'dumb ox' long predates 'dumb blonde' and was first applied to no less a luminary than the taciturn theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas. This nickname was probably influenced by Aquinas's quietness and as a corruption of the Dutch 'Dom', a prefix given to religious dignitaries. By the early 1920s various 'dumb' insults became fashionable and 'dumb ox' (for men) and 'dumb bunny' and 'dumb Dora' (for women) were in use in the US college scene. It didn't take long for wags to come up with 'dumb belle' as another. Here we'll take a little sideways journey to look at the origin of the word 'dumbbell'. We now know dumbbells as the handheld weights used in gyms. Rather an odd word when you think about it, but the following derivation provides the explanation. When large wheel-mounted peals of bells were introduced into churches in the Middle Ages, it was found that ringing them was quite vigorous exercise. Strength and fitness were as valued then as it is now and people used the bells, with the clappers padded with cloth to stifle the ring, as an early form of fitness machine. They were 'dumb' bells, hence 'dumbbells'. Back to 'dumb blondes'... 'Dumbbells' wasn't an entirely pointless tangent as 'dumb-bell blonde' was the initial form of 'dumb blonde' and is found in US newspapers from around the mid-1920s, as in this example from the Iowa Citizen, December 1926: Many capable, loyal, reliable sweethearts and wives are deserted for the featherweights. Such a woman may be worth her weight in rubies; but if you're only a mere man you are going to to prefer any dumb-bell blonde. The spread of 'dumb blonde' imagery was no doubt influenced by Anita Loos' popular novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which had been published the previous year, and the description of Jean Harlow as the Blonde Bombshellin her 1933 film, although the phrase 'dumb blonde' doesn't actually occur in either.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-07-16 19:27:49

  Fool's errand Meaning A pointless undertaking. Origin The description 'fool' is now often used as a contemptuous insult, but in the Middle Ages it didn't have such negative connotations. A fool then was a naive simpleton but regarded with respect and even admiration - somewhat the way that 'the fool on the hill' is portrayed in The Beatles' song. The numerous names and phrases that contain the word 'fool' generally refer to how easy it is to dupe (or to fool if you like) a fool. Examples of this are: Fool's errandFool's gold - a brassy mineral that resembles gold. Fool's paradise - a state of euphoria based on false hope. Fool's parsley - Lesser Hemlock, a poisonous weed that resembles parsley. Fool's mate - a naive chess move that incurs checkmate in two moves. Fools rush in... - a proverb indicating the unworldly lack of caution shown by fools. It has long been part of the initiation of new recruits to send them on 'fool's errands'. A credulous beginner might be sent to the stores to fetch a skyhook or a tin of striped paint. The first references to 'fool's errand' come in texts from the 18th century. An early example is from the Yorkshire-born clergyman Edmund Hickeringill's Priest-craft, 1705: Did not the Pope send all the Princes in Christendom upon a Fools Errand, to gain the Holy Land, that he might (as he did in their absense) rob them of their territories. Given that playing tricks on the simple-minded must have been happening since Adam was a lad, it seems odd that 'fool's errand' didn't emerge into the language until the 18th century. The reason for this is that mediaeval England had a different name for the sport, which was a 'sleeveless errand'. From the Tudor era to around the 1700s, 'sleeveless' was very commonly used to mean 'futile' or 'trifling'. 'Sleeveless answers' were those that gave no useful information and a 'sleeveless errand' was a fool's errand, often used to get someone out of the way. The historian Raphael Holinshed used the expression in Chronicles, 1577: So as all men might thinke that his prince made small account of him, to send him on such a slevelesse errand. 'Sleeveless' had also been used for centuries before with the same meaning as now, that is, 'without sleeves', so it's reasonable to assume that's where the 'futile' meaning of sleeveless derived. What's not clear, and despite my best efforts I've not been able to find out, is why 'sleeveless' was used with that meaning. Such usage of the word has long since died out and, although it's not difficult to make guesses at the link between 'sleeveless' and 'futile', to know the real truth of that derivation we may need get aboard a time machine.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-07-30 06:49:58

  Put the cart before the horse Meaning Reverse the accepted or logical order of things. Origin The accompanying horse and cart image looks preposterous. That's as it should be as the word 'preposterous' entered the English language precisely to describe such back to front imagery. Of course, 'pre' derives from Latin and is a standard prefix, that is, it is 'at the front'. Likewise, the Latin 'post' means 'at the back', so 'preposterous' actually denotes the normal arrangement of things, with the front at the front and the back at the back. 'Postprerous' might have been a better choice of word but, like 'head over heels', which also makes no sense, it's too late to change now. Put the cart before the horseAn early reference to 'putting the cart before the horse' comes in George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie, 1589: Ye haue another manner of disordered speach, when ye misplace your words or clauses and set that before which should be behind. We call it in English prouerbe, the cart before the horse, the Greeks call it Histeron proteron, we name it the Preposterous. He was probably referring back to, or possibly translating directly from, a work by Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC) - On Friendship: "We put the cart before the horse, and shut the stable door when the steed is stolen, in defiance of the old proverb." A hysteron proteron is a figure of speech we inherited from the Greeks, in which the thing that should come second is put first; for example, 'putting on one's shoes and socks'. It isn't surprising that, when needing an Anglicised proverb to express that notion, the English turned toward what they knew best, that is, agriculture, and in particular, horses. There are more 'horse phrases' in English than those referring to any other animal, including 'man's best friends', dogs. The notion of things being the opposite of what they rightfully should be seems to have played on the minds of the English at the time when modern English began to be formed, that is, in the 16th century. It is a common theme in Shakespeare and The Tempest,Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream all contain 'world turned upside down' magical elements. Other 'back to front' English phrases include 'the tail is wagging the dog', 'upside down', 'topsy-turvy' and 'inside out'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-08-25 18:48:27

  Black sheep of the family Meaning A disreputable or disgraced member of a family. Origin Old joke alert - let's just get this out of the way before we begin: The black sheep of the family'Black sheep' is rather an odd phrase to choose to epitomise worthlessness. Why sheep? Black cats are supposed to be lucky and badgers, dolphins, pandas and penguins, which are all primarily black, are considered cute. First thoughts might suggest that it came about because of the linking of black things with bad things, which is a long standing allusion in English texts - black mood, black looks or (where I come from) the Black Country. It may also be because shepherds disliked black sheep as their fleeces weren't suitable for dying and so were worth less than those of white sheep. In fact, it is more likely to have derived from a bit of misinterpretation by the writers of early English Bibles. Myles Coverdale's 1535 Bible, which was the first complete bible printed in English, rendersGenesis 30:32 as: ‘All blacke shepe amonge the lambes’ which Coverdale had translated from a German source text. Like bloggers and web publishers these days, the writers of early bibles copied from each other without checking their sources. Other bibles have the text as ‘all the browne cattell among the sheepe’ or ‘every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb’. In the original texts, the Genesis 30:32 story is that the shepherd Jacob suggested that he remove any spotted, dark or otherwise identifiable sheep or goats from his master's flock in order to be able to later demonstrate that he hadn't stolen any white ones. The 'black sheep' were actually a mark of integrity rather than disrepute. The 'Chinese whispers' of the early bible versions caused the original meaning to become lost and confused readers into the belief that the dark sheep were removed because they were worthless. The first record of 'black sheep' in a derogatory sense that I can find in print is from an English Puritan who emigrated to America in 1635, the appropriately named Thomas Shepard, in the evangelical text The Sincere Convert, 1640: Cast out all the Prophane people among us, as drunkards, swearers, whores, lyers, which the Scripture brands for blacke sheepe, and condemnes them in a 100. places. Meanwhile, back in England, black sheep maintained the same status as black cats. The long-standing English country tradition that black sheep are omens of good fortune remained until the 19th century. The Folk-Lore Record, 1878, included this piece: "We speak figuratively of the one black sheep that is the cause of sorrow in a family; but in its reality it is regarded by the Sussex shepherd as an omen of good luck to his flock." Baa, baa, black sheepBaa, Baa, Black Sheep is one of the oldest English nursery rhymes and was first printed in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, circa 1744 and is certainly much older than the 18th century. The original printed form is almost the same as the version familiar today: Bah, Bah a black Sheep, Have you any Wool? Yes merry have I, Three Bags full, One for my master, One for my Dame, One for the little Boy That lives down the lane Like most nursery rhymes, the interpretation of the text is a source of debate. It has been suggested in recent years that it contains a racial slur which, to this reader at least, seems speculative and based on little more than it includes the word 'black'. If there is a negative connotation it is that the rhyme may refer to the unpopular export tax on wool imposed in 1275. That country lore was overtaken by the figurative use of the 'black sheep' that we now commonly use.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-09-02 12:21:43

  Whistle-blower Meaning A person who tries to raise the alarm about a problem and publicises it inside and/or outside of his/her organisation. Origin If the number of phrases that make direct reference to whistles is anything to go by, whistling looms large in the consciousness of the English-speaking peoples. Examples are: ———— 显示引用的内容 ———— Similar activities, for instance humming, produce a much shorter list. 'Whistle-blowers' are people who attempt to draw their superiors' attention to something they believe to be wrong and, if they fail in that attempt and if they feel strongly enough about the matter, go public. Such folk may have been around for a long time but it is only recently that they have been given a name. The expression 'whistle blower' was used literally well before it gained its current figurative meaning. Lots of people blew whistles; hunters were said to 'whistle down the wind' when they let their falcons loose to fly. Sailors, when needing a wind to free a becalmed ship, would 'whistle for it'. The first profession to be labelled as 'whistle blowers' were the US police, who blew whistles to attract attention to wrongdoing. An early example comes from the newspaperThe Janesville Gazette, June 1883, in a story about a policeman who woke half the town in order to forestall a riot: Quiet was restored upon the arrival of the regular police force, and ere the town clock had struck the midnight hour all had returned to their homes. But the crowd of people were all willing to bet that McGinley was the champion whistle blower in America. More recently, football referees have also been called 'whistle blowers'. The association with the blowing of whistles and the drawing of attention to a misdemeanour has now been extended into figurative use. The new use of the expression began in the 1960s and the earliest examples of its use are found in journalistic reports of the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War, in which several hundred civilians were murdered. Such a report, which was made at the stage that newspapers were still reporting My Lai as an 'incident' and 'alleged massacre', was printed in the Lawton Constitutional, December 1969. This dismissed Ronald Ridenhour, the GI that brought the story to the public's attention, as a fortune hunter with a vested interest: This "whistle-blower" has turned out to be a clever member of the anti-war faction which has been using the alleged misconduct of a few GIs to slander the American Army. In the 19th century we had 'whistle blowers', in the 20th we had 'whistle-blowers' and now we have 'whistleblowers'. This changing of an expression into a word, with the intervening hyphenated phase, is one of the most common ways we form new words. There are many examples, from Shakespeare's coinages 'birthplace', 'bloodstained' and 'barefaced' (using just the Bs), to more modern-day examples like 'beancounter' and 'bombshell' (and how long before 'modern-day' becomes 'modernday'?). Search engines seem to have caught on to this mutation of phrases into words very quickly. A Google image search for "whistle blower" brings up pictures of people blowing whistles. A search for "whistleblower" retrieves pictures of Bradley (a.k.a. Chelsea) Manning.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-09-08 19:03:40

  To kowtow to Meaning To accept the authority of another; to act in a subservient manner. Origin To kowtow toI've understood the meaning of 'to kowtow to' for as long as I can remember but it is only recently that I came to wonder how the expression originated. 'Kowtow' (and, in case you've not come across it before, kowtow is pronounced to rhyme with 'cow' + 'how') is an odd word and, for no better reason than the sound of it, I thought it might have something to do with cows. Apparently not. 'Kowtow' sounds odd to our ears because it is a Chinese word. To kowtow is to kneel and touch the ground with the forehead as an act of worship or submission. The practice first came to the attention of the English-speaking world late in the 18th century, when westerners began to visit China. The word is an Anglicised version of the Chinese 'kētóu', which derives from 'kē' (knock')+ 'tóu' (head). The British explorer Sir John Barrow was well placed to observe kowtowing at first hand. In 1792 he was appointed as an aide to Viscount Macartney, the British ambassador in Peking. Barrow subsequently wroteTravels in China, 1804, in which he was the first to explain kowtowing to the west: ———— 显示引用的内容 ———— There were several degrees of kowtowing, depending on the difference in rank of the participants, the highest level requiring a full face down prostrate pose with arms held wide. To kowtow toMacartney was given his £15,000 a year job as ambassador to head a trade mission to negotiate a deal between Britain and China. In 1793 he was presented to Emperor Qianlong, or 'son of heaven' as he preferred to be called, but the viscount pointedly refused to perform the obligatory kowtow. To the disbelief of the aghast Chinese court, Macartney would only go down on one knee, as he would to the British ruler. This event was recorded by the satirical cartoonist Gillray. Qianlong left in a huff, the trade mission was abandoned and Macartney was sacked. Prices in the UK have increased about 500 times since 1793. Macartney might have felt that he had retained his dignity but, had he known it was going to cost him a £7.5 million a year job, he might have thought that a quick kowtow would have been prudent.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-09-17 23:14:24

  Keep a stiff upper lip Meaning Remain resolute and unemotional in the face of adversity, or even tragedy. Origin This is such a clichéd expression that it is difficult to imagine doing anything else with a stiff upper lip apart from keeping it. If you try to hold your upper lip stiff your facial expression will appear aloof and unsmiling, betraying little of any feeling you might be experiencing. That demeanour is the source of 'keep a stiff upper lip'. The phrase is similar to 'bite the bullet', 'keep you chin up', and (to the amusement of many Americans) 'keep you pecker up'. It has become symbolic of the British, and particularly of the products of the English public school system during the age of the British Empire. In those schools the 'play up and play the game' ethos was inculcated into the boys who went on to rule the Empire. That 'do your duty and show no emotion' attitude was expressed in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade: ———— 隐藏引用的内容 ———— Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. In more recent years the stiff upper lip has gone out of favour in the UK and British heroes have been able to show more emotion. Footballers now cry when they lose and soldiers cry at comrades' funerals, both of which would have been unthinkable before WWII. Keep a stiff upper lipSo, where did the 'stiff upper lip' originate? In 1963, P. G. Wodehouse published a novel called Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, and you can't get much more English than that. Strange then that a phrase so strongly associated with the UK should have originated in America. The first printed reference to it that I know of is in the Massachusetts Spy, June 1815: "I kept a stiff upper lip, and bought [a] license to sell my goods." That citation doesn't explicitly refer to keeping one's emotions in check, but a slightly later one, from the Ohio newspaper The Huron Reflector, 1830, makes the meaning unambiguous: "I acknowledge I felt somehow queer about the bows; but I kept a stiff upper lip, and when my turn came, and the Commodore of the Police axed [sic] me how I come to be in such company... I felt a little better." The expression can be found in several US references from the early 19th century and was commonplace there by 1844, which is the date of the earliest example that I can find from a British source.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-09-20 12:16:52

  Fifth estate Meaning The fifth power in the land. Origin Fifth estate What we generally mean by the word 'estate' these days is a large body of land, often one surrounding a grand house. The best-known estate in my neck of the woods is the 35,000 acre Chatsworth estate in Derbyshire, designed by Capability Brown, and it is a classic of its kind. The Duke of Devonshire, whose family seat is Chatsworth, owns at least four other major properties, but when we talk of the third, fourth, fifth etc. estates, we aren't referring to land but to an earlier 14th century meaning of the word, that is, 'power in the land'. The OED defines that meaning of 'estate' as: "An order or class regarded as part of the body politic, and as such participating in the government.". The 2013 film The Fifth Estate presents online media, and specifically the WikiLeaks website, as being 'the fifth estate'. This immediately raises the question "what are the other four?". It would be nice, if a little pedestrian, to give you a list and end it there. As so often with language, things aren't so simple. Firstly, five is rather an abundance of estates; we started with three. In Works, 1380, the theologian John Wyclif declared that three estates were 'ordained by God'. Given those credentials and Wyclif's religious views, it's not surprising that he heads the list with the Clergy, followed by the Barons and Knights and lastly the Commons. In time, after the concept of the three estates of power became accepted, the wording was generally given as 1. Lords Spiritual; 2. Lords Temporal; 3. Commons. All was clear until 1559, when another religious John, the Bishop of London John Aylmer, muddied the waters. He stated that the 'three estates' were those required by parliament to enforce legislation, viz. the Crown, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. In the parliament hous you shal find these 3 estats. The King or Quene, which representeth the Monarche. The noble men, which be the Aristocratie. And the Burgesses and Knights the Democratie. So, by the 16th century, although there might have been some dispute about what they were, there were three estates. Move on to the 18th century and we get the notion of the fourth estate. In our time this is generally regarded as being the press, in the form of powerful press barons like Lord Beaverbrook (who actually was a baron and is the source of the term 'press baron'), William Randolph Hearst and latterly Rupert Murdoch. The novelist Henry Fielding was the first to refer to a 'fourth estate', in theCovent-Garden Journal 1752, but he didn't believe it to be the press: ...that very large and powerful Body which form the fourth Estate in this Community - The Mob. Before we settled on media barons as the holders of the fourth estate, various writers put forward 'the mob', 'William Cobbett' and 'Harper's Magazine' as candidates. Likewise, just as various people were called 'the fifth Beatle', there are various nominees for the title of 'fifth estate'. What people really mean by the expressions 'fourth estate' and 'fifth estate' is 'a power in the land that has emerged to rival the existing acknowledged powers'. What that might be depends on time and place. In 1932, The Times reported that "radio has been called the fifth estate.". By 1955 they were saying that "[Trades] Unions are now the fifth estate of the realm.". Now it is a foot race between WikiLeaks, social media, WWW etc. Once we have settled on a clear winner we will presumably move on to the 'sixth estate'. Any suggestions?

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-09-27 22:24:23

  Shrinking violet Meaning A shy or modest person. Origin Anyone coming across the expression 'shrinking violet' for the first time might be excused for being confused. You might wonder who Violet was and why she might be, like Alice in Wonderland, telescoping down to the size of a guinea-pig. The English language is chock-full of phrases that include people's names, for example 'For Pete's sake', 'Davy Jones' locker', 'Jimmy Riddle' and so on; and there's a whole page of 'Jacks'. By and large, with some notable exceptions like 'Sweet Fanny Adams' and 'Hobson's choice', these don't refer to real people. The violet in this case isn't an imaginary diffident woman but a flower. As for the shrinking, we don't mean reducing in size but modestly recoiling. The Viola family of flowers includes violets and pansies, which are polychrome extroverts that seem just the opposite of shy. Their colourfulness makes them a favourite of municipal plantsmen around the world and even the horticulturally challenged amongst you must have seen them adorning park flowerbeds and traffic islands. However, the phrase 'shrinking violet' was coined in the UK before selective breeding turned the plants into images of steroidal blousiness. The native English violet (Viola odorata, known as the wood violet) is, as seems appropriate for our small green island, a reclusive and understated flower. Shrinking violetFey Georgian gentlemen like Keats and Shelley were disposed to wandering around woodland composing poetry and it was a close friend of theirs who was doing just that when he gave the ground-hugging Viola odorata the name 'shrinking violet'. In a poetry magazine called The Indicator, the poet and essayist Leigh Hunt drew attention to the modest wood violet: ———— 显示引用的内容 ———— There was the buttercup, struggling from a white to a dirty yellow; and a faint-coloured poppy; and here and there by the thorny underwood a shrinking violet. The expression may have originated as the lyrical name of a flower rather than a person but it is now mainly used figuratively to describe modest and introverted individuals. That figurative usage is first found in the USA. An early example of the phrase's use in print comes from the Pennsylvania newspaper The Titusville Herald, November 1870. The rather sarcastic article is about the New York businessman William Tweed, who was widely believed to have stolen large amounts of public money: ...deputations of the tax payers of New York waiting upon Mr. Tweed with the title-deeds of their mansions and the shrinking violet Tweed begging them to pardon his rosy blushes. Can it be that he is a humbug? A search for 'shrinking violet' online these days brings up links to a weight reduction method that women may use to magically 'reduce by a dress size in one treatment', which nicely brings us back to where we started.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-10-09 07:11:01

  Kettle of fish more like this... ...other phrases about: Animals Food and drink Meaning This expression is usually part of the phrases 'a fine kettle of fish', 'a pretty kettle of fish' etc, which mean 'a muddle or awkward state of affairs'. The phrase 'a different/another/whole-new kettle of fish' has a separate meaning, which is, 'an alternative; a different thing altogether'. Origin Being English, I have a close association with kettles, which are essential equipment for a custom that the English can still claim world dominance, the making of 'a nice cup of tea'. As you may have realised, the expression 'a kettle of fish' doesn't refer to tea-kettles but to the long saucepans that have been used for centuries to poach whole salmon, namely fish-kettles. The noun 'kettle of fish' is listed by several reference works as dating from 1745, although the earliest actual citation of the term in print that I can find is in Thomas Newte's A Tour in England and Scotland in 1785: ———— 显示引用的内容 ———— "It is customary for the gentlemen who live near the Tweed to entertain their neighbours and friends with a Fete Champetre, which they call giving 'a kettle of fish'. Tents or marquees are pitched near the flowery banks of the river... a fire is kindled, and live salmon thrown into boiling kettles." Incidentally, the two meanings of the verb 'poach', which are 'steal game' and 'cook by simmering in water', both derive from the French 'pocher', which means 'put in a bag'. The 'stealing game' meaning is pretty obviously connected with putting game into bags. The 'cook by boiling' is less intuitive and derives from the poaching of eggs, in which the egg white forms a pocket for the yolk. So, if a ne'er-do-well were to illegally take a salmon from a river and boil it for his tea, he would be poaching in both senses. The French term fête-champêtre, meaning 'rural feast', was still in use at the 1780s to describe outdoor meals. The word 'picnic' (also French - 'pique-nique') was introduced around that date but wasn't widely used until a century or so later. There's no obvious reason why a humdrum item of kitchen equipment was singled out as the source of a phrase meaning 'muddle or mess'. It may be an allusion to the confusion of bones, head and skin that is left in fish-kettles after the fish has been eaten. In all likelihood there wasn't any specific connection between the saucepans and muddle. It seems that 'kettle of fish' was picked (who knows why) as a synonym for 'state of affairs', or simply 'thing' and then various prefixes added to convey meaning. The earliest uses of the phrase, which apparently are examples of the 'muddle' meaning come from the English novelist Henry Fielding. In The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, 1742, he writes: "'Here's a pretty kettle of fish', cries Mrs. Tow-wouse." and, in The History of Tom Jones, 1749: "Fine doings at my house! A rare kettle of fish I have discovered at last." Should there be any doubt about the meaning of the expression in Fielding's uses of it, there's an unambiguous explanation of the phrase in Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1811: "When a person has perplexed his affairs in general, or any particular business, he is said to have made a fine kettle of fish of it." 'A different kettle of fish' is much later in origin than 'a pretty kettle of fish' and is known only since the 1920s. It's quite pleasing that, as far as etymology goes, 'a different kettle of fish' is a different kettle of fish.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-10-12 15:46:41

  Get medieval Meaning Use violence or extreme measures. Origin The expression 'get medieval' was coined in the USA is fairly recent years. It joins a list of figurative phrases of the 'become crazy' form. These include venerable expressions like 'go berserk', 'run amok', 'go haywire' and, more recently, 'go postal'. Get medievalThe allusion in 'get medieval' is clearly to the forms of torture that were in use in the Middle Ages, the best-known of which was the rack. This grisly stretching apparatus was used to extract retractions of faith from both Protestants and Catholics during the 15th and 16th centuries in England. A notable victim was Cutbert Simson, who is shown in the accompanying image, which records his torture in 1558. He was probably relieved when he was released from the rack, but not for long - he was burned at the stake soon afterwards. The person who brought the phrase 'get medieval' to the public's attention is Quentin Tarantino, who, with Roger Avary, wrote the screenplay to the 1994 film Pulp Fiction. In the film, the character Marsellus Wallace swears revenge on an attacker: Tarantino leaves it to our imagination what the revenge will be but, as Wallace says it is going to involve "a pair of pliers and a blow-torch", we can assume a degree of unpleasantness. Get medievalTarantino and Avary didn't coin the phrase however. It was in occasional use by the 1970s. The earliest use that I can find of it is in another form of pulp fiction, a cartoon strip in the Ohio newspaper The Lima News, October 1971. The cartoon suggests that the expression was then used to mean 'adopt old-fashioned courtly values' rather than being a reference to extreme violence.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-11-01 12:49:47

  Horse-sense Meaning A robust form of common sense believed to be found in poorly educated but shrewd people. Origin When faced with the task of coining a new phrase, horses wouldn't seem to be the obvious choice of animal to act as a yardstick for mental discernment. Owls, foxes or dolphins maybe, but not horses. Indeed, the person who coined the term horse feathers (meaning nonsense, stupidity) went the more conventional route in associating horses with a certain lack of refined intellect. Given the animal's important place in the lives of the people of medieval England, where present-day English was largely formed, it's not surprising that we now have numerous expressions that refer to horses. These usually allude to the hefty, coarse or even vulgar nature of the working hacks of the Middle Ages. This perceived lack of sophistication is apparent in the way that rural language was formed. Any plant that resembled another but was large and coarser would be known as horse-'plant name of choice'. Here are a few examples (and there are many more): ———— 显示引用的内容 ———— Horse-senseLikewise, in general use, adding the prefix 'horse' was considered enough to render any item comic (in the same way that Steve Coogan's 'monkey tennis' is inherently humorous). Examples (and again there are many to choose from) are 'horse-fiddle' (a watchman's ratchet or rattle) and 'horse-billiards' (a form of deck quoits using a large wooden disc). So why 'horse-sense', which seems to go against the usual pattern? In fact, this expression came about in just the same way. The addition of 'horse' to 'sense' was meant to convey an unsophisticated, country type of sense. What is different is that, although the idea of an equine violin or billiards table is ludicrous, 'country-sense' has value, being a common-sense alternative to the high-falutin' claptrap of what we would now call 'men in suits'. As to where and when the phrase 'horse-sense' originated, my horse-sense tends to lead me towards the wild west and plain-talking men in cowboy hats. The expression is often attributed to the American writer James Kirke Paulding, who wrote the novel Westward Ho! in 1832: I'm for Dangerfield, though he hasn't got a white pocket handkerchief, and though he can't play the piane [sic]. He's a man of good strong horse sense. In 1870 the New York magazine The Nation offered a corroborative view of the expression's origin: The new phrase - born in the West, we believe - of ‘horse-sense’, which is applied to the intellectual ability of men who exceed others in practical wisdom. In fact, we need to cross the Atlantic for the origin. 'Horse-sense' was coined nearer to the Devon town of Westward Ho! (incidentally, this is the only place name in the UK that includes an exclamation mark) than to Pauling's wild west. The English romantic novelist Evelyn Malcolm wrote a string of novels in the 19th century, firmly set in Daphne du Maurier West Country bodice-ripping territory. One of these was Forsaken; Love's Battle for Heart, published in The London Story Paper, January 1805, which includes a reference to a horny-handed son of the soil: Lud, Bill Perkins has horse sense. Horse senseOr you may just prefer to recross the pond for this definition of the expression, attributed to W. C. Fields: Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2013-11-01 12:50:15

  Pulling one's leg Meaning To deceive someone in a humorous or playful way. Origin 'You're pulling my leg' was a common slang expressions in the 20th century, but is rather going out of use these days. It would be nice to be able to say that I've discovered the origin of 'pulling your leg', which is one of the holy grails of etymology. Regretfully, not. Nevertheless, I get asked about the phrase often and it's worth investigating, so here goes. To 'have your leg pulled' means to be misled or teased in a mild and benign way. It is natural, or at least seems to be natural, as almost everyone that claims to know the origin of the phrase does it, to locate its source in a situation where an actual leg is pulled. But, like those other 'leg' phrases 'an arm and a leg', 'shake a leg' and 'break a leg', there's no evidence to show that the limb in question when the phrase was coined was anything other than imaginary. The two most commonly repeated of the literal 'leg pulling' theories are: ———— 显示引用的内容 ———— Die hard As to the actual origin of 'pulling my leg', I don't really know, but I can provide an approximate date and location. Surprisingly to some, who might think it sounds British, the phrase is American. It was coined in the 19th century and the first time it is found in print is in The diary of James Gallatin, secretary to Albert Gallatin, a great peace maker, 1813-1827, recording an incident that was said to have taken place in 1821: Mr. Adams is not a man of great force or intelligence, but his own opinion of himself is immense. I really think father, in a covert way, pulls his leg. I know he thinks little of his talents and less of his manners. The diary was published in 1914 from notes Gallatin claimed to have been given to him by his grandfather. It is now generally accepted to be a fake and the contents invented by Gallatin. The use of the expression 'pulls his leg', which isn't found anywhere else in print for many years, hardly adds to the diary's claim of authenticity. The real date of origin is more like 1880 and the earliest example that I've found of it in print is from the Ohio newspaper The Newark Daily Advocate, February, 1883: It is now the correct thing to say that a man who has been telling you preposterous lies has been "pulling your leg." The fact that the phrase needed to be explained to the paper's readers is clear evidence that it was a neologism (as far as Newark, Ohio was concerned at least) in 1883, so if that example isn't the earliest use it must be close to it. Pull the other one, it's got bells onWhat is unequivocally British is the extended version 'pull the other one, it's got bells on'. That of course means 'don't try and fool me with that crazy story, I'm not that stupid'. It has been in use in Britain since at least the 1960s, which is when the first appearances in print are found. The 'bells' are probably a reference to a jester's costume. So, we don't know who coined 'pulling your leg', but I hope this has gone some way to clarifying who didn't. What's that? You know the origin of 'the real McCoy', 'posh' and 'the whole nine yards'...

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