Z A Phrase A Week

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-01-16 10:24:06

  At loggerheads Meaning In dispute with. Origin 'At loggerheads' is of UK origin. The singular 'loggerhead' occurs as a name in several contexts - as a species of turtle, a bird and as a place name. Originally, a loggerhead was none of these but was first used with the meaning of 'a stupid person - a blockhead'. Shakespeare used it that way in Love's Labours Lost, 1588: "Ah you whoreson logger-head, you were borne to doe me shame." A 'logger-head' was literally a 'block-head'. A logger was a thick block of timber which was fastened to a horse's leg to prevent it from running away. In the 17th century, a loggerhead was also recorded as 'an iron instrument with a long handle used for melting pitch and for heating liquids'. It is likely that the use of these tools as weapons was what was being referred to when rivals were first said to be 'at loggerheads'. The first known use of the phrase in print is in Francis Kirkman's, The English Rogue, 1680: "They frequently quarrell'd about their Sicilian wenches, and indeed... they seem... to be worth the going to Logger-heads for." The next year saw the printing of The Arraignment, Trial, and Condemnation of Stephen Colledge. In that text, the author makes a clear link between loggerheads and fighting: So we went to loggerheads together, I think that was the word, or Fisty-cuffs. Incidentally, 'fisticuffs' is another two-word term from around the same date that was later amalgamated into a single word. A cuff was a blow with the open hand. A fisty cuff was a cuff using the fist, i.e. a punch. Following the departure of the clown William Kemp from The Lord Chamberlain's Men, the troupe of actors that William Shakespeare worked with for most of his writing and acting career, his place was taken by Robert Armin. In 1605, the diminutive clown Armin, a.k.a. 'Snuff, the Clown of the Globe', had a stab at writing and came up with Foole upon Foole. In this piece he makes the first recorded reference to 'fisty cuffs': "The foole... falls at fisty cuffes with him." Loggerheads is also the name of three small towns in the UK - in Leicestershire, in Lancashire and in Mold, North Wales. As is 'de rigueur' when a town might have some reason to claim to be associated with some phrase or another, each town's residents claim that 'at loggerheads' originated in their home-town. Alas, despite the early citations referring to 'going to' loggerheads, this isn't the case. The towns were named after the term, not the other way about. Nevertheless, the use of 'loggerheads' as a place name has been a boon to stand-up comedians of the 'take my wife...' fraternity. They have been trotting out this classic for years: 'I'm going on holiday - a fortnight at Loggerheads with the wife'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-02-05 14:03:32

  Derring-do Meaning Heroic daring. Origin We now use 'derring-do' as a rather curious and archaic sounding two-part noun to describe 'ye olde' swordplay and the like. Use of the phrase was almost obligatory in any review of films starring the late Errol Flynn, who was surely the most audacious actor ever to swash a buckle. The fact that we come to have the word at all is actually due to a series of mistakes by a group of very eminent writers. The earliest form of 'derring-do' in print is found in Geoffrey Chaucer's Troylus And Criseyde, circa 1374: "In durring don that longeth to a knight." Chaucer was using the two words 'durring' and 'don' with their usual 14th century meanings of 'daring' and 'do'. This line in his work translates into 20th century language as 'in daring to do what is proper for a knight'. The poet John Lydgate, paraphrased Chaucer in The Chronicle of Troy, 1430, and his 'dorryng do' was misprinted in later versions of the work as 'derrynge do'. In reading the above, the celebrated Tudor poet Edmund Spenser appears not to have realised that derrynge was a misprint of durring, the meaning of which he would have been familiar with, and interpreted 'derrynge do' as meaning 'brave actions'. That was the way he used it in several of his late 16th poems, including his best-known work, The Faerie Queene, 1596: "A man of mickle name, Renowned much in armes and derring doe." Last, but not least, make way for that inveterate plunderer of historic language, Sir Walter Scott. His use of 'derring-do' as a single word in the hugely popular novel Ivanhoe, 1820, cemented it into the language: "Singular," he again muttered to himself, "if there be two who can do a deed of such derring-do!" Incidentally, Flynn and his flamboyant colleagues weren't described as swashbuckling for no reason. 'Swash' was a 16th century term that referred to the noise braggarts made to simulate the sound of swishing weapons when pretending to swordfight. A buckler was a small round shield, usually fixed to the forearm. So, a 'swashbuckler' was a swaggering ruffian; someone very likely to swash his buckle.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-02-05 14:04:20

  Wax poetic Meaning Speak in an increasingly enthusiastic and poetic manner. Origin 'Waxing poetic' has nothing to do with bees, candles, or polishing cars. The verb 'to wax' is 'to grow'; the opposite of 'to wane', which is 'to decrease'. Grow and decrease have largely superseded the archaic terms wax and wane in almost all modern usages, apart from the waxing and waning of the moon. The other remaining contemporary uses of 'wax' with the meaning of 'grow', survive in various expressions like 'wax poetic' and 'wax lyrical'. These are often explained as deriving from the imagery of the waxing of the moon. In fact, the word is extremely ancient and was used to mean grow in many contexts prior to it being used to describe the monthly increase in size of the visible moon. King Alfred, in the translation of Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care, which he commissioned in AD 897, used the Old English version of the word - 'weaxan'. There are numerous examples of the use of 'wax', meaning 'grow', in mediaeval texts. For example, The Geneva Bible, 1560: "But he that shulde haue bene vpright, when he waxed fat, spurned with his hele." [the 1611 version has it in more modern English as "Jesurun waxed fat, and kicked."] It isn't until much later that 'wax' began to be used to refer to flowery and poetic speech or writing. This occurs in various phrases, like 'wax lyrical', 'wax poetic' and 'wax eloquent'. Of these, it is 'wax poetic' that is still most commonly used. 'Wax eloquent' was the first of this group of phrases to be used to describe someone becoming increasingly expansive and expressive in speech. That dates from the early 19th century, for example, this piece from Bracebridge Hall, a collection of essays and literary sketches by Washington Irving, 1824: "The whole country is covered with manufacturing towns... a region of fire; reeking with coal-pits, and furnaces, and smelting-houses, vomiting forth flames and smoke." The squire is apt to wax eloquent on such themes. Ironically, far from 'waxing eloquent', Irving was suffering from writer's block in 1824, following a family bereavement, and struggled to finish enough essays as to be worth publishing. 'Waxing poetic' came next. The first example that I can find in print is in Sir Henry Morton Stanley’s How I Found Livingstone, 1872: "One could almost wax poetic, but we will keep such ambitious ideas for a future day." Stanley seems to have been an enthusiastic waxer. His book also contains "I waxed indignant", "Farquhar and Shaw waxed too wroth", "I accordingly waxed courageous" - all at a time when he reports that the sun "waxed hotter and hotter". 'Wax lyrical' followed in the early 20th century; for example, Gilbert Cannan's translation of Jean-Christophe in Paris, 1911: "He had the genius of taste except at certain moments when the Massenet slumbering in the heart of every Frenchman awoke and waxed lyrical." Time for me to wane lyrical and stop.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-02-06 13:11:36

  Back to square one Meaning Back to the beginning, to start again. Origin There are three widely reported suggestions as to the origin of this phrase: BBC sports commentaries, board games like snakes and ladders and playground games like hopscotch. Let's examine them in turn: BBC Commentaries: In order that listeners could follow the progress of football games in radio commentaries, the pitch was divided into eight notional squares. Commentators described the play by saying which square the ball was in. The Radio Times, the BBC's listings guide, referred to the practice in an issue from January 1927. Commentaries that used a numbering system certainly happened and prints of the pitch diagrams still exist. Recordings of early commentaries also exist, including the very first broadcast sports commentary (of a rugby match). That commentary, and many others that followed, referred listeners to the printed maps and a second commentator called out the numbers as the ball moved from square to square. However, at no point in any existing commentary do they use the phrase 'back to square one'. Despite this, the BBC issued a piece in a January 2007 edition of The Radio Times that celebrated 80 years of BBC football commentary. In this, the football commentator John Murray stated with confidence that "Radio Times' grids gave us the phrase 'back to square one'" and that "the grid system was dropped in the 1930s (not before the phrase 'back to square one' had entered everyday vocabulary)". This confidence is despite the fact that, although it could be true, it is nothing but conjecture. What is a fact is that the BBC broadcast a more measured view in the popular etymology series Balderdash and Piffle, in collaboration with the OED, in 2006. This questioned the claims that the BBC commentaries were the source of the phrase and that it was in circulation in the 1930s. It's not the first time that BBC commentators have talked balderdash and piffle and I doubt it will be the last. Private Eye made something of a cottage industry out of printing examples of such in their Colemanballs columns and books. (see over the moon). Board Games: Many people report that the phrase refers to Snakes and Ladders or similar board games. The earliest citation of the phrase in print is currently 1952, from the Economic Journal: "He has the problem of maintaining the interest of the reader who is always being sent back to square one in a sort of intellectual game of snakes and ladders." Despite that comment, it isn't a feature of Snakes and Ladders that players are sent back to square one. Of the many examples of such boards that exist, only a few have a snake in the first square. For the phrase to have come from that source people must have had occasion to use it, and that appears not to be the case with Snakes and Ladders. Hopscotch This playground game is played on a grid of numbered squares. The precise rules of the game vary from place to place but usually involves players hopping from square to square, missing out the square containing their thrown stone. They go from one to (usually) eight or ten and then back to square one. The game's name derives from 'scotch', which was used from the 17th century to denote a line scored on the ground and, of course, hopping. It was referred to in the 1677 edition of Robert Winstanley's satirical almanac Poor Robin: "The time when School-boys should play at Scotch-hoppers." All of the above explanations are plausible enough to gain supporters. As is usual with phrases of uncertain origin, most people are happy to believe the first explanation they hear. There's no real evidence to put the origin beyond reasonable doubt, and so it remains uncertain. Whatever the source, 1952 is surprisingly late as the earliest printing for a phrase that was certainly in the spoken language much earlier than that. There are many believable hearsay examples from at least thirty years earlier. Perhaps a printed source from before 1952 will yield the truth? See also: back to the drawing board.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-02-16 16:01:11

  Augur well Meaning To foreshadow a successful outcome, indicated by some circumstance or event. Origin As you might expect of someone who writes this stuff, I like crosswords. A clue that I came across recently was 'Soothsayer with a noisy implement'. Those of you who are familiar with the arcane rules of cryptic crosswords may have deduced that the answer to this is 'augur'. For those of you who aren't crossword aficionados, an augur is a fortune teller and an auger is a carpenter's tool - the 'noisy' keyword usually translates as 'sounds like' and clearly, 'augur' sounds like 'auger'. To be more specific about augers and augurs, an auger is the 'bit' part of a carpenter's brace and bit, i.e. a drill. An augur was a Roman official with the job of predicting the future and advising on public policy. That might sound like a difficult task but, in practice, the augurs just had to look mysterious and feign the experience of receiving omens arising from the flight of birds or the appearance of the entrails of sacrificial victims, etc. - no doubt to the accompaniment of a good deal of toga flapping and rolling of eyes. Of course, 'auguring well' has nothing to do with drilling neat holes but derives from the Roman augur's prediction of a good outcome as the consequence of some portent. Similarly, 'to augur badly' didn't mean 'to make an inaccurate prediction' but 'to predict a bad event'. The phrase 'augur well' isn't a translation from Latin but originated, in the late 18th century, amongst the classically educated English elite. The first record of it that I have found is from a speech to the UK Parliament, given by the Duke of Richmond and published in the Parliamentary Register for 1778: "I augur well from the readiness with which it [his request for papers about the movements of British forces] has been granted." 'Augur well' has much in common with 'bode well', which is also of ancient vintage and means much the same thing. A bode was a herald or messenger and was referred to thus as early as circa 888AD in King Alfred's Boethius De consolatione philosophiae. Like 'augur', 'bode' also had to wait until the 18th century to become absorbed into a common phrase. The first known use of 'bode well' comes from John Dryden's Works, circa 1700: "Whatever now The omen proved, it boded well to you."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-03-30 16:18:18

  In the offing Meaning Imminent; likely to happen soon. Origin This is one of the many phrases of nautical origin. It is quite simple to understand once you know that 'the offing' is the part of the sea that can be seen from land, excluding those parts that are near the shore. Early texts also refer to it as 'offen' or 'offin'. Someone who was watching out for a ship to arrive would first see it approaching when it was 'in the offing' and expected to dock before the next tide. Something that is 'in the offing' isn't happening now or even in a minute or two, but will inevitably happen before too long. The phrase has migrated from its naval origin into general use in the language and is now used to describe any event that is imminent. In its literal nautical sense, the phrase has been in use since the late 16th century and the earliest citation of it that I have found is a quotation from S. Argoll from 1610 which was reported by S. Purchas in Purchas his Pilgrimes, in 1906: "I came to an Anchor in seven fathomes water in the offing to sea." The phrase wasn't commonly used until the beginning of the 18th century, as in this example from Josiah Burchett's Memoirs of Transactions at Sea During the War with France, 1703. This is, incidentally, a classic example of the use of the long form of the letter 's' in 18th century printing: ...fome other fmall Ships were feen in the Offing. Thofe Ships ftood away with their Boats a-head, fetting fire to fome, and deftroying and deferting other of their fmall veffels. All of the 18th century citations of 'in the offing' refer to the offing as a physical place. It wasn't until the mid 19th century, in America, that our presently understood figurative meaning began to be used. An early example of that comes in S. B. Beckett's Portland Reference Book and City Directory, 1850: We have known wives to forget that they had husbands when they supposed that a tax bill or a notification to do military duty was in the offing.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-03-30 16:18:45

  Meaning An affectionate term for wife. Origin Unlike the many vaguely pejorative terms that the English have coined about their near neighbours, e.g. 'Dutch courage', 'Dutch treat', Dutch uncle' etc., 'my old Dutch' has nothing at all to do with the Netherlands. The expression is often cited as an example of Cockney rhyming slang. It is certainly a slang term that originated in London, but it isn't rhyming slang, as Dutch, being short for duchess, is an abbreviation rather than a rhyme. Some commentators have suggested that the expression is true CRS and that 'Dutch' is short for 'Duchess of Fife' and hence a rhyme for 'wife'. This assertion isn't supported by the facts. The term 'Dutch', meaning 'woman of showy appearance' and later an affectionate term for wife, was known by the early 18th century. Oliver Goldsmith referred to it in his comic play She Stoops to Conquer, 1773: "This Stammer in my address... can never permit me to soar above the reach of... one of the Duchesses of Drury-Lane." The name was used specifically to refer to a wife in Donald Mitchell's Jimmy Johnson's Holiday, circa 1883. Mitchell was an American writer who wrote this piece while travelling in England: "Now he'd not a brown [a copper halfpenny], nor a friend in town, In fact he was quite undone; He made a vow he'd never row with his old Dutch again." The granting of titles to the British aristocracy is a subject that is minutely recorded and those records come in handy at this point. The Earl of Fife was created the First Duke of Fife on 27th July 1889, on his marriage to Princess Louise Dagmar, the daughter of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Until that date, there had been no title of Duchess of Fife. It is clear that the phrase came before the title and that 'Duchess of Fife' can't be the source of 'my old Dutch'. The determination of some to establish that the term is Cockney rhyming slang has led to another inventive suggestion - that the term derives from 'Dutch plate', i.e. 'mate'. This is doubly unconvincing as 'Dutch plate' isn't a known 19th century expression and 'my old Dutch' means wife, not mate. It is likely that this supposed derivation has been confused with 'China plate', which is genuine CRS. It was quite soon after Mitchell's publication that the song that made the phrase well-known was popularised by the music-hall entertainer, Albert Chevalier. Chevalier was a popular London-based variety artist of the late Victorian era and was widely known by the abbreviation 'AC'. That's something of a mercy, as his full name was Albert Onésime Britannicus Gwathveoyd Louis Chevalier. The lyrics of My Old Dutch were written by Chevalier in 1893, probably as a tribute to his wife Florrie although, if so, the 'been together now for forty years' line is something of a stretch of artistic license, as the couple didn't marry until October 1894. We've been together now for forty years, An' it don't seem a day too much, There ain't a lady livin' in the land As I'd swop for my dear old Dutch. The supposed association of 'My old Dutch' with Cockney rhyming slang has been strengthened by the linking of the phrase with Chevalier, who's stage persona was very much the Cockney 'singing costermonger'. Amongst London costermongers, 'dutch' just meant 'duchess' - slang, yes, but rhyming, no. The Duchess of Fife lived a quiet life out of the public gaze, but her position in society made her name well-known. 'Duchess of Fife' did become used as rhyming slang for wife, but that was in the 20th century, long after ''Dutch' and 'my old Dutch' were already well-established.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-03-30 16:19:19

  Ring a ring o'roses, a pocketful of posies, atishoo, atishoo, all fall down Meaning Verse from a nursery rhyme. Origin There are many versions of this rhyme, some of which use entirely different words to the roses/rosy variants. The most commonly seen are 'ring a ring of (or o') roses (or rosy)' and 'ring around a rosy'. The many versions aren't surprising as, being lines from a playground rhyme, they would have first been spoken/sung/chanted rather than recorded in a book. It is often suggested that the rhyme relates to the symptoms of plague, specifically the Black Death - the bubonic plague that spread through Europe in the 1340s, or to the Great Plague of London, 1665/6. The plausible-sounding theory has it that the 'ring' was the ring of sores around the mouths of plague victims, who subsequently sneezed and fell down dead. Those with more knowledge of etymology will shake their heads sagely and explain that the plague theory is a well-known falsehood. The idea is usually dismissed for these reasons: 1. The first appearance of the rhyme in print is in Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose, which wasn't published until 1881, suggesting that the rhyme originated far too late for the Great Plague to have been the origin: Ring-a-ring-a-roses, A pocket full of posies; Hush! hush! hush! hush! We're all tumbled down. 2. The 'atishoo, atishoo, all fall down' lyric isn't present in many of the the numerous versions and neither soreness about the mouth nor sneezing tally with the actual symptoms of people suffering from bubonic plague. 3. The noted folklorists of childhood Iona and Peter Opie have reported that the plague theory didn't appear until the 1950s. If the theory were true then we would expect to see it in circulation much sooner than that. Despite the strong evidence against it, some of the refutations of the plague theory are rather too emphatic in their rejection of this idea. Let's look at those items of evidence in turn: Firstly, the 1881 date that is part of the refutations is a little misleading; it is the first known printing of the complete rhyme, but the game and the 'ring a ring of rosies' line were known well before that. The game and the rhyme were known in the USA, and quite probably elsewhere, by 1855, when it was included in The Old Homestead, a novel by Ann S. Stephens. This depicts children playing 'Ring, ring a rosy' in New York. William Wells Newell, the author of Games and Songs of American Children, 1884, wrote that Ring a Ring a Rosie, with the familiar tune, was in use by children in Bedford, Massachusetts, circa 1790. The version he recorded was: Ring a ring a rosie A bottle full of posie, All the girls in our town, Ring for little Josie Newell was a respected folklorist but, unfortunately, he didn't supply documentary evidence for his assertion. The argument that the lyric couldn't have lasted in common playground parlance without being recorded in print from the days of the Black Death in the 1340s until 1881 has some weight. The Black Death wasn't the only occurrence of plague in England - the population also suffered Great Plague of 1665. That 'ring a ring o'roses' lay unrecorded between 1665 and 1790 doesn't seem entirely impossible - many phrases have lain dormant for longer than that. Children's rhymes would have been of little interest to authors in the 17th century and printing was then still an expensive process. There's no evidence to suggest that these lines originated as anything other than a children's rhyme and would inevitably have been known to children for some time before appearing in print. How long a time is open to conjecture, but 125 years - well, why not? Secondly, both coughing, sneezing and bright red sputum are symptoms of pneumonic plague, which has just as good a claim to be the rhyme's origin as does bubonic plague. Thirdly, the Opies only claim that they haven't found evidence of the plague theory from before the 1950s; they don't know when it actually originated. So, the items of evidence against the plague origin of the rhyme are open to doubt. However, showing that something is possible doesn't make it true. It is a common urge to try to ascribe meaning to ambiguous lyrics and poems - for example, 'Pop goes the weasel'. An alternative and more probable explanation, and one which is almost always the case with nursery rhymes, is that the words are playful nonsense. The plague derivation is indeed unlikely but, in their haste to denounce an apparent fallacy, several websites have begged the question by swallowing the assertion that 'the first time the phrase appears in print is 1881' as fact. As a French wine producer once said after tasting a poor imported wine which was labelled 'Appellation d’origine contrôlée'; "the paper never refuses the ink" - that goes double for digital paper.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-03-30 16:19:48

  A stitch in time saves nine Meaning A timely effort will prevent more work later. Origin This is nothing to do with rips in the fabric of the space-time continuum, as some have ingeniously suggested. The meaning of this proverb is often requested at the Phrase Finder Discussion Forum, so I'll be explicit. The question usually asked is "saves nine what"? The stitch in time is simply the sewing up of a small hole in a piece of material and so saving the need for more stitching at a later date, when the hole has become larger, Clearly, the first users of this expression were referring to saving nine stitches. The Anglo Saxon work ethic is being called on here. Many English proverbs encourage immediate effort as superior to putting things off until later; for example, 'one year's seeds, seven year's weeds', 'procrastination is the thief of time' and 'the early bird catches the worm'. The 'stitch in time' notion has been current in English for a very long time and is first recorded in Thomas Fuller's Gnomologia, Adagies and Proverbs, Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British, 1732: "A Stitch in Time May save nine." Fuller, who recorded a large number of the early proverbs in the language, wrote a little explanatory preamble to this one: "Because verses are easier got by heart, and stick faster in the memory than prose; and because ordinary people use to be much taken with the clinking of syllables; many of our proverbs are so formed, and very often put into false rhymes; as, a stitch in time, may save nine; many a little will make a mickle. This little artiface, I imagine, was contrived purposely to make the sense abide the longer in the memory, by reason of its oddness and archness." As far as is known, the first person to state unambiguously that 'a stitch in time saves nine', rather than Fuller's less confident 'may save nine', was the English astronomer Francis Baily, in his Journal, written in 1797 and published in 1856 by Augustus De Morgan: After a little while we acquired a method of keeping her [a boat] in the middle of the stream, by watching the moment she began to vary, and thereby verifying the vulgar proverb, '"A stitch in time saves nine."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-03-30 16:20:19

  A skeleton in the closet Meaning A secret source of shame, potentially ruinous if exposed, which a person or family makes efforts to conceal. Origin The phrase 'a skeleton in the closet' was coined in England in the 19th century. Since then the word closet has become used primarily in England to mean 'water closet', i.e. lavatory - a possible hiding place for a skeleton I suppose, but not one with much potential. The English now usually use 'a skeleton in the cupboard', with 'skeleton in the closet' more common in the USA. 'A skeleton in the closet' undoubtedly originated as an allusion to an apparently irreproachable person or family having a guilty secret waiting to be uncovered. The close-at-hand domestic imagery of a closet or cupboard gives a sense of the ever-present risk of discovery. What isn't clear is whether the origin of the phrase lies in fiction or with real life, so to speak, skeletons. The phrase was first used in the early 1800s. The first reference I can find in print is a figurative one in a piece by William Hendry Stowell, in the UK monthly periodical The Eclectic Review, 1816. The 'skeleton' in this case was the desire to keep a hereditary disease secret: Two great sources of distress are the danger of contagion and the apprehension of hereditary diseases. The dread of being the cause of misery to posterity has prevailed over men to conceal the skeleton in the closet... The dramatic device of a hidden body was used widely in the Gothic novels of the Victorian period. Edgar Allen Poe was the master of such tales, for example, this extract from The Black Cat, 1845 : "Gentlemen, I delight to have allayed your suspicions", and here, through the mere frenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom. The wall fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. It has been suggested that the phrase derives from the era of the notorious body snatchers, i.e. prior to 1832, when the UK's Anatomy Act allowed the more extensive use of corpses for medical research. The theory goes that, in a scenario like that of the concealment of Catholic priests in priest holes in domestic houses in Elizabethan England, doctors would conceal in cupboards the illegally held skeletons they used for teaching. There's no evidence at all to corroborate that theory. Concealed skeletons are occasionally found walled-up in houses but they are usually those of unwanted infants. The notion of a skeleton in the closet as shorthand for the grim evidence of a murder was widely adopted into the language due to the writings of the popular Victorian author William Makepeace Thackeray. He referred to 'a skeleton in every house' in a piece in 1845 and explicitly to 'skeletons in closets' in The Newcomes; memoirs of a most respectable family, 1854–55: Some particulars regarding the Newcome family, which will show us that they have a skeleton or two in their closets, as well as their neighbours. Whether Thackeray was alluding to actual skeletons or whether he was responding to the imagination of authors like Poe, we are never likely to know. One person he certainly wasn't referring to was the 18th/19th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham - despite his being the best-known actual skeleton in a cupboard. Bentham was hardly aiming to keep his skeleton a secret, as he willed that his body be preserved in a wooden cabinet. It is on public display in University College, London. The American expressions 'come out of the closet' or simply 'come out' began to be used in the 1960s and are, of course, direct follow-ons from 'a skeleton in the closet'. As far as I'm aware, no one in the UK has declared themselves as gay by coming out of a cupboard.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-04-04 19:27:43

  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 There is a story that 'Hobson's choice' 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 will return 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 and the obscure 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, 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, explains 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'. 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 2009-04-13 13:56:34

  Copper-bottomed Meaning Genuine; trustworthy. Origin If you come across something that is copper-bottomed these days, it is most likely to be a saucepan. In the 18th century, it would have been a ship. It is unusual for an idiomatic phrase to have such a literal derivation as this. 'Copper-bottomed' described ships that were fitted with copper plating on the underside of their hulls. The process was first used on ships of the British Navy in 1761 to defend their wooden planking against attack by Teredo worms a.k.a. Shipworms (actually a type of bivalve clam) and to reduce infestations by barnacles. The method was successful in protecting ships' timbers and in increasing speed and manoeuvrability and soon became widely used. This piece from The London Magazine, March 1781, records the introduction of its use on all the ships of the Royal Navy: Admiral Keppel made a remark upon copper bottomed ships. He said they gave additional strength to the navy and he reproached Lord Sandwich with having refused to sheath only a few ships with copper at his request, when he had since ordered the whole navy to be sheathed. John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, may have been otherwise occupied. He is said to have once spent twenty-four hours at the gaming-table without refreshment other than some cold beef placed between slices of toast - hence giving name to the sandwich. Before long, 'copper-bottomed' began to be used figuratively to refer to anything that was certain and trustworthy. Washington Irving, in his work Salmagundi, 1807, included this line: "The copper-bottomed angel at Messrs. Paff's in Broadway." It wasn't all plain sailing. Pay attention at the back, here's the science bit: Copper and iron, when immersed in a suitable electrolytic fluid, like fruit juice or, at a pinch, seawater, form an electrochemical couple and the arrangement becomes a serviceable galvanic battery. Over time, the iron is eaten away to nothing by the electrochemical action. That wasn't good news for mariners who fixed their boat's copper plates using iron nails - the iron eroded and the plates went to visit Davy Jones. Copper nails were the answer and soon afterwards ships began to be described not only as copper-bottomed but also copper-fastened. Such technically top-of-the-range ships were well thought of; an example is found in the 9th July 1796 edition of The Hull Advertiser: She is copper-fastened and copper-bottomed, and a remarkable fine ship. The expression 'copper-fastened' was and is used quite infrequently and is often wrongly taken to be a simple misstating of 'copper-bottomed'. Its meaning is similar but with the emphasis on security and lack of any ambiguity, rather than of certainty and trustworthiness. It had to wait longer to be taken into metaphorical use - until the 20th century in fact. An example of such is to be found in The Evening Independent, November 1948: We had some striking examples of what happens when a guy gets so big for his britches that any pal of his is automatically a copper-fastened genius.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-04-20 17:16:58

  The proof of the pudding Meaning To fully test something you need to experience it yourself. Origin 'The proof of the pudding' is just shorthand for 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating'. That makes sense at least, whereas the shortened version really doesn't mean anything. Nor does the often-quoted incorrect variation 'the proof is in the pudding'. The continued use of that meaningless version is no doubt bolstered by the fact that the correct version isn't that easy to understand. The meaning become clear when you know that 'proof' here means 'test'. The more common meaning of proof in our day and age is 'the evidence that demonstrates a truth' - as in a mathematical or legal proof. The verb form meaning 'to test' is less often used these days, although it does survive in several commonly used phrases: 'the exception that proves the rule', 'proof-read', 'proving-ground', etc. Clearly, the distinction between these two forms of the word was originally quite slight and the proof in a 'showing to be true' sense is merely the successful outcome of a test of whether a proposition is correct or not. 'The proof of the pudding is in the eating' is a very old proverb. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations dates it back to the early 14th century, albeit without offering any supporting evidence. The phrase is widely attributed to Cervantes in The History of Don Quixote. This appears to be by virtue of an early 18th century translation by Peter Motteux, which has been criticised by later scholars as 'a loose paraphrase' and 'Franco-Cockney'. Crucially the Spanish word for pudding - 'budín', doesn't appear in the original Spanish text. The earliest printed example of the proverb that I can find is in William Camden's Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine, 1605: "All the proof of a pudding is in the eating." It is worth remembering that, as the phrase is quite old, the pudding wouldn't have been a sticky toffee pudding from the sweet trolley, but a potentially fatal savoury dish. In Camden's listing of proverbs he also includes "If you eat a pudding at home, the dog may have the skin", which suggests that the pudding he had in mind was some form of sausage. THE OED describes the mediaeval pudding as 'the stomach or one of the entrails of a pig, sheep, or other animal, stuffed with a mixture of minced meat, suet, oatmeal, seasoning, etc., and boiled'. Those of you who have ventured north of the border on Burns Night will recognize this as a fair description of a haggis - "the great chieftain o' the pudding-race", as Burns called it in the poem Address to a Haggis, 1786. Mediaeval peasants, faced with a boiled up farmyard massacre, might have thought a taste test to have been a wise choice.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-05-03 09:37:23

  Rule of thumb Meaning A means of estimation made according to a rough and ready practical rule, not based on science or exact measurement. Origin The 'rule of thumb' has been said to derive from the belief that English law allowed a man to beat his wife with a stick so long as it is was no thicker than his thumb. In 1782, Judge Sir Francis Buller is reported as having made this legal ruling and in the following year James Gillray published a satirical cartoon attacking Buller and caricaturing him as 'Judge Thumb'. The cartoon shows a man beating a fleeing woman and Buller carrying two bundles of sticks. The caption reads "thumbsticks - for family correction: warranted lawful!" It seems that Buller was hard done by. He was notoriously harsh in his punishments and had a reputation for arrogance, but there's no evidence that he ever made the ruling that he is infamous for. Edward Foss, in his authoritative work The Judges of England, 1870, wrote that, despite a searching investigation, "no substantial evidence has been found that he ever expressed so ungallant an opinion". It's certainly the case that, although British common law once held that it was legal for a man to chastise his wife in moderation (whatever that meant), the 'rule of thumb' has never been the law in England. Even if people mistakenly supposed the law to exist, there's no reason to believe that anyone ever called it the 'rule of thumb'. Despite the phrase being in common use since the 17th century and appearing many thousands of times in print, there are no printed records that associate it with domestic violence until the 1970s, when the notion was castigated by feminists. The responses that circulated then, which assumed the wife-beating law to be true, may have been influenced by Gillray's cartoon or were possibly a reaction to The Rolling Stones' song 'Under My Thumb', which was recorded in 1966. The phrase itself has been in circulation since the 1600s. In 1692, it appeared in print in Sir William Hope's training manual for aspiring swordsmen, The Compleat Fencing-master: "What he doth, he doth by rule of Thumb, and not by Art." The origin of the phrase remains unknown. It is likely that it refers to one of the numerous ways that thumbs have been used to estimate things - judging the alignment or distance of an object by holding the thumb in one's eye-line, the temperature of brews of beer, measurement of an inch from the joint to the nail to the tip, or across the thumb, etc. The phrase joins the whole nine yards as one that probably derives from some form of measurement but which is unlikely ever to be definitively pinned down. The earliest such 'measurement' use that I can find referred to in print is in a journal of amusing tales with the comprehensive title of Witt's Recreations - Augmented with Ingenious Conceites for the Wittie and Merrie Medicines for the Melancholic. It was published in 1640 and contains this rhyme: If Hercules tall stature might be guess'd But by his thumb, the index of the rest, In due proportion, the best rule that I Would chuse, to measure Venus beauty by, Should be her leg and foot: The 'rule of leg' never caught on.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-05-03 09:38:16

  La-di-da Meaning Used to highlight and ridicule snobbish forms of behaviour or speech. Origin 'La-di-da' was fading out of use in the language until it staged something of a comeback following its use by the eponymous heroine of the 1977 film Annie Hall. Diane Keaton's character actually said 'La-di-da, la-di-da, la la'. This wasn't a reference to swanky or snobbish behaviour - it was used as a meaningless phrase, spoken out of context when nervous, to emphasize Hall's ditzy personality. The expression was in general use by the 1880s. This usage was probably advanced by the inclusion of 'la-di-da' in some songs of the day. George Duckworth Atkin and others collected many of these in the journal House Scraps, which was published around 1883, and included these two songs: We are a Merry Family, We are! we are! we are! Jack, he deals in Canadas, In Trunks, one, two, or three; Willie, he gives turns away, But not to you or me. The young 'un goes to music-halls, And does the la-di-da; We are a shiney family, We are! we are! we are! Untitled: La-di-da, La-di-do, He's a well-known old Adonis, La-di-da, La-di-do, You may tell it by his nose, La-di-da, La-di-do, For the colour all his own is, It's a pleasing combination Of the beetroot and the rose. 'La-di-da' sounds as though it may be of French origin. In fact, it isn't and derives from the earlier reduplicated phrase 'lardy-dardy'. That phrase was cited in Lacy's Acting Edition of Plays, Dramas, Farces and Extravagances, 1849: One of those haw-haw fellows, who used to hang around you - lardy dardy, pois'ning the atmosphere with their pomadey. [Note: pomade has two meanings - either a type of cider or a sticky, scented gel used to dress hair. We can safely assume the above citation refers to the latter.] That example shows 'lardy dardy' used as an exclamation. Other contemporary sources used it in the current descriptive manner, for example, this piece from Mary Elizabeth Braddon's novel Three times dead; or, The secret of the heath, 1859: You're not much good, my friend, says I, with your lardy dardy ways, and your cold blooded words. Reduplicated expressions like lardy-dardy usually have one word that supplies the meaning and a secondary rhyming word, which is added for emphasis. In this case the significant word is 'lardy'. These days, 'lardy' just means 'full of lard', like lardy cakes, the sweet, fatty 'heart attack on a plate' buns that are still sold in the UK without any form of health warning. 'Lardy-dardy and 'la-di-da' have nothing to do with lard. It is more likely that 'lardy' was a corruption of 'lady' or 'lordy', which match the meaning of the phrases. See other reduplicated phrases.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-05-10 16:11:16

  Old codger Meaning An old man, especially one who is eccentric, curmudgeonly or grotesque. Origin An episode of the UK Channel4 archeological series Time Team, in April 2009, featured an item on falconry. A falconer, suitably dressed in mock-tudor doublet and hose, explained that the frame that was used to carry falcons to the field was called a cadge (probably a variant of 'cage'). Frame carrying was said to be a job for elderly falconers, who came to be called 'old cadgers' and later, 'old codgers'. He also threw in for good measure that this was also the derivation of 'cadging a lift' (a.k.a. 'cadge a ride'). Time Team includes senior academics who expect a good standard of historical and archeological evidence to support theories about the origins of the buildings and the artefacts that they dig up. Regrettably, those standards go out of the window when it comes to words and phrases. The 'old codger' assertion came with no evidence at all and yet it was confidently broadcast as fact. In truth, it is a highly dubious claim. The 'cadge a lift' theory is certainly wrong. That phrase isn't known until the 19th century, well after falconry had become uncommon and, in any case, that 'beg/borrow' meaning of cadge was in use as a general term for 'obtaining without payment' and only later became used in 'cadge a lift'. As to 'old codger', it is the begging sense of cadge rather than the falcon transport meaning that is much more likely to be linked to 'cadger' and later 'codger'. The earliest meaning of 'cadger', which pre-dates the naming of falconry cadges by a good two hundred years, was as the name of itinerant dealers who traded in butter/eggs etc., which they transported by pack-horse. This dates from the 15th century and was referred to in Robert Henryson's The Morall Fabillis of Esope, circa 1450: "A Cadgear, with capill and with creils". [horse and baskets] Over time, less respectable tramps, beggers and smugglers also began to be called cadgers. Cadging changed from 'trading' to begging/borrowing'. By the early 19th century, any ne'er-do-well who made a living by questionable means might be called a cadger. William Hone's The Every-day Book, 1825, lists that meaning: "A rosinante [a worn-out horse], borrowed from some whiskey smuggler or cadger." The link between cadger and codger is complex. In some parts of England the two words were used interchangeably, whereas in other regions they were separate words, one meaning 'beggar' and the other 'eccentric/grotesque fellow'. The latter meaning is the one used in an early example of 'old codger', David Garrick's farce Bon Ton, 1775: "My Lord's servants call you an old out-of-fashion'd Codger." Men who had fallen on hard times and had resorted to any means possible to keep body and soul together were often those who were too old to find work. A cadger was likely to be a grizzled character wanting to borrow or steal from you; a codger was a peculiar and unfashionable chap, and both were likely to be old. 'Old codger' is most likely to be the linguistic merging of all those images. What is less likely is that the first such codger was seen carrying a cage of falcons.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-05-18 12:37:47

  Cherchez la femme Meaning The translation from the French is "look for/seek the woman". It is used when a man behaves unusually or gets into a quarrel or other difficulty and the reason for it is sought. Origin 'Cherchez la femme' is sometimes mistakenly thought to refer to men's attempts to pursue romantic liaisons with women. In fact, the phrase, which is occasionally used in its loose English translation 'look for the woman', expresses the idea that the source of any given problem involving a man is liable to be a woman. That isn't to say that the woman herself was necessarily the direct cause of the problem, as in Shakespeare's Macbeth for instance, but that a man has behaved stupidly or out of character in order to impress a woman or gain her favour. The expression was coined by Alexandre Dumas (père) in the novel The Mohicans of Paris, 1864, in the form of 'cherchons la femme'. In John Latey's 1878 English translation, Dumas' detective, Monsieur Jackal, concludes that a woman must have been involved in the crime being investigated: "Where's the woman? Seek her." His opinion was later confirmed by a colleague: "Ah! Monsieur Jackal, you were right when you said, 'Seek the woman.'" The phrase was adopted into everyday English use and crossed the Atlantic by 1909. It was well enough known there by that date for O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) to use it as the title of a story - Cherchez La Femme, which includes this line: "Ah! yes, I know most time when those men lose money you say 'Cherchez la femme' - there is somewhere the woman." Dumas was, of course, the author of many popular novels, including The Count of Monte-Cristo, 1844, from which he earned a sizeable fortune. He had a bash at following in the footsteps of his eponymous hero when he had the lavish Château de Monte-Cristo built in 1846. Life copied art also in his ruinous attempts to attract women to the high life at the chateau. When biographers looked to see where all his money went, the only explanation needed was 'cherchez les femmes'

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-05-26 07:57:50

  Cotton-picking Meaning A general term of disapproval, of something that is troublesome or a nuisance. Origin It can come as as little surprise that the term 'cotton-picking' originated in the southern states of the USA. It began life in the late 1700s and differs from the 19th century Dixie term, 'cottonpicker', in that the latter was derogatory and racist, whereas 'cotton-picking' referred directly to the difficulty and harshness of gathering the crop. Of course, 'cotton-picking' must have been in use as an English adjectival phrase for as long as English-speaking people have picked cotton. There are numerous citations of 'cotton-picking' seasons/jobs/machines etc. since the late 1700s. J & E Pettigrew's Letters has an early example, from 1795: 'One of the students was banished... for going to a cotton picking after eight at Knight.' Our folk memory of grizzled cowboys in Hollywood B-features 'fixin to run that cotton-picking greenhorn outta town' etc., might give us cause to think that the use of 'cotton-picking' as a figurative term originated in the 19th century wild west. In fact, it didn't, and it doesn't even seem to have been spoken in any of Hollywood's numerous early cowboy movies. It isn't until the 1940s that the term began to be used in any other context than that of the actual picking of cotton. The earliest such reference that I have found is in the Pennsylvania newspaper, The Daily Courier, November 1942: It's just about time some of our Northern meddlers started keeping their cotton-picking fingers out of the South's business. Where memory doesn't play tricks is when recalling the works of the sainted Bugs Bunny. While not originating the term, Bugs can claim to have done more to fix it into the language than the rest of rabbitkind, especially in its most often used form 'Wait just a cotton-picking minute'. There's an example in Bully for Bugs, 1953: "Just a cotton-pickin' minute, this don't look like the Coachella Valley to me!"

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-05-30 10:34:38

  Off his own bat Meaning By an individual's own efforts. Origin One question that I've been asked several times about the figurative expression 'off his own bat' is "should that be 'off his own back'"? Well no, it shouldn't. 'Off your own back' originated as a mishearing of the former expression. It has gained sufficient currency to be considered as a viable everyday alternative of the correct version, but purists dismiss it as a straightforward error. Bats come in many forms of course and, as is always the case with such words when they occur in phrases where the context clear, the meaning is open to fanciful interpretations. So, as with the yards in 'the whole nine yards', which are guessed to be any number of things, the 'bat' in 'off his own bat' has been said to be one of these: the flying mammal, a butter pat, a tool used in brickmaking etc, etc. In fact, the bat in question is a cricket bat and the first activity that was said to be done 'off someone's own bat' was to score runs. The first citation of 'off his own bat' in print comes from the pen of the celebrated cricket historian and statistician Henry Thomas Waghorn, in Cricket Scores, 1742: "The bets on the Slendon man's head that he got 40 notches off his own bat were lost." The 'Slendon man' was probably Richard Newland, the star of the Slindon Cricket Club and cricket's first great all-rounder. It is worth noting that the phrase is found in print several times during the next century and all of the known citations are explicit cricket references - the other supposed derivations of 'bat' in this context owe everything to imagination and nothing to evidence. There's an example in Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery, by Mary Russell Mitford, 1824: "William Grey got forty notches off his own bat; and that brilliant hitter Tom Coper gained eight from two successive balls." Why runs that were scored 'off someone's own bat' were worth mentioning derives from the arcane rules of cricket. Runs, which were often referred to as 'notches' in early references to the game, may be scored in cricket in several different ways. These include various forms of 'extra' runs, for example, bowling misdemeanours like wides or no balls; various forms of 'bye', in which the batsmen run without first hitting the ball; and overthrows, where a fielder throws the ball at the wicket and misses, giving time for the batsmen to run again. All of these are counted towards the batting side's score, but it is the runs that a batsman scores 'off his own bat' that gain kudos for the player. The first usage of 'off his own bat' as a figurative, i.e. non-cricket, phrase is in Fragment on Irish Affairs by the Rev. Sydney Smith, May 1845: "Dr. Hodgson is a very worthy, amiable man... but [I] suppose he had no revenues but what he got off his own bat."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-06-06 13:08:16

  Someone is walking over my grave Meaning A response to a sudden unexplained shudder or shivering. Origin 'Someone is walking over my grave' seems a rather odd thing for a living person to say when experiencing a sudden shudder, so why is it said? The 18th saying derives from an earlier folk legend that a sudden cold sensation was caused by someone walking over the place that one's grave was eventually going to be. This belief is in line with the workings of people's minds in England in the Middle Ages, in which the distinction between life and death was much less clear than we see it now. There was then an unambiguous belief in the everyday communication between the afterlife in heaven or hell and the physical world of the living. When someone dies in our day and age we a likely to hold a commemorative gathering where we talk about the deceased person. Mediaeval mourners would hold wakes, in which they spoke to the deceased, in the belief that their words were being heard and understood. A person's final resting place would also have been understood to be predetermined and 'someone has walked over my grave' would have been said in the belief that a real person had actually walked over the ground where the speaker would be interred. The earliest known record of the phrase in print, which is of course an indication of the earliest date that we can prove that the phrase was in public use, is in Simon Wagstaff's A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, 1738. (Simon Wagstaff was one of the many pseudonyms of the celebrated writer Jonathan Swift): Miss [shuddering]. Lord! there's somebody walking over my Grave. The old folk belief is recorded by the Yorkshire novelist Harriet Parr, who also used a pseudonym, that of Holme Lee, in Basil Godfrey's Caprice, 1868: Joan shuddered - that irrepressible convulsive shudder which old wives say is caused by a footstep walking over the place of our grave that shall be. The expression is sometimes found in the form of 'a goose (or occasionally, a rabbit) walked over my grave'. These are later and chiefly American variants and the 'goose' version at least appears to be a back-formation, derived from 'goose bumps/goose pimples' which are associated with a sudden feeling of chilliness. The modern-day scientific explanation for sudden unexplained shuddering and for goose pimples is that they are caused by a subconscious release of the stress hormone adrenaline. This may be as a response to coldness or an emotional reaction to a poignant memory. Fanciful it may be, but somehow, I prefer the mediaeval version.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-06-17 15:41:04

  The hair of the dog Meaning A small measure of drink, intended to cure a hangover. Origin The fuller version of this phrase, i.e. 'the hair of the dog that bit me', gives a clue to the source of the name of this supposed hangover cure. That derivation is from the mediaeval belief that, when someone was bitten by a rabid dog, a cure could be made by applying the same dog's hair to the infected wound. How many people managed to get bitten again when trying to approach the aforesaid dog to acquire the hair to achieve this completely useless remedy isn't known. The knowledge of the derivation should at least put paid to the frequent 'hare of the dog' misspelling. With most metaphorical phrases that have a literal origin, for example toe the line and on the warpath, the later figurative use doesn't become popular until the literal use has fallen out of use. 'The hair of the dog' is unusual in that the figurative version is recorded before any known examples of the literal meaning. John Heywood, in his invaluable early text, A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, 1546, uses the phrase with a clear reference to drinking: I pray thee let me and my fellow have A hair of the dog that bit us last night - And bitten were we both to the brain aright. We saw each other drunk in the good ale glass. Another useful text, Randle Cotgrave's A dictionarie of the French and English tongues, 1611, also records the 'drinking' version of the expression: Our Ale-knights [habitual drinkers] often use this phrase, and say, Give us a haire of the dog that last bit us. It isn't until the 18th century that the literal use of dogs' hair to cure bite wounds is recorded in print. Robert James alludes to the method in A Treatise on Canine Madness, 1760: The hair of the dog that gave the wound is advised as an application to the part injured. In fact, James is rather skeptical about the treatment, preferring another commonly believed but equally unpromising remedy - the application of the ashes of river crabs. Whilst the hair of the dog that bit us is now dismissed as an effective rabies treatment, the taking of additional alcohol to cure a hangover has some scientific basis. The symptoms of hangover are partly induced by a withdrawal from alcohol poisoning. A small measure of alcohol may be some temporary relief, even if in the longer term it makes the hangover worse.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-06-22 17:55:03

  Plain sailing Meaning An easy, uncomplicated course. Origin 'Plain sailing' is a nautical phrase that has the literal meaning of 'sailing that is easy and uncomplicated'. We now use the phrase to describe any straightforward and trouble-free activity. There might seem to be be little more to say about this phrase, if it weren't for the existence of 'plane sailing'. 'Plane sailing' is a simplified form of navigation, in which the surface of the sea is considered to be flat, i.e. what mathematicians call a plane surface. The plane method of approximation made the calculations of distance much easier than those of 'Mercator's sailing', in which the curvature of the earth was taken into account. So, 'plane sailing' was 'plain sailing'. It would be rather neat if 'plane sailing' came first and that, being an easy and uncomplicated method, it came to be called 'plain sailing'. In fact, it is the 'plain' spelling that is found first in print, in Adam Martindale's A Collection of Letters for Improvement of Husbandry & Trade, 1683: A token for ship boys, plain-sailing made more plain and short than usually, in three particular methods. The term must have been in regular use by the turn of the 18th century as, in 1707, Edward Ward made metaphorical use of it in The Wooden World Dissected: Tho' he guide others to Heaven by the plain-sailing Rules of the Gospel. The first known use of 'plane sailing' isn't found until much later, in James Atkinson's Epitome of the Art of Navigation, 1749: Plane Trigonometry applied in Problems of Sailing by the Plane Sea-Chart, commonly called Plane-Sailing. Most people now make a distinction between 'plain', i.e. easy and simple, and 'plane', i.e. flat. That wasn't so when this phrase was coined. Since the 14th century, although less so more recently, various spellings for 'level and flat' have been accepted - plane, pleyne, playn and, significantly in this context, plain. So, although 'plane sailing' is unambiguous, when a writer used 'plain sailing' any number of things may have been on his/her mind: - Sailing that was easy. - Sailing on a flat, level sea. - Navigation that was calculated using plane (a.k.a. plain) trigonometry. - Any straightforward task. In recent years, the introduction of the phrase 'clear sailing' as an alternative to 'plain sailing' may have cleared things up a little. This was used to good, if rather poignant, comic effect in The Simpsons' cartoon The Simpsons Bible Stories, 1999: Milhouse: Well, Lisa, we're out of Egypt. So, what's next for the Israelites? Land of milk and honey? Lisa: [consulting a scroll] Hmm, well, actually it looks like we're in for forty years of wandering the desert. Milhouse: Forty years! But after that, it's clear sailing for the Jews, right? Lisa: [nervously] Uh-huh-hum, more or less.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-06-27 15:16:18

  Movers and shakers Meaning People of energetic demeanour, who initiate change and influence events. Origin The expression 'movers and shakers' is now most often applied to the rich and powerful in politics and business. In a year (2009) in which the movers and shakers of the financial world brought us to the brink of ruin, it is worth a thought as to who the original movers and shakers were. The public perception of the term began after the first performance of Sir Edward Elgar's popular choral work The Music Makers, at the Birmingham Festival in October 1912. The work is a setting of Arthur O'Shaughnessy's 1874 poem 'Ode', from his Music and Moonlight collection. In that poem, which singles out poets and musicians as the bards that guide lay thinking, O'Shaughnessy coined the phrase 'movers and shakers': We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. By 'shakers', O'Shaughnessy didn't mean the Shakers that are an offshoot of the Quaker religion, more fully known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, but simply those who shake the foundations of conventional thinking by the strength of their imagination and vision. The poem is by far O'Shaughnessy's best known work and it had a profound effect on Elgar, who set the complete poem without alteration. The two men were admirers of each other's work and, judging from from their photographs, would have made a strong joint entry in a 'Spot the Victorian Gentleman' competition. Nevertheless, although the first two lines of the poem became well known, the phrase 'movers and shakers' didn't begin to be used more widely until well into the 20th century, when it was taken up in the USA. It was hardly used at all until the American socialite and patron of the arts Mabel Dodge Luhan used it as the title of a volume of her autobiography, published in 1934. 'Movers and shakers', along with the alternative 'shakers and movers', which was clearly coined in ignorance of the poetic original, began to be used commonly in the USA in the 1960s and 70s and later in other countries. It was then exclusively applied to people in business and other positions of power. For example, from the magazine Ebony, July 1962: The fabulous Rollins sisters were operating a Paris-style salon for movers and shakers.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-07-03 17:46:17

  Pass the buck Meaning Evade responsibility by passing it on to someone else. Origin Look up 'buck' in the dictionary and you'll find a couple of dozen assorted nouns, verbs and adjectives. The most common use of the word these days is as the slang term for the American dollar. That's not the buck meant here though. Look a little further down the list and you'll find the definition 'buck: an article used in a game of poker' - and that's the buck that was first passed. Poker became very popular in America during the second half of the 19th century. Players were highly suspicious of cheating or any form of bias and there's considerable folklore depicting gunslingers in shoot-outs based on accusations of dirty dealing. In order to avoid unfairness the deal changed hands during sessions. The person who was next in line to deal would be given a marker. This was often a knife, and knives often had handles made of buck's horn - hence the marker becoming known as a buck. When the dealer's turn was done he 'passed the buck'. Silver dollars were later used as markers and this is probably the origin of the use of buck as a slang term for dollar. The earliest citation that I can find of the literal use of the phrase in print is from the Weekly New Mexican, July 1865: They draw at the commissary, and at poker after they have passed the 'buck'. This is clearly around the time that the phrase was coined, as there are several such printed citations in the following years. The figurative version of the phrase, i.e. a usage where no actual buck is present, begins around the start of the 20th century. For example, this piece in the California newspaper The Oakland Tribune, from May, 1902: [Oakland City Attorney] Dow - 'When the public or the Council "pass the buck" up to me I am going to act.' The reporter's use of quotation marks around pass the buck indicate its recent coinage as a figurative phrase, or at least one that the paper's readers might not have been expected to be familiar with. The best-known use of buck in this context is 'the buck stops here', which was the promise made by US president Harry S. Truman, and which he kept prominent in his own and his electors' minds by putting it on a sign on his desk.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-07-17 17:42:14

  Tempest in a teapot Meaning A small or unimportant event that is over-reacted to, as if it were of considerably more consequence. Origin Readers from England might well be tut-tutting about the mangling of their perfectly good phrase 'a storm in a teacup' and castigating the American 'tempest in a teapot' as a newcomer, having little more reason to exist than its neat alliteration. In fact, the teacup wasn't the first location of the said storm, nor was the teapot. The phrase probably derives from the writing of Cicero, in De Legibus, circa 520BC. The translation of his "Excitabat fluctus in simpulo" is often given as "He was stirring up billows in a ladle" (correctly translated or not, I don't know; I don't speak Latin). Whether the first user of the expression in English had Cicero in mind, he made no mention of tea-making, although he wasn't so far away. The Duke of Ormond's letters to the Earl of Arlington, 1678, include this: "Our skirmish seems to be come to a period, and compared with the great things now on foot, is but a storm in a cream bowl." Also, before the 'teacup/teapot' versions were well-established, another nobleman came up with a version that didn't involve the tea-table at all. The Gentleman's Magazine, 1830, records: "Each campaign, compared with those of Europe, has been only, in Lord Thurlow's phrase, a storm in a wash-hand basin." 'Tempest in a teapot' is the version that is used most often in the USA, and hardly at all in other places, but which nevertheless appears to have a Scottish rather than an American origin. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1825, included a debate over the relative merits of the Scottish poets James Hogg and Tom Campbell. Campbell's imagery of raging tempests in his poetic work wasn't well received there: What is the 'tempest raging o'er the realms of ice'? A tempest in a teapot! Finally, we come to the version of the phrase that we English might imagine is the 'proper' original version. This appears to be neither original or English as it is later than the versions above, and the first mention that I can find of it also hails from north of the border. Catherine Sinclair, the Scottish novelist and children's writer, wrote a novel of fashionable society life, Modern Accomplishments, or the march of intellect, in 1838: "As for your father's good-humoured jests being ever taken up as a serious affair, it really is like raising a storm in a teacup."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-08-01 15:31:41

  Fuddy-duddy Meaning A stuffy or foolishly old-fashioned person. Origin If any term sounds old and English, it must be this one. As so often, intuition is found to be inadequate as fuddy-duddy appears to be of American origin, possibly via Scotland, nor is it especially old. The first record that I can find of it is from the Texas newspaper The Galveston Daily News, 1889: "Look here; I'm Smith - Hamilton Smith. I'm a minister and I try to do about right ... I object to being represented as an old fuddy-duddy." That usage - without any accompanying explanation - seems to suggest that the readership would have been expected to have been familiar with it. That is quite possible, there are several citations in American newspapers from the end of the 19th century that relate to a pair of fictional wags called Fuddy and Duddy. A string of their rather weak gags was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript. Here's an example from a November 1895 edition: Fuddy: So Miss Dandervecken is going to marry an Englishman. A lord, I suppose? Duddy: Well, no, not exactly: but I understand that he's often as drunk as a lord. Whether or not the expression 'fuddy-duddy' was already known and the names were taken from it, or whether it was the other way round, we can't now tell. The coincidence in the dates of the arrival of the two characters and the phrase does suggest that there was a connection of some kind. Duddy was a Scottish term meaning ragged - duds having been used to refer to rough tattered clothes since the 15th century. Fud, or fuddy, was a Scots dialect term for buttocks. In 1833, the Scots poet James Ballantyne wrote The Wee Raggit Laddie: Wee stuffy, stumpy, dumpie laddie, Thou urchin elfin, bare an' duddy, Thy plumpit kite an' cheek sae ruddy Are fairly baggit, Although the breekums on thy fuddy Are e'en right raggit. The full-on Scots dialect in that sentimental, Burns influenced rhyme is difficult to translate precisely. The gist of the meaning is: Poor scruffy little lad, bare and ragged, your wet belly and red cheeks are swollen and the trousers on your buttocks are torn. There is a British term - 'duddy fuddiel', which is also recorded from around the same date. William Dickinson's A glossary of words and phrases pertaining to the dialect of Cumberland, 1899, has: "Duddy fuddiel, a ragged fellow." There may be a link between 'duddy fuddiel' and 'fuddy-duddy' but, as they don't mean exactly the same thing, we can't be certain. One thing we can be sure about; that the cartoon character Elmer Fudd inherited the name from the phrase. 'Fuddy-duddy' was in general circulation in the US well before the character was created in around 1940 and the expression accords with his old-fashioned and obsessive temperament. In a rather sad sequel to the Boston Transcript's role in the coining of 'fuddy-duddy', Time magazine reported in 1939 that a survey commissioned by the paper found that, "the most frequent word used by advertisers to describe the paper was fuddy-duddy". The Transcript ceased trading soon afterwards. See also - other reduplicated phrases.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-08-01 15:33:18

  The jury is still out Meaning Judgement has not yet been finalised on a particular subject; especially due to information being incomplete. Origin 'The Jury Is Still Out' has been a staple headline in US newspapers for at least 150 years. For example, this from The New York Daily-Times, May 1850: "The [Gardiner Trial] Jury are still out, with no prospect of immediate agreement." The phrase has continued to be used in this literal sense. The emergence of the figurative use of 'the jury is still out', i.e. as a reference to a non-legal decision where no actual jury is involved, began in the USA in the 1940s and has now become somewhat hackneyed. For example, the expression was used in a report of a baseball game, published in the Indiana newspaper The Terre Haute Star in July 1949: The jury is still out on his [Orestes Minoso] batting ability. There are a few examples of the phrase's use, mostly in a sporting context, throughout the 1940s and 50s, but it was a specific event that brought it fully into the language - the infamous Finch-Tregoff murder trials in 1959/61. Dr. Bernard Finch was a middle-aged Los Angeles surgeon and Carole Tregoff was described in newspapers at the time as 'his shapely young receptionist'. The murder of Finch's wife and the subsequent trials were a cause célèbre. At each of the the couple's three trials the jury took their time in coming to a judgement and hacks must have got tired of typing 'Jury Still Out' each day. This newspaper cutting was typical of the hundreds of stories that ran during 1959 to 1961: At the third trial, during March and April 1961, the pair were finally convicted of murder. Had Dr. Finch kept his mind on surgery, we would probably not now have the cliché 'the jury is still out' at our disposal. I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's to the good or not.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-08-08 12:51:06

  Swan song Meaning A final gesture or performance, given before dying. Origin This term derived from the legend that, while they are mute during the rest of their lives, swans sing beautifully and mournfully just before they die. This isn't actually the case - swans, even the inaccurately named Mute Swans, have a variety of vocal sounds and they don't sing before they die. The legend was known to be false as early as the days of ancient Greece, when Pliny the Elder refuted it in Natural History, AD 77: "Observation shows that the story that the dying swan sings is false." Nevertheless, poetic imagery proved to be more attractive than scientific method and many poets and playwrights made use of the fable long after Pliny's observations. Chaucer included this line in the poem Parliament of Fowles: The Ialous swan, ayens his deth that singeth. [The jealous swan, sings before his death] Shakespeare, the Swan of Avon no less, used the image in The Merchant of Venice, 1596: Portia: Let music sound while he doth make his choice; then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, fading in music. The actual term 'swan song', with its current figurative meaning, doesn't crop up in print until the 18th century. The Scottish cleric Jon Willison used the expression in one of his Scripture Songs, 1767, where he refers to "King David's swan-song". The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) turned the phrase on its head in the poem On a Volunteer Singer: Swans sing before they die; ’twere no bad thing Did certain persons die before they sing. If people ever did believe in the 'singing before death' story, few would now claim to do so. 'Swan-song' is now used figuratively and most commonly to refer to celebrated performers embarking on 'farewell tours' or 'final performances'. Those ironic quote marks were never more appropriate than in the case of Nellie Melba, whose swan song consisted of an eight year long string of 'final concerts' between 1920 and 1928. This led to the popular Australian phrase - 'more farewells than Nellie Melba'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-08-17 09:04:49

  By hook or by crook Meaning By whatever means necessary - be they fair or foul. Origin It is sometimes suggested that 'by hook or by crook' derives from the custom in mediaeval England of allowing peasants to take from royal forests whatever deadwood they could pull down with a shepherd's crook or cut with a reaper's billhook. This feudal custom was recorded in the 1820s by the English rural campaigner William Cobbett, although the custom itself long predates that reference. Another commonly repeated suggestion is that the phrase comes from the names of the villages of Hook Head and the nearby Crooke, in Waterford, Ireland. Hook Head and Crooke are on opposite sides of the Waterford channel and Cromwell (born 1599 - died 1658) is reputed to have said that Waterford would fall 'by Hook or by Crooke', i.e. by a landing of his army at one of those two places. A third suggestion is that the phrase derives from two learned judges, called Hooke and Crooke, who officiated during the reign of Charles I (born 1600 - died 1649) and who were called on to solve difficult legal cases. Hence, the cases would be resolved 'by Hooke or by Crooke'. Only the first of the above suggestions stands up to scrutiny by virtue of the age of the phrase. The earliest references to hooks and crooks in this context date back to the 14th century - the first known being from John Gower's Confessio Amantis, 1390: What with hepe [hook] and what with croke [crook] they [by false Witness and Perjury] make her maister ofte winne. Gower didn't use the modern 'by hook or by crook' version of the phrase, but it is clear that he was using the reference to hooks and crooks in the same sense that we do now. The earliest citation of the phrase that I can find is in Philip Stubbes' The Anatomie of Abuses, 1583: Either by hooke or crooke, by night or day. There are several other theories as to the origin of 'by hook or by crook', all of which are either implausible or arose too late. Taking away those, we are left with two serious contenders: sheep farming and wood gathering. Crooks are the curved or hooked sticks that shepherds use to catch sheep by hooking their hind legs. Hook is a synonym for crook. It is quite possible that the two words were put together to mean 'one way or another', for no better reason than the alliteration. Either that, or the 'wood gathering' derivation is correct. We may never know which.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-08-24 15:54:38

  Lose your marbles Meaning Lose your wits. Origin To 'lose one's marbles' is to lose one's mind. In the 1954 film The Caine Mutiny Humphrey Bogart linked insanity with marbles when he showed his character, the demented Lt. Cmdr. Queeg, restlessly jiggling a set of metal balls when under stress in court. Bogart's performance was so affecting that many have supposed the film to be the source of the phrase. It is American, but originated in the late 19th century, not the 1950s. The expression has now been shortened to simply 'losing it'. The point is that the person in question has, as in another earlier variant, 'a bit missing'. Perhaps 'marbles' meant 'mind' or 'wits' before 'lose one's marbles' was coined. That's worth investigation at least, so let's have a go. Marbles are, of course, the little glass or metal balls that children use to play the eponymous game. From the mid 19th century 'marbles' was also used to mean 'personal effects', 'goods', or more generally 'stuff'. This latter meaning derives from the French word 'meubles', which means 'furniture'. From the 1920s onward two US expressions became established - 'to pick up the marbles' and 'to pick up one's marbles'. These mean 'to carry off the honours or prizes' and 'to withdraw from activity or game and cause it to cease' (like the UK variant 'take one's ball home'). 'Marbles' also meant testicles and has been used that way since at least the mid 19th century. It has been suggested that the 'losing one's mind' meaning derives from the Elgin Marbles. These are the collection of sculptures, some from the Parthenon Frieze, which were taken from Athens by Lord Elgin in 1806. The supposition is that the expression derives from the loss of the artworks by the Greeks, or their subsequent loss at sea when the ship that was transporting them sank. An interesting theory, but no more than that; there's no evidence to support the idea. It's more likely that 'marbles' was coined as a slang term meaning 'wits/common sense', as a reference to the marbles that youngsters play with. The notion of 'losing something that is important to you' appears to have migrated from the image of a forlorn child having lost his prized playthings. An early citation of this figurative usage is found in an August 1886 copy of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat: He has roamed the block all morning like a boy who had lost his marbles. During the late 19th century, 'losing one's marbles' began to be used to mean 'getting frustrated or angry'. This reference from New Zealand was printed in The Tuapeka Times, in August 1889: For I tell you that no boy ever lost his marbles more irrevocably than you and I will lose our self-respect if we remain to take part in a wordy discussion that ends in a broil. [a quarrel] This transition to the 'losing one's mind' meaning began in the US around the same time and the Ohio newspaper The Portsmouth Times, reported a story in April 1898 that referred to marbles as a synonym for mental capacity: Prof. J. M. Davis, of Rio Grande college, was selected to present J. W Jones as Gallia's candidate, but got his marbles mixed and did as much for the institution of which he is the noted head as he did for his candidate. The expression took a little time to mature and was used in both 'anger' and 'sanity' senses for a few decades. What is common in all the early citations is the sense of loss and the consequent reaction to it. By 1927, the loss of sanity meaning had won out and an edition of American Speech defined the term unambiguously: "Marbles, doesn't have all his (verb phrase), mentally deficient. 'There goes a man who doesn't have all his marbles.'" See also: knuckle down.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-08-31 09:00:34

  Card-sharp Meaning Someone who is skilful at playing or manipulating cards, or one who makes a living by cheating at cards. Origin 'Card-sharp', which is sometimes spelled either 'card sharp' or 'cardsharp', might be thought by some to be a misspelling of 'card-shark'. The latter is the more commonly used of the two synonymous phrases, especially outside the UK, which is one of the few countries to prefer card-sharp. It is sometimes suggested that one term derived from the other. There's no clear evidence to support that view, although if it is the case then it must have gone from 'sharp' to 'shark' as 'card-sharp' appears to be the older term. Both 'card-sharp' and 'card-shark' originated in the 19th century. There is a 1594 painting by the Italian artist Michelangelo Merisi (Caravaggio), that is called 'The Cardsharps'. Of course, Caravaggio didn't title his paintings in English and it isn't clear when it was given its Anglicized name - probably not until well into the 20th century. Such tricksters were also known as broadsmen or spielers and 'card-sharping' was also called 'Greekery' - a derogatory term that probably wouldn't get past the political-correctness lobby these days. The reason for thinking that 'card-sharp' and card-shark' may be independent coinages is the existence of the two much earlier words 'sharping' (swindling or cheating - circa 1692) and sharking' (cheating, stealing or sponging - circa 1608). These terms for deceitfulness have been adopted in to other phrases, for example, 'sharp practice' and 'loan shark'. Tricksters were called both 'sharps' and 'sharks' well before the 19th century, which makes the separate coinages entirely plausible. Whatever the think about how and when the terms were coined there can be little doubt about where. Both 'card-sharp' and 'card-shark' appear in print in the USA many times before they are seen in publications elsewhere - a sure sign of country of origin. The first such devious card players were called 'card-sharpers' rather than 'card-sharps', although the dates of the earliest known citations of the two terms are close enough together to raise doubts as to which came first. 'Card-sharpers' was recorded by George Augustus Sala, in his Twice round the clock, or the hours of the day and night in London, 1859: "German swindlers and card-sharpers." As mentioned above, the earliest known citations of 'card-sharp' and 'card-shark' come from America. The first of these is in an odd tale indeed. In May 1872, The Hagerstown Mail, printed a bizarre account of a card-playing pig called 'Ugly Ben'. The story, which was written by a journalist who seems to have believed it to be true, tells how the animal pointed to cards with its trotters and played a decent game of euchre - a card game similar to whist. The piece was headed A Porcine Card Sharp: "St. Louis boasts of a hog that shames the most skilful sports a handling playing cards. The specially of the animal is euchre." Clearly, for the term to used like that in a newspaper headline it must already have been well-known to the paper's audience and we may yet find earlier citations. 'Card-shark' comes a few years later as in this example from Wisconsin newspaper The Daily Northwestern, October 1893: "A few days ago Charles Petrie opened a gambling; house, which was promptly raided by the city police. Then Petrie got angry and swore out warrants for all the other keepers until every card shark in the city was taken in." It seems over-generous to have two almost identical terms for the same thing and, in time, no doubt one - probably 'card-shark', will do to 'card-sharp' what grey squirrels have done to red squirrels. Until then, vive la différence.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-09-04 13:31:06

  Birds of a feather flock together Meaning Those of similar taste congregate in groups. Origin This proverb has been in use since at least the mid 16th century. In 1545, William Turner used a version of it in his papist satire The Rescuing of Romish Fox: "Byrdes of on kynde and color flok and flye allwayes together." The first known citation in print of the currently used English version of the phrase appeared in 1599, in The Dictionarie in Spanish and English, which was compiled by the English lexicographer John Minsheu: Birdes of a feather will flocke togither. The phrase also appears in Benjamin Jowett's 1856 translation of Plato's Republic. Clearly, if the it were present in the original Greek text then, at around 380BC, Plato's work would be a much earlier reference to it. What appears in Jowett's version is: Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says. Plato's text can be translated in other ways and it is safe to say it was Jowett in 1856, not Plato in 380BC, that considered the phrase to be old. The lack of any citation of it in English prior to the 16th century does tend to suggest that its literal translation wasn't present in The Republic - a text that was widely read by English scholars of the classics well before the 16th century. In nature, birds of a single species do in fact frequently form flocks. Ornithologists explain this behaviour as a 'safety in numbers' tactic to reduce their risk of predation. In language terms, it was previously more common to refer to birds flying together than flocking together and many early citations use that form, for example Philemon Holland's translation of Livy's Romane historie, 1600: "As commonly birds of a feather will flye together."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-09-12 21:32:45

  Over the moon Meaning Very happy or delighted. Origin 'Over the moon' has been part of the language for more than a century. It has become more widely used in the past twenty or thirty years, since it was adopted by English football managers when interviewed after 'the boys' managed a victory. The increased use of televised post-match interviews and hours of studio commentary during the 1970s brought many football managers before the cameras. These days such men are likely to be cultured and erudite Frenchmen or Spaniards. Before that they were usually British ex-footballers who had left schools in the English or Scottish back streets early to play football. It's fair to say that many of them have little interest in the finer points of English grammar. Two of the best-known English football managers of recent years, who have maintained the English tradition with their engagingly entertaining way of mangling the language, are Ron Atkinson and Terry Venables. The list of quotations from them is long and includes: "The Spaniards have been reduced to aiming aimless balls into the box." (Atkinson) "If you can't stand the heat in the dressing room, get out of the kitchen." (Venables) "If Glenn Hoddle said one word to his team at half time, it was concentration and focus." (Atkinson) "I felt a lump in my throat as the ball went in." (Venables) The humorous magazine Private Eye picked up on these and began publishing them in its Colemanballs column. The name was taken from the sports commentator David Coleman, who could give even the managers a run for their money: "Nottingham have now lost six matches in a row without winning." (Coleman) It was really Private Eye's lampooning that made this phrase popular. There is an associated phrase, 'sick as a parrot', which was used when 'the boys' lost. This has a much shorter pedigree and it's quite likely that it was invented by a writer at Private Eye rather than in a football stadium. It certainly gained currency because The Eye always printed the two phrases together in their parodies. 'Sick as a parrot' was probably influenced the the famous Monty Python 'Dead Parrot' sketch, which could be quoted verbatim by many in the UK at the time and which remains one of the most popular sketches ever shown on British TV. Well, that's the last thirty years. The actual origin of 'over the moon' is much earlier and, although not widely used before the 1970s, it would have been familiar to all who grew up in Britain in the 20th century. Why, because the source was included, as High Diddle Diddle, in the influential 16th century nursery rhyme collection, Mother Goose's Melody; or Sonnets from the Cradle, circa 1760: High diddle diddle, The Cat and the Fiddle, The Cow jump'd over the Moon, The little dog laugh'd to see such Craft, And the Dish ran away with the Spoon. As with most nursery rhymes, the first appearance in print may well post-date the first use by years, centuries even - children didn't write their rhymes down. The text of such rhymes was subject to a 'Chinese whispers' effect over all of that time and, whatever the origin may have been, the version passed down to us is quite probably nonsense and isn't easily interpreted. What is clear is that the 'over the moon' line is a reference to excitement and energy. That's evidenced by one of the earliest allusions to the phrase in print - Charles Molloy's The Coquet, or, The English Chevalier, 1718: "Tis he! I know him now: I shall jump over the Moon for Joy!"

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-09-19 09:40:41

  Out of sorts Meaning Mildly unwell; not in one's usual health or state of mind. Origin Since at least the 17th century 'sorts' has been the name of the letters used by typographers. This usage is referred to in Notes on a Century of Typography at the University Press Oxford 1693–1794 and is nicely defined in Joseph Moxon's Mechanick Exercises, or the Doctrine of Handy-works - Printing, 1683: "The Letters... in every Box of the Case are... called Sorts in Printers and Founders Language; Thus a is a Sort, b is a Sort." For sets of type blocks to be 'out of sorts' would clearly be unwelcome to a typesetter. That terminology could be the source of the phrase and the notion is certainly a tempting one. We need to be cautious with that attribution however as the above citation is pre-dated by one from The proverbs, epigrams, and miscellanies of John Heywood, 1562, which makes no explicit mention of typesetting: Fit (adj): disordered, out of sorts That unusual definition of 'fit' is, oddly, almost the opposite of our current usage of the word as an adjective. It may well turn out that pre-1562 citations that refer to typesetting will be found; after all, Gutenberg invented the printing press in around 1440. Until then, I'm sure that many people will opt to believe that 'out of sorts' derives from typesetting. All I can do is present you with the evidence as I find it and let you come to your own conclusions. PS Speaking of being 'out of sorts', there's illness in the Martin family just now, so I am donning the nurse's uniform and helping out. We are also moving house. Things are busy here and the weekly mails may be rather shorter than usual over the next month or so and, if I miss one or two, please indulge me. Gary Martin

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-10-09 15:55:14

  Pull out all the stops Meaning Make every possible effort. Origin The popular belief is that this phrase derives from the manner of construction of pipe organs. These instruments have have stops to control the air flow through the pipes and pulling them out increases the musical volume. This seems to be the type of casual easy answer that is the hallmark of folk etymology. In this case, the popular belief isn't a fallacy but is in fact correct. Prior to the introduction of pipe organs the word 'stop' had, in a musical context, been used to mean 'note' or 'key'. That usage is recorded as early as the late 16th century, as in this example from George Gascoigne's satire The Steele Glas, 1576: "But sweeter soundes, of concorde, peace, and loue, Are out of tune, and iarre in euery stoppe." Of course, 'notes' and 'keys' can't be pulled out. The word 'stop' later came to be used for the knobs that control the flow of air in pipe organs, by pushing them in or, more to the point here, pulling them out. The first person to have used the phrase in a figurative, i.e. non-organ related, sense appears to have been Matthew Arnold, in Essays in Criticism, 1865: "Knowing how unpopular a task one is undertaking when one tries to pull out a few more stops in that... somewhat narrow-toned organ, the modern Englishman." PS Thank you to the gratifyingly large number of kind messages of goodwill during my wife's recent illness. Gary Martin

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-10-27 11:55:58

  Raze to the ground Meaning To destroy and sweep completely away. Origin The expression 'raze to the ground', like 'bated breath' and 'just deserts', is often spelled incorrectly. The sources of these misunderstandings are the homophones 'bated' and 'baited', 'deserts' and 'desserts' and, in 'raze to the ground', 'raze' and 'raise'. Added to that is the fact that the correct spelling in each case is of an archaic word that is rarely used elsewhere. As a child, I heard stories of WWII and of cities like Dresden and Hiroshima being, as I thought, 'raised to the ground'. That seemed odd to me. How could destroying them with bombs raise them? Were these cities underground? It makes a little more sense when we understand that what's being said is akin to 'erased to the ground'. It seems that others are similarly confused - there are currently (Oct 2009) ten times as many hits in Google for 'raise the the ground' as there are for 'raze to the ground'. Razed is hardly a common word now, but it was in the 16th century. For example, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, used it in Aeneid II, 1547, in a context that makes the 'erased' meaning evident: "I saw Troye fall down in burning gledes. Neptunus town clene razed from the soil." Shakespeare also used it in Henry VI Part II, 1591: "These are his substance, sinewes, armes, and strength, With which he ... Razeth your Cities, and subverts your Townes." The earliest example that I can find of the precise 'raze to the ground' form is in The Glory of England, written by Thomas Gainsford in 1620: "King Lewis held nothing in Italy but the lanterne of Genes, which afterward the Genouais razed to the ground." If you invite your neighbours to a barn raising, you had better get the spelling right, or the consequences might be unfortunate. ----------------------- BEST REGARDS TO THE AUTHOR GARY MARTIN

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-10-31 13:29:01

  In a pickle Meaning In a quandary or some other difficult position. Origin The earliest pickles were spicy sauces made to accompany meat dishes. Later, in the 16th century, the name pickle was also given to a mixture of spiced, salted vinegar that was used as a preservative. The word comes from the Dutch or Low German pekel, with the meaning of 'something piquant'. Later still, in the 17th century, the vegetables that were preserved, for example cucumbers and gherkins, also came to be called pickles. The 'in trouble' meaning of 'in a pickle' was an allusion to being as disoriented and mixed up as the stewed vegetables that made up pickles. This was partway to being a literal allusion, as fanciful stories of the day related to hapless people who found themselves on the menu. The earliest known use of pickle in English contains such an citation. The Morte Arthure, circa 1440, relates the gory imagined ingredients of King Arthur's diet: He soupes all this sesoun with seuen knaue childre, Choppid in a chargour of chalke-whytt syluer, With pekill & powdyre of precious spycez. [He dines all season on seven rascal children, chopped, in a bowl of white silver, with pickle and precious spices] The figurative version of the phrase, meaning simply 'in a fix' or, in the almost identical 19th century phrase 'in a stew', arrives during the next century. Thomas Tusser's Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 1573, contains this useful advice: Reape barlie with sickle, that lies in ill pickle. Presumably, barley that wasn't in ill pickle, i.e. the corn that was standing up straight, would be cut with the larger and more efficient scythe. There are a few references to ill pickles and this pickle etc. in print in the late 16th century, and Shakespeare was one of the first to use in a pickle, in The Tempest, 1611: TRINCULO: I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last that, I fear me, will never out of my bones: I shall not fear fly-blowing. A return to the more literal interpretation of the phrase came about in the late 1700s. The Duke of Rutland had toured Britain and wrote up his experiences in a travelogue - Journal of a Tour to the Northern Parts of Great Britain, 1796. He was present at the disinterment of the 350 year-old body of Thomas Beaufort, which he claimed to have been pickled and 'as perfect as when living': The corpse was done up in a pickle, and the face wrapped up in a sear cloth. Just nine years later the most celebrated personage ever to have been literally in a pickle - Admiral Horatio Nelson, met his end, although some pedants might argue that, being preserved in brandy, he found himself in more of a liquor than a pickle. See other phrases and sayings from Shakespeare.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-11-06 20:11:36

  A red rag to a bull Meaning A deliberate provocation, sure to bring about an adverse reaction. Origin In the 17th century, to wave a red rag at someone was merely to chatter with them - 'red rag' was then a slang term for the tongue. This usage is cited in print as early as 1605 and is nicely illustrated in Francis Grose's definition in The Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785: "Shut your potatoe trap, and give your redrag a holiday." The waving of a cloth rag at an animal to distract it may have been a common practice for centuries, but it wasn't until the 1700s that it was documented in print. The animal in question wasn't, as we might suppose, a bull. The first creature known to be susceptible to rag waving was that most dim-witted of birds, the pheasant. This was cited in Trenchard and Gordon's religious essays, Cato's Letters, 1724: Foxes are trapann'd [trapped] by Traces, Pheasants by a red Rag, and other Birds by a Whistle; and the same is true of Mankind. Next come vipers, which were also thought to be adversely affected by red rags, as was recorded in The Times in March 1809: "Truth to a lawyer was like a red rag to a viper - it extracted his venom." Bulls come rather a long way down the list of red rag sensitive beings found in early citations. Before them we find turkeys and, not to be left out, Frenchmen - as in Catherine Gore's Memoires of a Peeress, 1837: "They [the English] have no ardour for gratuitous quarrels; they do not fire up like a turkey-cock or a Frenchman, at sight of a red rag." It wasn't until 1873 that someone decided that bulls were to be added to the list, when Charlotte Yonge included an allusion in the novel Pillars of the House: "Jack will do for himself if he tells Wilmet her eyes are violet; it is like a red rag to a bull." The inclusion of bulls to the list was rather misguided. Bulls don't have the optical equipment to distinguish red from other colours, so the 'red rag to a bull' phrase gives the wrong impression. It is generally accepted that bulls are enraged by the waving of the cloth rather than its colour and that a green rag would work just as well. Personally, I've never been close enough to an annoyed bull for a double-blind trial, so to speak, and that is the way I prefer to keep it.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-11-17 10:10:07

  Away with the fairies Meaning Not facing reality; in a dreamworld. Origin This phrase has its basis in the Scots/Irish Gaelic tradition of belief in a set of folk myths, the cartoon version of which is a belief in the existence of 'the little people'. In a mythology that compares with the current fad for stories of abduction by aliens, Irish folklore had the alien role played by the Sidhe, a dominant, supernatural clan of fairies. The stories involved the Sidhe appearing from some hidden place, either their underground lair or from an invisible world, equivalent to contemporary science's notion of a parallel dimension, and spiriting people away. In another link to current scientific understanding of relativity, the stories usually involved the victim returning after what seemed like a few hours only to find that many years had passed in the world of humans. The everyday belief in a nether world populated by fairies, elves, pixies, leprechauns, goblins and the like was commonplace in mediaeval Europe, as was the belief in their interaction with the real world. A letter to the Scottish poet William Drummond, dated October 1636, contained the following: As for the Fairy Queen, of whom you wrote to me, her Apparitions of late have bewitched so many, that I find sundry ready to dance with the fairies. The belief in people being taken away by the fairies was very well-established by the time that the phrase 'away with the fairies' first came to be used - which isn't until the 20th century. This earliest example of the expression that I can find in print is in the New Zealand newspaper The Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, May 1909. This retells a story from Ireland, in which a Michael Coyne attempts to convince onlookers that he hadn't murdered his rival, James Bailey: [Coyne] "Don't mind your son; that is not him you see there." Bridget Bailey understood that he meant that her brother was away with the fairies. The phrase didn't begin to be used in its current figurative sense until the late 20th century. This item from The Washington Post, June 1987, is typical of the examples of the phrase that are commonly found from the 1980s onward: "Still away with the fairies, the fey and gentle Incredible String Band epitomised the hippie ideals of the Sixties."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-11-24 11:36:16

  You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink Meaning People, like horses, will only do what they have a mind to do. Origin Proverbs give richness to language and, to some extent, define a culture. 'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink' might be thought to encapsulate the English-speaking people's mindset better than any other saying, as it appears to be the oldest English proverb that is still in regular use today. It was recorded as early as 1175 in Old English Homilies: Hwa is thet mei thet hors wettrien the him self nule drinken [who can give water to the horse that will not drink of its own accord?] There are other pretenders to the throne of the oldest English proverb; for example: A friend in need is a friend indeed. (mid 11th century in English; 5th century BC in Greek) When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. (late 9th century in English; Bible, Luke Chapter 6) Whilst the above were spoken in English earlier than 'lead a horse to water...', they derive from either a Greek or Biblical source and so can't claim to be the 'full English'. Either that or, like the 11th century proverb 'full cup, steady hand', they haven't stood the test of time. The proverb 'lead a horse to water' has been in continuous use since the 12th century. John Heywood listed it in the influential glossary A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue: "A man maie well bring a horse to the water, But he can not make him drinke without he will." It also appeared in literature over the centuries in a variety of forms. For example, in the play Narcissus, which was published in 1602, of unknown authorship, subtitled as A Twelfe Night merriment, played by youths of the parish at the College of Saint John the Baptist in Oxford: Your parents have done what they coode, They can but bringe horse to the water brinke, But horse may choose whether that horse will drinke. It wasn't until the 20th century that 'lead a horse to water...' got a substantial rewrite, when Dorothy Parker reworked it from its proverbial form into the epigram 'you can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-11-27 18:22:53

  Namby-pamby Meaning Childish and weakly sentimental. Origin In 1714, the English poet and playwright, Ambrose Philips (1674 - 1749) became tutor to George I's grandchildren. The position gave him a status amongst the aristocracy and he took the opportunity to advance his place in society by writing sycophantic sentimental poems in praise of their children. These were written in rather affected and insipid nursery language, of the 'eency-weency', 'goody-goody' sort. This didn't go down well with his rival poets and playwrights and when, in 1725, he wrote the execrable 'To the Honourable Miss Carteret', he was widely derided: Thou, thy parents pride and care, Fairest offspring of the fair ... When again the lambkins play, Pretty sportlings,full of May and so on His contemporaries Henry Carey, John Gay, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift combined the cloying nursery reduplication in Philips' work with his first name and came up with a nickname for him - Namby-Pamby. Carey was the first to put it into print, in the poem Namby-Pamby (1725?): All ye poets of the age, All ye witlings of the stage … Namby-Pamby is your guide, Albion's joy, Hibernia's pride. Namby-Pamby, pilly-piss, Rhimy-pim'd on Missy Miss Tartaretta Tartaree From the navel to the knee; That her father's gracy grace Might give him a placy place. Pope subsequently made similar fun of Philips in his poem The Dunciad - "Beneath his reign, shall ... Namby Pamby be prefer'd for Wit!" The term began to be used to describe a style of ineffectual writing soon afterwards. For example, William Ayre, in his Memoirs of the life and writings of Alexander Pope (1745), writes: "He [Philips] us'd to write Verses on Infants, in a strange Stile, which Dean [Jonathan] Swift calls the Namby Pamby Stile." It wasn't long before the direct insult to Philips became a new form of general disparagement and 'namby-pamby' entered the language to refer to anything weak or ineffectual. For example, The Westmoreland Magazine, 1774, refers to "A namby-pamby Duke". Philips wasn't amongst the first rank of English poets, but some believe the fact that his only lasting contribution to the language as the butt of the disparaging 'namby-pamby' is rather unfair. He was socially unpopular and remained unmarried, poignantly referring in print to 'a broken love-promise', and his unattractive appearance ("of lean make and pale complexion and five feet seven inches high" - Joseph Spence) made him an easy target. However, no less a champion than Samuel Johnson came to his rescue in asserting that "Philips became ridiculous, without his own fault". Perhaps a kinder epitaph is that 'namby-pamby' was clearly the inspiration for the name of the children's television character, Andy Pandy. The puppet was featured in the classic series Watch With Mother, which was amongst the first television programmes made for children and a mainstay of BBC output in the 1950s.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-12-07 15:24:09

  Sleep tight Meaning Sleep well. Origin 'Sleep tight' is a very well-used phrase in many parts of the English-speaking world. It's common at bedtime in the form of the rhyme "good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite". There are many meanings of the word 'tight' and, unsurprisingly, there are several theories going the rounds as to the origin of 'sleep tight'. One is that the phrase dates from the days when mattresses were supported by ropes which needed to be pulled tight to provide a well-sprung bed. This was the notion that was put forward on a 2008 BBC antiques show, when the presenter lay on an oak settle to demonstrate the support provided by the understringing and to confidently pronounce "hence the expression 'night, night, sleep tight'". This explanation seems unlikely, as it is the bed rather than its occupant that is tight and no one (in my experience) ever wishes furniture a good night's sleep. He would had more luck had he opted to say that 'settle down to sleep' derives from 'settle' or 'seat' - which it does. The 'don't let the bedbugs bite' part has prompted some to suggest that the 'tight' refers to the tightness of bedclothes, intended to keep bedbugs at bay. That's hardly likely, as bedbugs live in mattresses and wouldn't be avoided by tying bedclothes tightly. Also, '...bedbugs bite' is an extended version of the original 'sleep tight' bedtime message, which didn't start to be used until the mid-20th century - well after 'sleep tight' was first used. 'Sleep tight' didn't derive from either bedcoverings or ancient furniture and, in fact, isn't a very old expression at all. The first citation of it that I can find is from 1866. In her diary Through Some Eventful Years, Susan Bradford Eppes included: "All is ready and we leave as soon as breakfast is over. Goodbye little Diary. ‘Sleep tight and wake bright,’ for I will need you when I return". There aren't many other known citations until the early 20th century and the OED lists none until 1933, by which time the innerspring mattress had been invented and most mattresses were supported by metal straps or springs. This puts the phrase out of general circulation at the date that rope-strung beds were commonly used, which makes the rope-stringing origin unlikely at best. Susan Eppes' line, with its clear link between 'sleep tight' and 'sleep well', leads us to the most probable explanation for the phrase. The word tightly, although not often used in this way now, means 'soundly, properly, well'. The earlier phrase 'tight asleep' derives from this meaning, as seen in this example from Marie Beauchamp's novel Elizabeth and her German Garden, 1898: And once, when there was a storm in the night, she complained loudly, and wanted to know why lieber Gott didn't do the scolding in the daytime, as she had been so tight asleep. 'Tight asleep' just meant 'soundly asleep' and 'sleep tight' just means 'sleep soundly'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-12-11 11:46:25

  Bring home the bacon Meaning To earn money, especially money for one's family; to be successful, especially financially successful. Origin The origin of the phrase 'bring home the bacon' is muddled by association with other 'bacon' expressions - 'save one's bacon', 'cold shoulder', chew the fat' etc. In reality, the link between them is limited to the fact that bacon has been a slang term for one's body, and by extension one's livelihood or income, since the 17th century. Of course, the source of that 'body' meaning is from bacon coming from the body of a pig or, more accurately, a pig's back and sides. An invented explanation that links 'bringing home the bacon' with the culinary habits of mediaeval English peasantry is given in the nonsense email 'Life in the 1500s'. That ignores the fact that 'bring home the bacon' is a 20th century phrase that was coined in the USA. One field of endeavour in which one's body, i.e. bacon, is the key to one's fortune is boxing, and it is in that sport that the expression first became widely used. Joe Gans and 'Battling' Oliver Nelson fought for the widely reported world lightweight championship on 3rd September 1906. In coverage of the fight, the New York newspaper The Post-Standard, 4th September 1906, reported that: Before the fight Gans received a telegram from his mother: "Joe, the eyes of the world are on you. Everybody says you ought to win. Peter Jackson will tell me the news and you bring home the bacon." Gans (on the right in the picture) won the fight, and The New York Times printed a story saying that he had replied by telegraph that he "had not only the bacon, but the gravy", and that he later sent his mother a cheque for $6,000. A month later, in October 1906, The Oakland Tribune reported another boxing correspondent, Ray Peck, predicting the result of the impending Al Kaufmann/Sam Berger fight in California like this: Kaufmann will bring home the bacon. [He did] There are no newspaper records, or any other printed records that I can find, of 'bring home the bacon' dating from before September 1906, but there are many, most of them boxing-related, from soon afterwards. That's not exactly prrof that the expression was coined by the good Mrs Gans, but we can say at least that she was the one who brought it into the public arena.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-12-18 19:06:16

  A pig in a poke Meaning An offering or deal that is foolishly accepted without being examined first. Origin 'Don't buy a pig in a poke' might seem odd and archaic language. It's true that the phrase is very old, but actually it can be taken quite literally and remains good advice. The advice being given is 'don't buy a pig until you have seen it'. This is enshrined in British commercial law as 'caveat emptor' - Latin for 'let the buyer beware'. This remains the guiding principle of commerce in many countries and, in essence, supports the view that if you buy something you take responsibility to make sure it is what you intended to buy. A poke is a sack or bag. It has a French origin as 'poque' and, like several other French words, its a diminutive is formed by adding 'ette' or 'et' - hence 'pocket' began life with the meaning 'small bag'. Poke is still in use in several English-speaking countries, notably Scotland and USA, and describes just the sort of bag that would be useful for carrying a piglet to market. A pig that's in a poke might turn out to be no pig at all. If a merchant tried to cheat by substituting a lower value animal, the trick could be uncovered by letting the cat out of the bag. Many other European languages have a version of this phrase - most of them translating into English as a warning not to 'buy a cat in a bag'. The advice has stood the test of time and people have been repeating it in one form or the other for getting on for five hundred years, maybe longer. Fraser's Magazine (1858) reprinted a piece from Richard Hill's (or Hilles') Common-place Book, 1530, which gave this advice to market traders: "When ye proffer the pigge open the poke." John Heywood included something nearer to our modern-day version of the phrase in Proverbes and Epigrammes, 1555-60: I will neuer bye the pyg in the poke : Thers many a foule pyg in a feyre cloke. See also: 'let the cat out of the bag'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2009-12-25 16:36:38

  1. The 'dog's bollocks' originated as a play on 'box deluxe' printed on Mecanno sets True False 2. 'Thick and thin' refers to Mixed English woodland David and Victoria Beckham Tweedledum and Tweedledee 3. 'Bring home the bacon' originated As a reference to an English peasant's wages In boxing circles in the USA With the story of the Dunmow Flitch 4. If you were 'saved by the bell', where you be? In a coffin In a boxing ring In a pub 5. Who were the first to be recorded as 'as happy as...' Larry Clams Sandboys 6. 'Stealing one's thunder' was originated by The writers of Greek mystery plays The English playwright John Dennis Norse mythology 7. 'Boxing Day' got its name from Sporting events held on the day after Christmas The mating habits of hares The giving of gifts in boxes at Christmas 8. The first person described as a 'living legend' and 'a legend in her own lifetime' was Queen Elizabeth I Marlene Deitrich Florence Nightingale 9. 'Humble pie' was The first meal served to monks after Christmas Named after the Victorian stable keeper James Humble A variant of 'umble pie', i.e. a pie made from innards 10. To be 'dressed to the nines' meant Wearing a suit made from nine yards of cloth To be dressed well, in one's best clothes A member of Edward II's council of nine worthies 11. 'Below the salt' referred to Sailors buried at sea People of low status who didn't sit at the high table Scholars expelled from Eton College 12. 'Waxing poetic' means Singing in the moonlight Sealing a love letter Becoming increasingly poetic 13. Swans sing 'swan songs' before they die True False 14. 'Smithereens' were Small fragments The rocks that trails comets A group of villages in the west of Ireland 15. A 'harbinger' was A type of parrot A rainbow A scout or forerunner 16. 'Sleep tight' referred to The tightness of bedclothes An encouragement to sleep well The stringing on wooden beds 17. 'Namby Pamby' was A soft cheese A parodying name for the poet Ambrose Philips A nursery rhyme character 18. Guy Fawkes was hanged, drawn and quartered True False 19. 'Pull out all the stops' refers to Barrel making Playing the organ Hairdressing 20. A codger was A servant who carried hawks to the hunt An elderly beggar A 'coffin-dodger' 21. 'Left in the lurch' comes from Being left without lunch The French card game lourche A bride left jilted at the church's lych gate 22. If you have a 'chip on your shoulder' you are Taking timber from a shipyard A Billingsgate fishmonger Challenging an adversary to a fight 23. 'Flotsam and jetsam' were A 19th century musichall act The debris remaining after a shipwreck The spots seen after looking at a bright light 24. The phrase 'taken aback' derived from Nautical language referring to a change in the wind Being led backwards in a blindfold Surprise at being stabbed in the back 25. The word 'posh' derives from 'Port out, starboard home' False True 26. A 'dead ringer' was originally a horse substituted in order to gain advantage in a race True False 27. 'Umbrage' was first A town in the west of England A shady area A type of medicine 28. A 'loggerhead' was originally A dam formed from logs A dunce or blockhead A turtle 29. In its original meaning, if 'had a clue' you had A ball of string A message from a clairvoyant A pot of glue 30. The first 'Jumbo' was An elephant in Barnum's circus A ceremonial Hindu prayer wagon A Disney cartoon character 31. An 'inkling' was A fairy's ghost The bell sounded at a funeral A faint hearing of one's own name 32. Swashbucklers were so called because they swashed their buckles True False 33. 'Off your own bat' is a corruption of 'off your own back' True False 34. If 'curiousity killed the cat', what is said to have brought it back? Cheshire cheese Its ninth life Satisfaction 35. A 'chaise lounge' is A type of sofa An American misspelling of the French 'chaise longue' The back room of a London pub 36. The first things said to have 'cropped up' were Rocks in the landscape 'Cropmarks' that indicate buried archeolology Weeds in fields of cereal 37. 'Limbo' was first The Tower of London's 'death row' The borders of Hell A dance 38. If you were 'hoist by your own petard' you were Blown up by your own weapon Caught by your own trap Drummed out of the navy 39. 'Peter out' was first used In relation to St. Peter In the mining industry As a translation of the French to fart 40. The phrase 'Catch 22' was in common use before Joseph Heller's 1961 novel True False 41. The phrase 'Salad Days' was coined by William Shakespeare Noel Coward Mrs Beeton 42. 'Augur well' means Do a good job Be successful in a wager Bode well 43. 'The hair of the dog' refers to The belief that dog hair cures rabies The belief that drinking alcohol will cure a hangover A corruption of 'here lies God' 44. 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year' was The text on the first Christmas card Coined by US advertisers in the 1920s A traditional greeting by members of the German Royal Court 45. To be 'worth one's salt' one is Worth one's pay A member of the House of Lords A good cook 46. The 'sorts' in 'out of sorts' were Cockney stallholders Printer's type blocks Liquorice sweets 47. If you are 'in the offing' you are Just entering/leaving a port About to be married In a Limehouse pub 48. 'A cock and bull story' originated At the Cock and Bull coaching inns in Buckinghamshire In France, with the term cock a l'ane, meaning fanciful story From cock fighting terminology 49. 'Brass monkeys' were the stacks of cannonballs used on marine fighting vessels False True 50. The 'dutch' of 'my old dutch' was Cockney rhyming slang for duchess Queen Anne The Duchess of Fife

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-01-04 14:43:48

  Full to the gunwales Meaning Full to the brim; packed tight. Origin 'Gunwales' is pronounced like 'gunnels' and it is often spelled that way too. That's not surprising, as the word is no longer in everyday use - pretty much the only thing that most of us know about gunwales is that they can be full or packed. Consult any search engine and you'll find plenty of examples of "full to the gunnels". Nevertheless, 'gunnels' really is a misspelling. An early citation of the word comes from Manners and Household Expenses of England, 1466: Item, the same day my mastyr paid to Roger Fuller, for tymbre for colers [collars] of the maste, and gonne walles... That suggests that the gunwales of a ship were its 'gun walls', which is exactly what they were - hence the spelling. Whenever, as a mere landlubber, I stray into defining maritime terms I inevitably get mail from horny-handed sailors telling me that I've got it all wrong. As a precaution, here's the definition of gunwales from the OED: Gunwales: The upper edge of a ship's side; in large vessels, the uppermost planking, which covers the timber-heads and reaches from the quarter-deck to the forecastle on either side; in small craft, a piece of timber extending round the top side of the hull. The expressions 'full to the gunwales' or 'packed to the gunwales' were first used as literal references to heavily loaded ships. 'Gunwales' may have been a 15th century word, but there's no mention of the phrase until the 19th century, as in the Unitarian periodical, The Monthly Repository, 1834: This is the Island of the Golden Fruit. Look, yonder they come! boats - one, two, three, five, a dozen! all laden up to the gunwales with the juicy balls. The non-nautical use of the phrase didn't come about until the 20th century. A semi-figurative use was made of the phrase in the advertising for the 1944 Dorothy Lamour film, The Fleet's In: The Fleet's In... and it's loaded to the gunwales with the funniest, friskiest entertainment. An example of a properly figurative use, i.e. one set on land rather than aboard ship, comes from The New York Magazine, June 1969: A popular East Side bar, packed to the gunwales with arch young bankers and panicky, pathetic, ersatz Now girls. Not much has changed in the banking world in forty years it seems, and it's all a long way from gun walls.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-01-09 13:28:21

  Toffee-nosed Meaning Snobbish; supercilious; stuck-up. Origin Judging by the queries at my website's Bulletin Board, the British expression 'toffee-nosed' isn't familiar to everyone in the English-speaking world. Whenever it crops up in a BBC drama that is shown in the USA I get mail about it. For those not familiar with it, the meaning is somewhat similar to 'posh'. The origin of 'toffee-nosed' has nothing to do with the sugary, brown sweet, but derives from 'toff', which was the slang term given by the lower-classes in Victorian England to stylishly-dressed upper-class gentlemen. It was recorded by Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor, 1851: If it's a lady and gentleman, then we cries, 'A toff and a doll!' It is widely agreed amongst etymologists that 'toff' was a corruption of 'tuft', which has a clear aristocratic pedigree, being the ornamental tassel on an academic cap. Specifically, a tuft was the gold tassel originally worn on academic caps at Oxford University by the sons of those peers who had a vote in the House of Lords. They were worn on the celebratory 'Gaudy Days', i.e. the university's twice-yearly feast days (which sound a good deal more fun than 'Dress-down Fridays'). The wearers of the prestigious tufts became known as tufts themselves, even having their own sycophantic crowd of wannabees, known as the 'tufthunters'. If ever there was a tuft, it was the well-connected student Archibald Philip Primrose, the fifth Earl of Rosebery, first Earl of Midlothian and later British Prime Minister. In March 1894, The Westmoreland Gazette reported that: Lord Rosebery was one of the last undergraduates of Christ Church who wore the gold tassel, known by the name of 'tuft', which was the distinguishing mark of noblemen and the sons of noblemen. Tufts were variously called tofts, tuffs and, by 1851 at least, toffs. They were already a well-established breed before 'toffee-nosed' began to be used. That didn't emerge until the early 20th century, as in this definition from Fraser and Gibbons' Soldier and Sailor Words, 1925: Toffee-nosed, stuck up. 'Stuck-up' had emerged a century or so earlier, and is found in Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, 1839: 'He's a nasty stuck-up monkey, that's what I consider him,' said Mrs. Squeers. The 'nosed' part of 'toffee-nosed' appears to derive from the allusion to the haughty toffs, who stuck their noses in the air when faced with the hoi-polloi. See also: POSH.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-01-18 10:41:45

  Hobby-horse Meaning A favourite topic that one frequently refers to or dwells on; a fixation. Origin The first things that were referred to as hobbies were in fact horses, of a breed that was popular in Ireland in the Middle Ages and is now extinct. The Scottish poet John Barbour referred to them as hobynis, in the narrative poem The Bruce, 1375. In Reliquiae Antiquae, a poetic work of Barbour's from around 1400 and republished in 1841, he referred to them again, this time with a little more context: And one amang, an Iyrysch man, Uppone his hoby swyftly ran, English mummers, morris dance teams and minstrel groups began performing with characters (often children) dressed in wickerwork and cloth costumes, made to look like stylised horses - not altogether unlike the present-day pantomime horses. These 'hobby-horses', which took their name from the Irish breed, are still to be seen as part of the English folk tradition, notably at the annual 'Obby 'Oss festival, celebrated each May Day in Padstow, Cornwall. This custom dates back to at least the 16th century, when a payment for a performance by a hobby-horse was recorded in the Churchwarden's Accounts of St. Mary's Church, Reading, 1557: Item, payed to the Mynstrels and the Hobby~horse on May Day, 3s. As time went by, the name hobby-horse was given to numerous other things. For example, A loose woman or strumpet: William Shakespeare, Loves Labour's Lost, 1588 - "Cal'st thou my love Hobbi-horse?" A child's nursery toy: George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, 1589 - "King Agesilaus, hauing a great sort of little children... tooke a little hobby horse of wood and bestrid it to keepe them in play." A dance, similar to the stage antics of the mummers' horses: Richard Lassels, The Voyage of Italy, circa 1668 - "Women like those that danced anciently the Hobby-horse in Country Mummings." A favourite pursuit or pastime - later shortened of course just to hobby: Sir Matthew Hale, Contemplations Moral and Divine, 1676 - "Almost every person hath some hobby horse or other wherein he prides himself." A wooden horse fixed on a ‘merry-go-round’: Gray's Letters and Poems, 1741 - "A Fair here is not a place where one eats gingerbread or rides upon hobby-horses." A velocipede, on which the rider proceeded by pushing the ground with each foot alternately; also called a 'Dandy-horse': The Gentleman's Magazine, February 1819 - "A machine denominated the Pedestrian Hobby-horse... has been introduced into this country by a tradesman in Long Acre." It is the 'favourite pastime' version of the name, what we now call simply 'a hobby', that was adopted as a figurative expression meaning 'a fixation; a thing one keeps coming back to', i.e. similar to having a bee in one's bonnet. So, a hobby is really a hobby-horse. If by any chance you occupy your spare time studying 13th century Irish livestock, your hobby-horse might just be a Hobby horse.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-01-29 21:20:30

  If it ain't broke, don't fix it Meaning If something is working adequately well, leave it alone. Origin Humans seem to have the urge to improve things. Prehistoric hand-axes were made by repeatedly chipping small flakes off pebbles of flint with other hard objects. Million-year-old examples of these have been found that give the impression of being ruined by being chipped just one time too many. That pang of regret we have probably all felt after spoiling something by adding that unnecessary final touch was first faced by Ugg in his cave. The thought may be Stone Age but the phrase 'if it ain't broke don't fix it', which sounds as though it might come from the Roosevelt or Truman era, is even more recent than that - and it's nice for a change to be able to give an expression a precise date. This one was first uttered by T. Bert (Thomas Bertram) Lance, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget in Jimmy Carter's 1977 administration. He was quoted in the newsletter of the US Chamber of Commerce, Nation's Business, May 1977: Bert Lance believes he can save Uncle Sam billions if he can get the government to adopt a simple motto: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." He explains: "That's the trouble with government: Fixing things that aren't broken and not fixing things that are broken." George Bernard Shaw's 'two countries divided by a common language' comes into play here. The phrase has to be American. In England things don't get broke, they get broken. When websites ask 'Forgot Your Password?' I always mutter "No, but I have forgotten it". In a few short years, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' has, even in the UK, become so established a part of the language as to have become a cliché, which is an unusually quick ascent and descent. Nevertheless, it's a close call as to whether Lance is now best remembered as coining that phrase or for William Safire's pithy description of him as 'Carter's broken Lance' after his resignation in 1977, following the Calhoun National Bank corruption scandal.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-02-01 13:43:05

  Without so much as a by your leave Meaning Without even asking for permission. Origin 'Without so much as a by your leave' is an old phrase but is still often used when someone, who might have been expected to have asked permission first, is disapproved of for acting on their own authority. The expression began life in the early 19th century. The first mention that I can find of a version in print is from The New-England Magazine Volume 3, September 1832: The evil creature [a mosquito] ... lit upon my forehead. Already he had inserted his atrocious tube, and was drawing blood, without so much as the civility of By your leave. An example of the precise current version came a few years later, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 51, 1842: "You [an itinerant peasant] have taken a place by our fire, without so much as a 'by your leave'". This expression is an unusual example of a phrase made from two separate phrases. The form 'without so much as...' has been used since the 16th century to indicate that someone had failed to do something that they had been expected to do. For example, this piece from The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, by Sir Philip Sidney, 1590: Lifting his feete aboue his head, making a great deale of salt water to come out of his mouth, they layd him vpon some of their garments... At length, opening his eyes, he gaue a great groane... Hee (without so much as thanking them for their paines) gate vp. [got up] Before we can decipher what 'without so much as a by your leave' means, we also need to understand 'by your leave'. I have to admit that, as a callow youth and when my mother used this phrase, I though it was 'without a by or leave', not really knowing what a 'by' or a 'leave' might be. Perhaps I should have been quicker on the uptake, as 'by your leave' was commonly heard in 1950s swashbuckling 'tights and knights' B-feature movies, just as 'shiver me timbers' was drawled by yo-ho-ho screen pirates. Nevertheless, unlike that nautical expression, which was probably the invention of a landlubber author, 'by your leave' is an authentic mediaeval colloquial phrase. It derives simply from the mediaeval meaning of 'leave', i.e. 'permission'. To 'ask leave' of someone wasn't to request to depart their presence but to ask permission of them to do something and, as it would only be asked of someone who had the power to grant or bar such permission, it was often expressed as 'by your leave, sire'. That may be the association that has caused another misstated version of it, as 'by your liege'. 'Leave' has been used with the meaning of permission since at least the 9th century. It was still commonplace in Shakespeare's day and he used it numerous times in his plays, for example, in The Merchant of Venice, 1596: Shylock: I pray you give me leave to go from hence. Very soon after that comes the first example of 'by your leave' that I can find in print, in Henry Buttes' Dyets drie dinner, 1599: (by thy leaue) Ile be a Guest of thine.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-02-28 16:30:31

  On the ball Meaning To be alert; in command of one's senses. Origin Some authorities have suggested that 'on the ball' originated in the sporting arena, and alludes to runners being on the balls of their feet, eagerly ready to run a race. This has some similarities with being 'up to scratch', which derives from boxers or runners being ready at the starting line. It is a plausible derivation, but has nothing to recommend it beyond that. A more commonly advocated location for the source of 'on the ball' is the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. This is where the oldest surviving and best known time-ball is sited. The Greenwich time-ball was installed in 1833 to signal the accurate time to passing ships. It was, and still is, raised just before 1pm each day and falls as 1pm strikes on the observatory's clock. Captains needed to have their ships' chronometers set accurately in order to navigate correctly, hence they needed to be 'on the ball'. It's a nice story and there are any number of tour guides around the observatory who are all too happy to repeat it. Unfortunately... Need I go on? It isn't true. The phrase 'on the ball' did actually originate in the sporting arena, but relates to the eyes rather than the feet. It is a contraction of the earlier expression 'keep your eye on the ball', which advice has been given to participants in virtually every known ball game. For the source, we need to look to early ball games. The phrase is recorded in early records of cricket, golf, croquet and baseball and many people regard baseball as the origin. Well, that appears to be almost true - the earliest citation that I can find in print comes from the English game of rounders. The English novelist William Kingston wrote 'books for boys', and in 1864 published Ernest Bracebridge, or, Schoolboy Days, which includes this scene: Ellis seized the bat with a convulsive clutch... Remembering Ernest's advice, he kept his eye on the ball, and hit it so fairly that he sent it flying away to a considerable distance. "Capital!" cried Ernest. "Run! run! - two bases at least." American readers will recognise the similarity of the rounders terminology with that of baseball. For those not familiar with rounders and/or baseball, suffice it to say that they are essentially the same game, but that it is easier to imagine Sylvester Stallone playing baseball. There's no consensus on this but there's a strong case to be made that baseball is in fact an English game, being merely a beefed-up variation of rounders. In 1744, which is certainly before anyone is known to have played baseball in the USA, John Newbery, an English publisher and a man with a reasonable claim to be the originator of literature printed specifically for children, produced A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, intended for the Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly. That title sounds entirely suitable as the source of the rules of the game of rounders, which is played nowadays by children. Nevertheless, the book includes a graphic labelled Base-Ball, which shows men playing the game and which is accompanied by a rhyme that pretty much sums up the basics of both rounders and baseball: The ball, once stuck off, Away flies the boy To the next destin'd post, And then home with joy. Baseball may or may not have been the origin of 'keep your eye on the ball', but it did take over the use of the phrase. As well as as the batters 'keeping their eye on the ball', the pitchers were also said to 'put something on the ball', i.e. they imparted some spin or curve on it. This usage dates from the start of the 20th century, for example, this piece from The Indianapolis Star, April 1910: Graham put something on the ball that fooled even Bowerman. The figurative version of the phrase 'on the ball', i.e. with the meaning of being 'alert or apt' in a context where no actual ball is present, began later still. In 1989, W. C. Williams and J. Laughlin published Selected Letters, which contained an extract from a letter written Williams in 1939: The novella by Quevedo... [is] right on the ball.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-02-28 16:31:11

  High on the hog Meaning Affluent and luxurious. Origin The source of this phrase is often said to be the fact that the best cuts of meat on a pig come from the back and upper leg and that the wealthy ate cuts from 'high on the hog', while the paupers ate belly pork and trotters. The imagery of lords and ladies feasting on fine meats, done to a turn, at Olde Englyshe banquets is easy to bring to mind and this seems to be the right context for the phrase to have been coined in. However, as far as the source of this expression goes, our imagination needs to leap forward a few centuries. None of the variants of the phrase 'living (or eating) high on (or off) the hog' is to be found in any of the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare or the like. In fact, they aren't found in print in any form until the 20th century, and then in the USA rather than England. 'High' has been in used in the UK with the meaning 'impressive; superlative; exalted' since the 17th century and in the USA since the early 19th century. For example, this from Samuel Pepys Diary or, as he liked to call it, Samuel Pepys' Memoirs - Comprising his Diary, in the entry for 29th July 1667: "Where it seems people do drink high." The word alluded to people's status and is the source of the terms 'high-life' (18th century), 'high-table' (15th century) and even 'high-heaven' (9th century). The idea that 'living high on the hog' initially meant 'living the high life' and eating pork, rather than literally 'eating meat from high on the pig', seems plausible but is dealt a blow by the following citation. This is the earliest printed form of the phrase that I have come across - from the New York Times, March 1920: Southern laborers who are "eating too high up on the hog" (pork chops and ham) and American housewives who "eat too far back on the beef" (porterhouse and round steak) are to blame for the continued high cost of living, the American Institute of Meat Packers announced today. 'High off the hog' has a similar pedigree, i.e. mid 20th century USA. For example, the San Francisco paper the Call-Bulletin, May 1946: I have to do my shopping in the black market because we can't eat as high off the hog as Roosevelt and Ickes and Joe Davis and all those millionaire friends of the common man. Why, when people had eaten pork for millennia, did the phrase not originate before the 20th century, is a difficult question to answer. Nevertheless, 'high on the hog' appears to have been derived, in the USA, as a reference to the cuts of meat on pigs. The question of why the clunky idiom 'eating too far back on the beef' didn't quite catch on with the public is a little easier to resolve.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-02-28 16:31:45

  In spades Meaning In abundance; very much. Origin It's easy to believe that this expression derives from the imagery of digging with spades and that 'in spades' is just short for 'in spadefuls'. However, the spades concerned here aren't the garden tools but the suit of cards. Hearts and Spades are the higher ranking suits in the game of Contract Bridge, a very popular pastime in the USA in the early 20th century, which is when and where the phrase originated. Despite the agricultural-sounding name and the shovel-like shape, the suit in cards has nothing directly to do with garden spades. Playing Cards originated in Asia and spread across Europe around the 14th century, arriving in England a little later than in Spain, Italy and Germany. The Italian versions of early cards used the suits Cups, Swords, Coins and Batons, which, on migration to England, became Hearts, Spades, Diamonds and Clubs. The image for Spades on English and French cards looks somewhat like that of the German Acorn or Leaf suits, but its origin is revealed by its name rather than its shape. The Spanish and Italian for sword is 'espado' and 'spado' respectively, hence the suit 'Swords' became anglicized as 'Spades'. We have been 'calling a spade a spade' for many centuries, but the expression 'in spades' is a 20th century US coinage. The term was often used before that in relation to card games, where Bridge contracts might be entered into in the minor suits of Clubs or Diamonds or, for the higher scores, 'in Hearts' or 'in Spades'. The figurative meaning, i.e. the non-cards-related 'very greatly' meaning, isn't found before the 1920s. The American journalist and writer Damon Runyon used the expression that way in a piece for Hearst's International magazine, in October 1929: "I always hear the same thing about every bum on Broadway, male and female, including some I know are bums, in spades, right from taw." It isn't possible to be sure that the figurative 'in spades' derives from Bridge - we don't say 'in hearts' after all, but the coincidence of the time and place of the origin of the expression and the popularity of the card game certainly does suggest a connection. See also: Grand Slam.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-02-28 16:32:26

  On the button Meaning Just right; exactly on target or at exactly the right time. Origin The Vancouver Winter Olympics have provoked a rash of emails asking if 'on the button' derives from the sport of Curling. In curling, which has a Scots sub-language all of its own, the centre of the target (a.k.a. 'house') is called the button. The object is to get the stones as near as possible to the middle of the target, so being 'on the button' at the end of a game is clearly no bad thing. The sport has an ancient enough pedigree to have spawned the odd phrase as well as its jargon words, as it originated in Scotland in the 1600s and it would be pleasing to find a Scottish phrase that wasn't coined by Sir Walter Scott. Regrettably, 'on the button' is a 20th century phrase and from the USA. It is from a sporting context, but from boxing rather than curling. The 'button' in question is the US slang term for the point of the chin. The phrase started being used around the end of WWI and there are many printed citations of 'the champ was socked on the button' etc. from that period. The earliest citation of the phrase that I have found is from the impressively named Indiana newspaper The Logansport Pharos-Reporter, May 1917: Moran is a one-punch fighter. He packs a mighty mean crusher in his right hand. If it ever lands on the button Morris will prove himself a superman if he doesn't go down. The precise location of the button was made clear in Harry Witwer's screenplay for the 1921 boxing film The Leather Pushers: The Kid floored him with a right cross to the button of the jaw. P. G. Wodehouse, a frequent visitor to the USA, took up the phrase and introduced it to the UK, as in his novel Laughing Gas, 1936, for example: He soaked [socked] him on the button, don't you know. Before long the term began to be used to mean 'accurately; precisely' and came to refer to times as well as locations. An early example of that is found in Printers' Ink Monthly, May 1937: On the button, a program ending exactly on time. The interest in the possible curling-related source of 'on the button' has come about because of the media interest in the much-fancied British team and their chances of a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. It's no surprise that, with personnel with names like Ewan MacDonald, David Murdoch etc., the British team is really the Scottish team. That's only so long as they are winning though. Having lost to Sweden, the English newspapers have stopped referring to 'our boys', who can now enjoy being Scottish again.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-03-05 21:35:19

  Lark about Meaning Play the fool, in a childish or careless manner. Origin There are several possible derivations of the word 'lark' in this context. 'Larking about' or 'lark about' (sometimes used as 'larking around' or 'lark around') has been used to mean 'getting up to mischief; playing the fool' since at least the middle of the 19th century. At source its origins may well be somewhat earlier than that; how much earlier depends on which of the proposed origins proves to be correct. The principal theories are that either: 'Larking' derives from the Yorkshire dialect word 'lake', meaning 'to amuse oneself'. For example, in a book by William of Palerne, circa 1350: [He] layked him long while to lesten at mere. [listen to merriment] 'The Yorkshire pronunciation of 'lake' sounds like 'laik', which could be mistaken for 'lark' outside the county. or: 'Larking' derives from 'skylark' and alludes to the well-known aerial acrobatics of the European Skylark. When they are on the ground these inconspicuous little birds look like what birdwatchers disparagingly call SBJs - 'small brown jobs'. In the air and singing they are transformed into one of nature's wonders - spiralling upward and trilling an exquisite song. Of course, skylarks were the inspiration for the UK's favourite piece of classical music - Ralph Vaughn Williams' The Lark Ascending. They also appear to have inspired sailors to describe lads who played around in the rigging of ships as skylarks. This term appears to have been coined with reference to the earlier name 'mudlarks' - the children who played and scavanged about the shoreline. Skylarks were first defined in a rather unlikely source, The Student's Comprehensive Anglo-Bengali Dictionary, Kanta, 1802: Skylarking, the act of running about the rigging of a vessel in sport; frolicking. The use of 'lark' as a verb begins soon after that, as in an entry for 1813 in the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Peter Hawker: "Having larked all the way down the road." The first mention that I can find of 'larking about' in print comes from an edition of the American magazine The Living Age, 1844: One of the young genelmen was called Mr. Larkins, and I'm blessed but the name he hailed by tallied exactly with the cast of his figure-head and the trim of his craft, for he was eternally larking about somut or other, and his very face displayed a mixture of fun and mischief. Of the two theories presented above, it does seem that the 'skylarking' origin is by far the more likely. Whatever the origin, 'larking' may well have been the source of the term 'larrikin', i.e. 'hooligan; rowdy young fellow' (although there are other theories on that too). Fred Jago's Ancient Language and Dialect of Cornwall, 1882, includes this definition: Larrikins, mischievious young fellows, larkers. The term migrated to Australia and New Zealand and was in widespread use there in the 19th century. In the same way that a current UK term for rowdies - 'lads', has led on to female rowdies being called 'ladettes', polite Victorian society down under often complained about the excesses of 'larrikinesses'. Joseph Wright's Supplement to the English Dialect Dictionary, 1905, cites Warwickshire and Worcestershire sources that defined larrikin as 'a mischievous or frolicsome youth'. While the English West Midlands may not have been the source of the term, the common use of it there no doubt influenced the choice of name of Jethro Larkin, a character in The Archers, the BBC's long-running soap opera (sorry, 'Radio drama'), which is set in that region.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-03-25 15:10:46

  A complete shambles Meaning A scene of disorder; a ruin; a mess. Origin Journalists today are hyperbolical - and I don't mean they have taken to studying conic sections; but they do like to hype things up. Nothing is ever new, it is brand new and more often brand spanking new. Likewise, the nice little word 'shambles' is now almost always accompanied by one of the intensifiers 'total' or 'complete'. That intensification began around the middle of the 19th century - for example, this piece from the English literary journal Bentley's Miscellany, 1846: I stepped onto her decks; they were a complete shambles, a dozen or more men lay about the after part of the ship. Note the link between 'shambles' and blood and gore - more on that later. Many newspaper stories in the UK in early 2010 have had occasion to refer to shambles. The accounts of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile have described the cities of Port-au-Prince and Conception as 'a total shambles', 'a complete shambles' etc. It has also been reported that The Shambles area of York has been voted 'Britain's most picturesque street'. Even there, shambles wasn't allowed out alone, as the Daily Mail's report on Google's Street View Awards, March 2010: "Britain's most picturesque street is a complete Shambles" What's going on here? The same newspapers are using 'shambles' to describe 'the worst of cities' and 'the best of cities'. Oddly enough, for two apparent polar extremes, the 'devastated' shambles and the 'pretty' shambles derive from the same source. More oddly still, that source is a small wooden bench. As early as AD825 there is a documentary record of the Old English word 'scomul' [later called shamble], meaning 'footstool'. By AD971 this had been recorded as meaning 'bench for the sale of goods' and by 1305 'stall for the sale of meat'. Here's where York comes into it. The introduction to a 1410 copy of the text of the York Mystery Plays makes reference to a dispute between various crafts guilds in the town. Candlemakers were up in arms complaining that other guilds were muscling in on their territory and selling candles without a licence. The text is long and difficult to decipher, but the important point from our perspective is that it makes specific mention of York's 'Flesshchameles', ['flesh shambles'], i.e. 'stalls selling meat'. Other English towns also had 'shambles' meat markets, for example Nottingham, as is recounted in The Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 1484: The twychell betwix ye Shaumelles and ye Draperie [The narrow lane between the meat market and the clothes shops]. Go to York today and you will find the narrow lanes of The Shambles to be bustling with tourists and shoppers. In the Middle Ages it must have been mayhem, the streets crammed full with stalls of all manner of trades - in addition to the Shambles' bouchers, the 1413 Register of the Freemen of York lists wevers, cordwaners, bakesters, glovers, fysshmangers and many more. It isn't surprising that 'shambles' became a byword for chaos and disorder. It had become established as such by the 17th century and, in 1617, Fynes Moryson wrote a travelogue of his experiences in European countries, making this comment on Venice: There is the Pallace of a Gentleman, who proving a Traytor, the State (for his reproch) turned the same into a shambles. A shamble, beginning as a humble stool, took a step by step linguistic journey to become a ruin, and that's the shambles of earthquake zones that we have become all too familiar with. The Shambles in York, once a stinking meat market, headed in another direction and is now an model of Olde Englyshe charm.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-03-29 12:09:24

  Lock, stock and barrel Meaning The whole thing. Origin I've seen it suggested that this phrase refers to all of a shopkeeper's possessions - the stock in trade, the items stored in barrels and the lock to the door. This explanation is entirely fanciful though - the 'whole thing' in question when this phrase originated was a musket. Muskets were composed of three parts: - The lock, or flintlock, which is the firing mechanism. Various forms of 'lock' muskets were used from the 1400s onwards, e.g. firelocks, flintlocks, matchlocks etc. The term 'lock' was probably adopted because the mechanism resembles a door lock. - The stock, which is the wooden butt-end of the gun. 'Stock' is the old term for wooden butt or stump and is a generic term for a solid base. It was used as early as 1495 in association with Tudor guns, in a bill for 'gonne stokkes'. See also laughing stock. - The barrel, i.e. a cylindrical object, is an even older word and was well-established by the 15th century. This is the least obvious of these three terms to have been chosen to name a musket part. After all, in the 15th century people would have been very familiar with barrels as the squat coopered tubs used for storage - hardly similar to the parallel-sided cylindrical tubes that were used in muskets. It may have been that the term migrated from cannons or other sorts of gun which were more barrel-shaped. Note: that 'lock, stock and barrel' refers to muskets, not rifles. What makes rifles different from earlier guns are the spiral grooves inside the barrel, which cause the bullet to rotate and fly more truly. 'Rifle' derives from the French verb 'rifler' - to scratch or scrape. Note again: that some make a distinction between spirals (i.e. coiling around a fixed point - like a watch-spring) and helixes (i.e. advancing around an axis - like a corkscrew). If you prefer such nicety then your rifle's grooves are helicoid not spiral. Given the antiquity of the three words that make up the phrase and the fact that guns have been in use since at least the Hundred Years' War in 1450, and even earlier in other countries e.g. China, we might expect it to be very old. In fact it isn't particularly; the earliest use of it appears to come from around the beginning of the 19th century. The reason for the weasly 'around' is the difficulty of separating the literal uses of 'lock, stock and barrel' from the figurative uses that don't refer directly to guns. For example, the earliest use of the phrase that I have found is from James Ray's A Compleat History of the [Jacobite] Rebellion, 1752: ...she found my Highland Pistols, which were a Piece of curious Workmanship, the Stock, Lock and Barrel being of polish'd Steel. Calling that usage a phrase is stretching reality thin; it is more a form of words and certainly not a metaphorical reference to 'the whole thing'. Such grouping together of 'stock' and 'lock' and 'barrel' does lay the groundwork for their adoption as a single unit, i.e. a phrase; an example of that is found in the USA in July 1803 in The Connecticut Centinel. The newspaper included a letter that reported on a celebration of the 4th of July, in the town of Stratford. The 30 men present carried a 'huge keg of rum' around the town and then drank toasts with 'full bumpers' [glasses filled to the brim] to: 1st: The 4th of July, 1776, the birthday of our ninepence... 2nd: Jefferson, Paine, Gallatin and all the rest... [...] 6th: Patriotism - Self interest, the cock, lock, stock and barrel. [and so on...] After the 13th toast the records peter out, remarking that the company was 'over zealous' and 'celebrated all night'. The participants might have been 'feeling no pain' and possibly recalled little detail the next morning, but the writer seems to have noted the events precisely. His usage is clearly figurative rather than literal and as such is the earliest use of the phrase that I am aware of. The inclusion of 'cock' [the firing hammer] lends additional weight to the argument that the allusion is to firearms. The colloquial use and lack of any explanation suggests that the phrase was in circulation in the USA in 1803 and earlier citations may well be found. Rudyard Kipling came close to giving us a definition of the term in 1891, in Light That Failed: "The whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, isn't worth one big yellow sea-poppy."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-04-07 09:44:49

  Bite the bullet Meaning Accept the inevitable impending hardship and endure the resulting pain with fortitude. Origin I've always believed that, before the days of effective anaesthetics, soldiers were given bullets to bite on to help them endure pain. 'I've always believed' has to be as poor an opening gambit as 'it is widely accepted' or 'a man in a pub told me' on a piece discussing the origins of a phrase. Is it true or is it just 'believed'? The theory goes that patients undergoing surgery would be given a stick of wood or a cloth to bite on in order to concentrate their attention away from the pain and also to protect against biting their own tongues. A bullet, being somewhat malleable and not likely to break the patient's teeth, is said to have been an impromptu battlefield alternative. Lead poisoning would probably have been a secondary concern in those circumstances. Many artists, notably Rembrandt Van Rijn and Hieronymus Bosch, painted scenes of early surgery and none of those paintings shows patients biting into anything. Whether or not they might have been offered anything to nibble on, there's little doubt that they would have been fortified with strong drink. The most frequently cited origin of the alleged 'biting the bullet' practice is the American Civil War. This seems rather improbable, as effective anaesthesia using ether and chloroform was introduced in 1846/47 and ether was issued to U.S. military surgeons as early as 1849 - well before the US Civil War began in 1861. The photograph to the right shows, albeit not too clearly, a patient undergoing amputation in a US Civil War field hospital, with a cloth, presumably soaked in ether/chloroform, held near his mouth. It doesn't look like much fun but, given the choice, and apparently they were, surely patients would prefer unconsciousness to bullet chewing. On the other hand (isn't there always an other hand?), there is a documentary record of an interview with a Mr. Fergusson in the literary magazine The West of England Miscellany, Volume 1, Issue 1, 1844: The instant chance of being killed, in fact, and never more seeing Mrs. Ferguson, was eminently disagreeable to me. I shook a little, I confess, and bit the bullet-end of my cartridge, saying my prayers of course, the first time for ten years. That may well be a fictional account rather than an actual battlefield memory, but it does place the literal usage of 'bit the bullet' in 1844 and I can find no earlier example. It refers to an attempt to allay fear rather than pain. It seems unlikely that surgical patients ever bit bullets. However, it doesn't have to have been a description of something that actually happened for a phrase to pass into metaphorical use; the belief that it referred to some real practice would be sufficient. Rudyard Kipling wrote a dialogue in the 1891 novel The Light That Failed, which uses the expression figuratively (there is no actual bullet involved in the scene), but which appears to allude to the idea, real or invented, that fortitude can be gained by biting a bullet: 'Steady, Dickie, steady!' said the deep voice in his ear, and the grip tightened. 'Bite on the bullet, old man, and don't let them think you're afraid.' By 1926, the phrase had left the gory battlefields of the Boer War far behind and moved into the drawing rooms of the English upper classes, in the voice of Bertie Wooster, speaking to Jeeves in The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923: Brace up and bite the bullet. I'm afraid I've bad news for you. My 'always believed that' is now looking distinctly shaky - time for me to bite the bullet and accept the inevitable I think.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-04-09 12:13:41

  Hard lines Meaning Bad luck. Origin A line can be many things - a cord or string, a linear mark, a short letter, a policy, a range of retail goods, and so on. Given that, and the fact that 'hard lines' isn't obviously derived from any one of them, the door is open for the merchants of conjectural etymology. Clearly the derivation of 'hard lines' is entirely dependent on which line was being referred to when the phrase was coined. There is a reference to lines in the King James Version of the Bible, 1611, and that is the basis of several early citations of 'hard lines': Psalms 16:6 The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. 'Lines' here is generally interpreted to mean the demarkation of land for the building of a house. In 1866, the American writer John Greenleaf Whittier, in a prose work entitled Margaret Smith's Journal, wrote: My brother's lines have indeed fallen unto him in a pleasant place. The context of that piece is a woman's admiration her brother's new home and it's clear that it alluded to the earlier biblical phrase. Another suggested derivation of 'hard lines' is that the lines are those of a ship, i.e. ropes. For an example we can turn to Sir Walter Scott, an inveterate phrase coiner and frequent flyer on these pages, in the novel Redgauntlet, 1824: The old seaman paused a moment. 'It is hard lines for me', he said, 'to leave your honour in tribulation'. The nautical association is strengthened by the fact that 'hard line money' was paid to seamen in the 19th century and this was referred to explicitly in the August 1886 edition of the London newspaper The Pall Mall Gazette: On a Torpedo-boat, besides, there is hard-line money, which makes up for a good many discomforts. Both of the above explanations make sense, as etymological guesses often do, but neither is the origin of the phrase. The 'lines' in question here are comments written or said about someone. 'Hard lines' began to be used in the late 1600s and was a reference to unwelcome disparaging comments. The earliest example I have found is this piece of strangled verse by Mr. John Cleveland, from his Works, 1687: When sage George Withers and grave William Pryn Himself might for a poets share put in; Yet then could write with so much art and skill, That Rome might envy his Satyrick quill, And crabbed Persius his hard lines give o'er, And in disdain beat his brown desk no more. This is somewhat difficult to interpret but another example comes from The History of France, 1702, in which the meaning is more obvious: The innocency of the Princes was declared and published, while the Duke on the contrary was detested as an execrable murderer. These were hard lines to the Duke, who wrote his complaints to the King. The progression from a written or spoken opinion about a person which showed them in a bad light to 'bad luck, old chap' requires no great linguistic leap. 'Hard lines' isn't used so often in everyday speech these days. Fifty years ago, when hearing about a friend's misfortune, we might have bucked them up with 'hard lines chum'; twenty years ago, it might have been 'hard cheese'. These days, the young seem to prefer 'that's a bit harsh'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-04-18 08:01:04

  Life begins at forty Meaning Life begins to be better in one's middle age. Origin The notion that 'life begins at forty' is a 20th century one; prior to that it was more accurate to say 'death begins at forty' as most people didn't live much beyond that age. Life expectancy in mediaeval England was around 25 years and only reached forty sometime around the turn of the 20th century. By the 1930s many, in western societies at least, could expect a decent spell of reasonably affluent retirement, free from work and the responsibilities of childcare. Household gadgets like washing machines and vacuum cleaners were becoming more widely used and had begun to relieve women's drudgery and offer them increasing amounts of leisure time as compared to their Victorian mothers. In 1932, the American psychologist Walter Pitkin published the self-help book Life Begins at Forty. Pitkin stated confidently: Life begins at forty. This is the revolutionary outcome of our New Era. Today it is half a truth. Tomorrow it will be an axiom. Pitkin is often attributed with coining the phrase and, while it is true that his popular book was the cause of it becoming part of the language, he wasn't the first to express the idea, or even the phrase itself. The take-up of the idea was rapid and 'life begins at forty' appears many times in newspapers and other printed records from 1932 onwards. This was propelled further into the American consciousness in 1937 via a recording of the song 'Life begins at Forty', written by Yellen and Shapiro and sung by Sophie Tucker. However, we need to go back a way to find the origin of the phrase. The great 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer came close to it with his view: "The first forty years of life give us the text: the next thirty supply the commentary." In keeping with the reduction of the toil of domestic work and child rearing that began freeing up women's free time to some extent at the start of the 20th century, the first reference to life beginning at forty refers specifically to women. Mrs. Theodore Parsons was Physical Director of Schools in Chicago and, in 1912, wrote Brain Culture Through Scientific Body Building. It wasn't a runaway best-seller, but the arrival of the USA in the First World War in 1917 gave her views a new lease of life. In April of that year The Pittsburgh Press printed a feature on Mrs. Parsons and her no-nonsense opinions about the benefits of a brisk exercise programme that she acquired from her soldier husband (Mr. Theodore Parsons was, sadly, recently deceased - presumably from exhaustion): "The average woman does not know how to breathe, sit, stand or walk. Now I want women to train for the special duties which may devolve upon them in war time. Death begins at thirty, that is, deterioration of the muscle cells sets in. Attention to diet and exercise would enable men and women to live a great deal longer than they do today. The best part of a woman's life begins at forty." What special duties Mrs. Parsons had in mind, stationed as she was in Chicago, isn't clear. The paper was good enough to include a graphic of the dynamic couple, demonstrating their method in action, so you can give it a try and see if it works. Life expectancy has continued to move on and forty now seems no age at all. In 1991, the New York Times printed this opinion: All our age benchmarks, which used to seem solid as rocks, have turned into shifting sands. 'Life begins at 40? More like 60'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-04-23 13:26:23

  Household words Meaning Words or sayings that are in common use; names that are familiar to everyone. Origin Who coined the term 'household words'? The most common answer to any question beginning 'Who coined the phrase ...' is William Shakespeare and, as so often, the bard doesn't disappoint. This one comes from the celebrated Saint Crispin's Day speech in Henry V, 1598: He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:' Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.' Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember with advantages What feats he did that day: then shall our names. Familiar in his mouth as household words Shakespeare was in full creative flow at that date and also coined 'stiffen the sinews', 'like a greyhound in the slips' and 'once more unto the breach' all within the space of a few pages. A 'hold' or 'holding' was the tenure or ownership of a domestic property. This persists in words like 'freehold' and 'smallholding'. 'Household' was the word for things held by a house, i.e. the people and chattels that were normally at home. John Wyclif appears to have been the first person to have set down the word 'household' in print, in his 1382 translation of the Bible, in Ezekiel 28-13: And take pertenaunce of houshold and substaunce. Shakespeare seems to have enjoyed the word 'household' and used it no less than 23 times in his plays - often referring to 'household stuff', by which he meant the Tudor equivalents of bathroom fittings and white goods. Despite his efforts, 'household' didn't take off as a commonly used word and, apart from its use to refer to the Royal household, lay pretty much in the linguistic attic until it was dusted down by another literary giant - Charles Dickens. By 1850, when the magazine Household Words was first published, Dickens was a very successful writer. He had been frustrated by earlier publishing enterprises, in which he thought interference by the publishers had stifled his creativity, and he decided to fund Household Words himself. This gave him free rein to indulge his view that the general public could and should be uplifted by his artistic musings on the stuff of everyday life - hence the title. In the 16th century, the French landowner Michel de Montaigne retired to his chateau to write down and publish his thoughts and inadvertently invented the essay. In the 19th century, the wealthy author Dickens financed a journal to do much the same which also had the effect of bringing the magazine format to the general public. Now we have blogs. Easier and cheaper for us all to have a go, which is excellent - but I can't help feeling that standards have dropped rather.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-06-08 13:51:08

  Going to hell in a handbasket Meaning To be 'going to hell in a handbasket' is to be rapidly deteriorating - on course for disaster. Origin It isn't at all obvious why 'handbasket' was chosen as the preferred vehicle to convey people to hell. One theory on the origin of the phrase is that derives from the use of handbaskets in the guillotining method of capital punishment. If Hollywood films are to be believed, the decapitated heads were caught in baskets - the casualty presumably going straight to hell, without passing Go. The first version of 'in a handbasket' in print does in fact relate to an imaginary decapitated head. In Samuel Sewall's Diary, 1714, we find: "A committee brought in something about Piscataqua. Govr said he would give his head in a Handbasket as soon as he would pass it." Sewall was born in England but emigrated to America when he was nine, and this citation reinforces the widely held opinion that the phrase is of US origin. That is almost certainly the case and, even now, 'hell in a handbasket' isn't often used outside the USA. The expression probably had English parentage though. The English preacher Thomas Adams referred to 'going to heaven in a wheelbarrow' in Gods Bounty on Proverbs, 1618: Oh, this oppressor [i.e. one who was wealthy but gave little to the church] must needs go to heaven! What shall hinder him? But it will be, as the byword is, in a wheelbarrow: the fiends, and not the angels, will take hold on him. 'Going to heaven in a wheelbarrow' was a euphemistic way of saying 'going to hell'. The notion of sinners being literally wheeled to hell in barrows or carts is certainly very old. The mediaeval stained glass windows of Fairford Church in Gloucestershire contain an image of a woman being carried off to purgatory in a wheelbarrow pushed by a blue devil. The thought behind the phrase is 17th century, but the precise wording 'going to hell in a handbasket' and its alternative form 'going to hell in a handcart' originated in the US around the middle of the 19th century. The 'handbasket' version is now the more common. 'Going to hell in a handbasket' seems to be just a colourful version of 'going to hell', in the same sense as 'going to the dogs'. 'In a handbasket' is an alliterative intensifier which gives the expression a catchy ring. There doesn't appear to be any particular significance to 'handbasket' apart from the alliteration - any other conveyance beginning with 'H' would have done just as well. The similar earlier phrases 'hell in a basket' and 'hell in a wheelbarrow', not having the same catchiness, have now disappeared from common use. Let's launch 'going to hell in a hovercraft' and see if that flies, so to speak. The first example of 'hell in a hand basket' that I have found in print comes in I. Winslow Ayer's account of events of the American Civil War The Great North-Western Conspiracy, 1865. A very similar but slightly fuller report of Morris's comments was printed in the House Documents of the U.S. Congress, in 1867: Speaking of men who had been arrested he [Judge Morris] said, "Some of our very best, and thousands of brave men, at this very moment in Camp Douglas, are our friends; who, if they were once at liberty, would send the abolitionists to hell in a hand-basket." 'Hell in a handcart' is found in print before 'hell in a handbasket'. The earliest citation I can find for that is in Elbridge Paige's book of Short Patent Sermons, 1841: [Those people] who would rather ride to hell in a hand-cart than walk to heaven supported by the staff of industry.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-06-08 14:11:25

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

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-06-08 14:14:38

  Cheap at half the price Meaning Of uncertain meaning - see below. Origin Before we start on this phrase permit me to leap astride my favourite hobby horse for a while. Cheap prices - arghh, no! Price is a numerical measure and, as such, can be high or low but it can't be cheap, any more than it can be green, or hirsute, or pro-communist. Likewise, the phrase that can be heard in most weather forecasts - hot temperatures. No, again; temperature can be high or low, but it can't be hot. Then there's 'fast speeds' and... okay, I'll get off now; let us proceed. 'Cheap at half the price' has joined the list of English phrases that don't convey any useful literal meaning, but which are used in their entirety rather than by being reflected on word by word. Other examples that make little literal sense are 'put your best foot forward', 'head over heels' and, more recently, 'I could care less'. Those like myself, who suffer from literalism, faced with an item offered at half the usual price would expect it to be cheap - what isn't cheap if you halve its price? 'Cheap at twice the price', now there is a bargain. The interpretation of this phrase has caused some debate. I've seen all the positions listed below argued in Phrasefinder Bulletin Board discussions: 1. 'Cheap at half the price' is understood to mean 'reasonably priced' and if people understand that meaning why worry about logical niceties? 2. It was never intended to be taken seriously and is a pun on the meaningful phrase 'cheap at twice the price', intended either humorously or in order to deceive. 3. It is just an error made by people who meant to say 'cheap at twice the price' but didn't think hard enough about what they were saying. 'Cheap at half the price' is typical of the street cries of barrow boys. Many of these make no strict sense and stem from the same kind of linguistic exuberance and humour that brought us Cockney rhyming slang. Another theme in barrow boys' calls is the attempt to mislead or at least distract the public and draw their attention away from whatever mild scam the traders might be engaged in. In this way they aren't a million miles away from street magicians who used to use terms like hocus pocus as part of their distraction technique. For example, there's a street cry from the 1940s - 'apples a pound pears'. This makes no sense whatsoever, but sounds as though it ought to. Likewise with 'cheap at half the price'. In the hustle and bustle of a street market it sounds as though the customer is getting a bargain. Given the time to think the phrase through (and who bothers to anyway other than poor sufferers like me?), it is clear that no promise of value for money was made. In a more recent context we now get adverts that offer 'up to 50% or more' of something or other. This makes no sense either, as every quantity is up to 50% or more, thus making it ideal for advertisers - copy that attracts the punters without actually making any explicit promise. 'Cheap at half the price' is by no means recent. Here's an example from The Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel, October 1871: "A New Foundland dog recently sold in this city for $75. He was cheap at half the price." As an example of the confusion this term causes we couldn't do better. Did they intend us to think the dog was inexpensive at $75 or that it would have been had it been sold for $37.50? If I ever open a pet shop I can guarantee a literalist two-for-one offer on budgies- 'cheep at half the price'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-06-08 14:15:28

  Cotton on Meaning To get to know or understand something. Origin As early as 1648, in a pamphlet titled Mercurius Elencticus, mocking the English parliament, the royalist soldier and poet Sir George Wharton used 'cotton', or as it was spelled then 'cotten', as a verb meaning 'to make friendly advances'. 'Cotten up to' and 'cotten on to' were both used to mean 'become friendly with'. Whether this was as a reference to the rather annoying predisposition of moist raw cotton to stick to things or whether it alluded to moving of cotton garments closer together during a romantic advance isn't clear. John Camden Hotten, in his Slang Dictionary, 1869, opted for the former derivation: Cotton, to like, adhere to, or agree with any person; "to COTTON on to a man," to attach yourself to him, or fancy him, literally, to stick to him as cotton would. The number of citations that use 'cottening' in a courtship context and the use of the 'cottening up' variant would suggest the latter is more likely. For example, William Congreave's comic play Love for Love, 1695: I love to see 'em hug and cotten together, like Down upon a Thistle. The attaching of cotton strands to the bobbins of weaving looms is sometimes also cited as a source of 'cottoning on', but there appears to be no basis for that notion. None of the early citations of the phrase mention that context. The 'getting to know someone' meaning is now archaic and has been surplanted by the 'beginning to understand' meaning. 'Cottoning on' as we now use it derives from the meaning of 'attaching oneself to something', specifically an attachment to an idea that we haven't encountered before. This was coined independently from the previous meaning and two centuries later. It would seem to be a reasonable bet that at least one of these two meanings would have been coined in one of the major English-speaking cotton producing regions of the world, for example India or the USA. Not so; the 'become friendly' meaning was established in the UK and the first uses of the 'understand' meaning were in New Zealand and Australia. These do derive from the allusion to sticky cotton bolls. The earliest example that I can find of this is from the New Zealand newspaper The Wanganui Herald, June 1893: The Kaierau forwards are just beginnng to cotton on to the passing game. See also: the meaning and origin of 'cotton-picking'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-06-08 14:16:24

  Get off your high horse Meaning A request to someone to stop behaving in a haughty and self-righteous manner. Origin 'High' has long been a synonym for 'powerful'; 'remote from the common people'. This usage isn't limited to being on one's 'high horse' but has also persisted in terms like 'high and mighty', 'high-handed' and 'high finance' and in job titles like 'high commissioner'. When we now say that people are on their high horse we are implying a criticism of their haughtiness. The first riders of high horses didn't see it that way; they were very ready to assume a proud and commanding position, indeed that was the very reason they had mounted the said horse in the first place. The first references to high horses were literal ones; 'high' horses were large or, as they were often known in mediaeval England, 'great' horses. John Wyclif wrote of them in English Works, circa 1380: Ye emperour... made hym & his cardenals ride in reed on hye ors. Mediaeval soldiers and political leaders bolstered their claims to supremacy by appearing in public in the full regalia of power and mounted on large and expensive horses and, in sculptural form at least, presented themselves as larger than life. The combination of the imagery of being high off the ground when mounted on a great war charger, looking down one's nose at the common herd, and also being a holder of high office made it intuitive for the term 'on one's high horse' to come to mean 'superior and untouchable'. By the 18th century, the use of such visual aids was diminishing and the expression 'mounting one's high horse' migrated from a literal to a figurative usage. In 1782, Admiral Sir Thomas Pasley recorded his Private Sea Journals. These have ultimately failed to live up to their name as, in 1931, they were published by his great, great great grandson: "Whether Sir George will mount his high Horse or be over-civil to Admiral Pigot seems even to be a doubt with himself". Deference to people in positions of power has diminished over the years and we tend nowadays to mock high and mighty people as being 'on their high horse' when they affect a superior and disdainful manner - the term is now rarely used for people who actually are powerful and remote.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-06-21 09:48:43

  Gone for a burton Meaning No longer functional - a reference to a person who had died or an item that was broken. Origin There are numerous suggestions as to the origin of this British phrase, and I suppose that is a another way of saying that no one is entirely sure how it originated. It dates from mid 20th century UK and the first reference to it in print is a definition in The New Statesman, August 1941: "Go for a Burton, crash." The source is almost certainly to be the winner of a close-run race between two Burtons; the Staffordshire town of Burton upon Trent, or Sir Montague Burton the tailor - more on them later. The roll call of commonly repeated suggested derivations is quite long, so I'll also list a couple of the long shots: - A burton (also called a Spanish Burton) was a block and tackle mechanism used on Royal Navy ships. It was reputedly complex and difficult to use and any mariner who wasn't where he was expected to be was said to have 'gone for a burton'. 'Burton' is defined in William Falconer's An Universal Dictionary of the Marine, 1769: "Burton, a ... small tackle, formed by two blocks or pulleys ... generally employed to tighten the shrouds of the top-masts." - 'A-burton' was the term used to describe a form of stowage on a ship. Again, we have a definition - in Arthur Young's Nautical Dictionary, 1846: "A-burton, Casks are said to be stowed a-burton, when placed athwartships [from side to side across the ship] in the hold." There really isn't much to commend these explanations apart from the word 'burton'. They are both very early citations for a phrase that wasn't known before the 1940s. Without conclusive proof we can't completely discount them, but it does seem reasonable to put them at the back of the field. That leaves us the two more credible front runners: 1. To 'go for a burton' refers to the beer brewed in the Midlands town of Burton-upon-Trent, which was and still is famous for its breweries. RAF pilots who crashed, especially those who crashed into the sea, i.e. 'in the drink', were said to have 'gone for a burton'. Some commentators have referred to a pre-WWII advert for Burton's Ale, in which a place at table was vacant and the missing person was said to have 'gone for a Burton', i.e. gone to the pub for a drink. That would be a very strong candidate if only any record of the adverts were to be found - and surely they would be evident if they ever existed. Until any do come to light it's reasonable to call the said adverts mythical. 2. 'Go for a burton' is a reference to the suits made by Montague Burton, who supplied the majority of the demobilization suits that British servicemen were given on leaving service after WWII. (Note: Monty is also a contender as the source of the Full Monty). Any serviceman who was absent could have been said to have 'gone for a burton'. This does seem the less likely of the two explanations, as it doesn't quite match the meaning of the phrase. 'Gone for a burton' was used to mean dead, not merely absent, and Montague Burton didn't supply shrouds, as far as I know. What is known for sure is that the term was popularised by the RAF around the time of WWII, evidenced by the fact that all the early citations of it come from that date and context. It migrated to the USA quite quickly and in June 1943 a story entitled Husky Goes Down for a Burton appeared in Boys' Life, the magazine of the Boy Scouts of America: [Gone down for a Burton] In the R.A.F. it's the gentle way of saying that an aviator has been killed in operation. This phrase is now rather archaic and began fading from general use during the later part of the 20th century. It hasn't quite 'gone for a burton' but it is certainly well on its way.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-06-21 09:50:34

  In the nick of time Meaning Just in time; at the precise moment. Origin The English language gives us the opportunity to be 'in' many things - the doldrums, the offing, the pink; we can even be down in the dumps. With all of these expressions it is pretty easy to see what they refer to, but what or where is the 'nick of time'? It may not be immediately obvious what the nick of time is, but we do know what it means to be in it, i.e. arriving at the last propitious moment. Prior to the 16th century there was another expression used to convey that meaning - 'pudding time'. This relates to the fact that pudding was the dish served first at mediaeval mealtimes. To arrive at pudding time was to arrive at the start of the meal, just in time to eat. Pudding was then a savoury dish - a form of sausage or haggis (see also the proof is in the pudding). Pudding time is first referred to in print in John Heywood's invaluable glossary A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, 1546: This geare comth euen in puddyng time ryghtly. That seems a perfectly serviceable idiom, so why did the Tudors change it to 'the nick of time'? The motivation appears to be the desire to express a finer degree of timing than the vague 'around the beginning of the meal'. The nick that was being referred to was a notch or small cut and was synonymous with precision. Such notches were used on 'tally' sticks to measure or keep score. Note: the expressions 'keeping score' and 'keeping tally' derive from this and so do 'stocks' and 'shares', which refer to the splitting of such sticks (stocks) along their length and sharing the two matching halves as a record of a deal. If someone is now said to be 'in the nick' the English would expect him to be found in prison, the Scots would picture him in the valley between two hills and Australians would imagine him to be naked. To Shakespeare and his contemporaries if someone were 'in (or at, or upon) the (very) nick' they were in the precise place at the precise time. Watches and the strings of musical instruments were adjusted to precise pre-marked nicks to keep them in proper order. Ben Jonson makes a reference to that in the play Pans Anniversary, circa 1637: For to these, there is annexed a clock-keeper, a grave person, as Time himself, who is to see that they all keep time to a nick. Arthur Golding gave what is likely to be the first example of the use of 'nick' in this context in his translation of Ovid's Metamorphosis, 1565: Another thing cleane overthwart there commeth in the nicke: The Ladie Semell great with childe by Jove as then was quicke. The 'time' in 'the nick of time' is rather superfluous, as nick itself refers to time. The first example of the use of the phrase as we now know it comes in Arthur Day's Festivals, 1615: Even in this nicke of time, this very, very instant.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-06-28 10:20:58

  The bee's knees Meaning Excellent - the highest quality. Origin It's difficult to know if we need an etymologist or an entomologist for this one. Bees carry pollen back to the hive in sacs on their legs. It is tempting to explain this phrase as alluding to the concentrated goodness to be found around a bee's knee, but there's no evidence to support this explanation. It is also sometimes said to be a corruption of 'business', but there's no evidence to support that either. Nor is there any connection with another earlier phrase, 'a bee's knee'. In the 18th century this was used as a synonym for smallness, but has since disappeared from the language, replaced more recently by the less polite 'gnat's b*****k': [Note: Sorry for the Bowdlerised ***s above. If I included the actual word most email systems would block this mail.} Mrs. Townley Ward - Letters, June 1797 in N. & Q. "It cannot be as big as a bee's knee." 'Bee's knees' began to be used in early 20th century America. Initially, it was just a nonsense expression that denoted something that didn't have any meaningful existence - the kind of thing that a naive apprentice would be sent to the stores to ask for, like a 'sky-hook' or 'striped paint'. That meaning is apparent in a spoof report in the New Zealand newspaper The West Coast Times in August 1906, which listed the cargo carried by the SS Zealandia as 'a quantity of post holes, 3 bags of treacle and 7 cases of bees' knees'. The teasing wasn't restricted to the southern hemisphere. The US author Zane Grey's 1909 story, The Shortstop, has a city slicker confusing a yokel by questioning him about make-believe farm products: "How's yer ham trees? Wal, dog-gone me! Why, over in Indianer our ham trees is sproutin' powerful. An' how about the bee's knees? Got any bee's knees this Spring?" This odd cartoon from the May 5th 1914 edition of the Fort Wayne Sentinel uses the term in exactly the same way: [Text: Now dot I haf adopted Mr Skygack I suppose I haf to feed him. Vot does he eat? He likes bees' knees. Bees' knees? Yes, sure, he is very fond of them. Vell, I guess I got to catch some bees. Diss looks like a bee-hive.] There's no profound reason to relate bees and knees other than the jaunty-sounding rhyme. In the 1920s it was fashionable to use nonsense terms to denote excellence - 'the snake's hips', 'the kipper's knickers', 'the cat's pyjamas/whiskers', 'the monkey's eyebrows' and so on. Of these, the bee's knees and the cat's whiskers are the only ones to have stood the test of time. More recently, we see the same thing - the 'dog's b******s'. [Mr. Bowdler again...] The nonsense expression 'the bee's knees' was taken up by the socialites of Roaring 20s America and added to the list of 'excellent' phrases. A printed reference in that context appears in the Ohio newspaper The Newark Advocate, April 1922, in a piece on newly coined phrases entitles 'What Does It Mean?': "That's what you wonder when you hear a flapper chatter in typical flapper language. 'Apple Knocker,' for instance. And 'Bees Knees.' That's flapper talk. This lingo will be explained in the woman's page under the head of Flapper Dictionary." [an 'apple knocker' is a rustic] Clearly the phrase must have been new then for the paper to plan to take the trouble to define it. Disappointingly, they didn't follow up on their promise and 'the lingo' wasn't subsequently explained. Several U.S. newspapers did feature lists of phrases under 'Flapper Dictionary' headings. Although 'bee's knees' isn't featured, they do show the time as being a period of quirky linguistic coinage. For example, from one such Flapper Dictionary: Kluck - dumb person. Dumb kluck - worse than a kluck. Pollywoppus - meaningless stuff. Fly-paper - a guy who sticks around. One tenuous connection between the bee's knees and an actual bee relates to Bee Jackson. Ms. Jackson was a dancer in 1920s New York and popularised the Charleston, being credited by some as introducing the dance to Broadway in 1924. She went on to become the World Champion Charleston dancer and was quite celebrated at the time. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that the expression became popular in reference to her and her very active knees, but 1924 post dates the origin of the phrase.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-07-29 15:22:21

  Your name is mud Meaning You are highly unpopular. Origin In May 2010, BP tried to cap the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by plugging the leak with heavy mud. Had it worked, it might have given them some hope of limiting the damage to their reputation. As it didn't, the BP brand name is, more literally than most, mud. BP's CEO Tony Hayward has joined another villain of the collective American psyche, Dr. Samuel Mudd, who is widely reviled for his part in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Mudd gave medical help to John Wilkes Booth, who broke his leg while escaping after shooting Lincoln in 1865. Mudd was convicted of being Booth's conspirator, although the evidence against him was ambiguous and circumstantial, and many historians argue that he was innocent of any murderous intent. He has since been pardoned and there's even a Facebook site dedicated to salvaging his reputation. Actually, whether Dr. Mudd was innocent or not is of little consequence in regard to the origin of 'your name is mud', as it was in general circulation long before Lincoln was assassinated. This citation comes from John Badcock (a.k.a. 'J. Bee’) in Slang - A Dictionary of the Turf etc., 1823: "Mud - a stupid twaddling fellow. ‘And his name is mud!’ ejaculated upon the conclusion of a silly oration, or of a leader in the Courier." If the phrase wasn't originally 'your name is Mudd', how did it originate? Mud is exhaustively defined in the OED as "soft, moist, glutinous material resulting from the mixing of water with soil, sand, dust, or other earthy matter". The word began to be used in a figurative sense as early as the 16th century to refer to things that were worthless or polluting. That usage was later extended to apply to people, as listed in the 1703 account of London's low life, Hell upon Earth: Mud, a Fool, or thick skull Fellow. For reasons that are difficult to fathom, 'mud' later began to be used as a general intensifier. In the 19th century there are many printed examples of 'as fat as mud', 'as rich as mud', 'as sick as mud' etc. The combination of meanings of 'decaying and worthless' and 'extremely' was enough for the association of it with someone's name to become an insult - hence 'your name is mud'. As something that is at one extreme end of the scale, like 'good' or 'stupid', mud features in many English phrases - 'dragged through the mud', 'mud in your eye', 'as clear as mud' etc. The one that BP has most cause to hope isn't true is 'mud sticks'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-07-29 16:43:12

  Clutch at straws Meaning Try any route to get out of a desperate situation, no matter how unlikely it is to succeed. Origin It is only since the mid-19th century that we have been clutching at straws. Prior to that, desperate people would 'catch at a straw'. That usage of 'catch' was commonly used in mediaeval England, by which was meant 'obtain/achieve'. For example, John Wycliffe used it in his 1382 translation of the Bible into English, in 1 Timothy 6:12: Stryve thou a good strif of feith, catche everlastyng lyf By the 17th century, in the King James Version, this had migrated to: Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life Our present day ambitions are more prosaic and we only use that sense of 'catch' now to catch trains, buses and, occasionally, colds. A straw was chosen as the height of futility as a means of rescue. Being, as it was, a flimsy and virtually valueless waste product, it was often used as a synonym for the most unimportant and trifling of objects. 'Don't give/care a straw' was an indication of indifference, a 'man of straw' was an insubstantial adversary, and to 'condemn someone to straw' was to declare them ready for the madhouse. 'To clutch at straws' is now used as a figurative phrase, to describe any desperate situation. When the expression was coined it specifically referred to drowning. The notion of a drowning man anxiously seeking 'any port in a storm' was first expressed by Sir Thomas More, in A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, 1534: A man in peril of drowning catchest whatsoever cometh next to hand... be it never so simple a stick. More used the imagery on several occasions, but didn't mention straw in any of them. The 'catch at a straw' version of the proverb is first recorded in the English cleric John Prime's Fruitful and Brief Discourse, 1583: We do not as men redie to be drowned, catch at euery straw. The metaphor expresses futility rather well. Straws do float, but a drowning man would have to be pretty much out of other ideas if he put any reliance on it bearing his weight. Moving on to the 19th century, 'catch' has fallen from favour and we find an early mention of the current 'clutch at straws' version in The New-York Mirror, 1832: ... as drowning men clutch at straws. On to the 21st century and you no longer need to be drowning or desperate to clutch at straws - straw clutch bags have become fashion items.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-08-04 09:39:52

  It ain't over till the fat lady sings Meaning Nothing is irreversible until the final act is played out. Origin Just to get this out of the way before we start: is it 'til, till or until? You can find all of these in print: It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings It ain't over till the fat lady sings It ain't over until the fat lady sings You might even find versions with isn't instead of ain't. Grammarians argue about 'til and till; I'm opting here for till. Okay; so who was the fat lady? If we knew that, the origin of this phrase would be easy to determine. Unfortunately, we don't, so a little more effort is going to be required. The two areas of endeavour that this expression is most often associated with are the unusual bedfellows, German opera and American sport. The musical connection is with the familiar operatic role of Brunnhilde in Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung, the last of the immensely long, four-opera Ring Cycle. Brunnhilde is usually depicted as a well-upholstered lady who appears for a ten minute solo to conclude proceedings. 'When the fat lady sings' is a reasonable answer to the question 'when will it be over?', which must have been asked many times during Ring Cycle performances, lasting as they do upwards of 14 hours. Apart from the apparent suitability of Brunnhilde as the original 'fat lady', there's nothing to associate this 20th century phrase with Wagner's opera. All the early printed references to the phrase come from US sports. Some pundits have suggested that the phrase was coined by the celebrated baseball player and manager, Yogi Berra, while others favour the US sports commentator, Dan Cook. Berra's fracturing of the English language was on a par with that of the film producer Sam Goldwyn but, like those of Goldwyn, many of the phrases said to have been coined by him probably weren't. Along with "It's déjà vu all over again" and "The future isn't what it used to be", Berra is said to have originated "The game isn't over till it's over". All of these are what serious quotations dictionaries politely describe as 'attributed to' Berra, although he certainly did say "You can observe a lot by watching", at a press conference in 1963. In any case, "the game isn't over till it's over" isn't quite what we are looking for, missing as it is the obligatory fat lady. Dan Cook made a closer stab with "the opera ain't over till the fat lady sings", in a televised basketball commentary in 1978. Cook was preceded however by US sports presenter Ralph Carpenter, in a broadcast, reported in The Dallas Morning News, March 1976: Bill Morgan (Southwest Conference Information Director): "Hey, Ralph, this... is going to be a tight one after all." Ralph Carpenter (Texas Tech Sports Information Director): Right. The opera ain’t over until the fat lady sings." It was assumed at the time that Carpenter had coined the term on the spot. Circumstantial evidence is against that assumption. Whilst printed examples of the expression haven't been found that date from before 1976, there are numerous residents of the southern states of the USA who claim to have known the phrase throughout their lives, as far back as the early 20th century. "It ain’t over till the fat lady sings the blues" and "Church ain’t out till the fat lady sings" are colloquial versions that have been reported; the second example was listed in Southern Words and Sayings, by Fabia Rue and Charles Rayford Smith in 1976. Carpenter's and Cook's broadcasts did popularise the expression, which became commonplace in the late 1970s, but it appears that we are more likely to have found the first of the mysterious fat ladies in a church in the Deep South than on the opera stage or in a baseball stadium.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-08-15 13:35:15

  Left in the lurch Meaning Abandoned in a difficult position without help. Origin This has nothing to do with lurches in the sense of sudden unsteady movements. There are suggestions that lurch is a noun that originated from lich - the Old English word for corpse. Lych-gates are roofed churchyard entrances that adjoin many old English churches and are the appointed place for coffins to be left when waiting for the clergyman to arrive to conduct a funeral service. To be 'left in the lych/lurch' was to be in dire straits indeed. Another theory goes that jilted brides would be 'left in the lych' when the errant bridegroom failed to appear for a wedding. Both theories are plausible but there's no evidence to support either and, despite the superficial appeal of those explanations, 'lych' and 'lurch' aren't related. In fact, the phrase originates from the French board game of lourche or lurch, which was similar to backgammon and was last played in the 17th century (the rules having now been lost). Players suffered a lurch if they were left in a hopeless position from which they couldn't win the game. The card game of cribbage, or crib, also has a 'lurch' position which players may be left in if they don't progress half way round the peg board before the winner finishes. The figurative usage of the phrase had certainly entered the language by the 16th century as this line from Nashe's Saffron Walden, 1596, shows: "Whom he also procured to be equally bound with him for his new cousens apparence to the law, which he neuer did, but left both of them in the lurtch for him." The game came to England from continental Europe and its name derives from the word 'left', which is 'lurtsch' in dialect German and 'loyrtz' in Middle Dutch. Why call a game 'left'? The most plausible explanation (and regular readers will know that, in etymology, plausibility isn't everything) is that it relates to the bad feeling against the left hand that was then commonplace in many cultures. In English we have held on to this with the word 'sinister', which of course just means 'left-handed'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-08-15 13:36:10

  As pleased as Punch Meaning Very pleased. Origin 'As pleased as Punch' derives from the Mr. Punch puppet character. Punch's name itself derives from Polichinello (spelled various ways, including Punchinello), a puppet used in the 16th century Italian Commedia dell'arte. Punch and Judy shows, the popular summer-time entertainments on British beaches, have been somewhat in decline from the latter half of the 20th century onward, due to them being seen as politically incorrect. That's hardly surprising as the main character Punch is a wife-beating serial killer. In performance, the grotesque Punch character is depicted as self-satisfied and delighted with his evil deeds and squawking "That's the way to do it!" whenever he dispatches another victim. Nevertheless, there is still what might be called a folk affection for the old rogue in the UK and it would be a shame to see the tradition fade away completely. The show had an Italian origin and has been much changed over the years. It began in Britain at the time of the restoration of the monarchy in the 17th century. Samuel Pepys' Diary has an entry from 1666 that shows this early origin and also the popularity of the show even then: "I with my wife... by coach to Moorefields, and there saw ‘Polichinello’, which pleases me mightily." The phrase 'as pleased as Punch' appears fairly late in the story. The earliest known record is from William Gifford's satires The Baviad, and Maeviad, 1797: Oh! how my fingers itch to pull thy nose! As pleased as Punch, I'd hold it in my gripe. 'As pleased as Punch' is now the most common form of the expression. When the term was coined it was just as usual to say 'as proud as Punch'. Charles Dickens, for example used the two terms interchangeably in his novels. For example: David Copperfield, 1850: I am as proud as Punch to think that I once had the honor of being connected with your family. Hard Times, 1854: When Sissy got into the school here..her father was as pleased as Punch.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-08-20 17:11:02

  Once in a blue moon Meaning Very rarely. Origin Ask the man on the Clapham omnibus the question 'What is a blue moon exactly?' and you are likely to get one of three answers: 1. Duh. 2. It's the second full moon in a calendar month. 3. It's when the moon looks blue. Let's start with 3. Very occasionally, the moon actually does appear to be blue. This sometimes occurs after a volcanic eruption, like that of Krakatao in 1883. Dust particles in the atmosphere are normally of a size to diffract blue light, making the moon appear reddish at sunset. Larger volcanic dust particles diffract red light, making the moon appear bluish. Tempting as it is to suppose that something that happens very rarely, and which is mentioned by name in a phrase that means 'very rarely', is the source of the phrase, it probably isn't. Actual examples of the moon appearing blue would in fact be the exception that proves the rule, as the 'blue moon' was originally something that was considered not rare but impossible. The two notions, 'a blue moon' and 'the moon is made of green cheese', were synonyms for absurdity, like 'pigs might fly'. The 'blue moon' expression with the 'impossibility' meaning is old and dates back to mediaeval England. For example, a work by William Barlow, the Bishop of Chichester, the Treatyse of the Buryall of the Masse, 1528, included a sarcastic reference to a blue moon: Yf they saye the mone is belewe, We must beleve that it is true. In the following year, John Frith's essay A pistle to the christen reader, 1529, included: "They wold make men beleue... that ye mone is made of grene chese." Only after several centuries, and after the original usage had long since died out, did 'once in a blue moon' come to mean something that didn't happen very often. The earliest example of it that I can find is in Pierce Egan’s Real Life in London, 1821: How’s Harry and Ben? - haven’t seen you this blue moon. Moving on to answer No. 2. To explain that one we have to follow a long trail of etymological research, leading back to an American amateur astronomer called James Pruett. Since 1819, The Maine Farmers' Almanac has listed the dates of forthcoming blue moons. The compilers of the almanac had their own definition of what blue moons are. This derives from the fact that lunar and calendar months aren't quite the same and that some years have 13 full moons. In a typical 12-moon year, the moons all have names, like the familiar 'Harvest Moon', 'Hunter's Moon' etc. In a 13-moon year the extra moon is, somewhat arbitrarily, deemed to be the third moon in the season that has four rather than the usual three, and is called the 'Blue Moon'. The aforementioned James Pruett read an edition of the Maine Farmers' Almanac, but misinterpreted the system and printed the 'second full moon in a month' version in a 1946 edition of the Sky & Telescope Magazine. For some reason, probably because it ended up being printed as an answer in an early version of Trivial Pursuit, Pruett's version has gained currency. Two full moons in a month isn't really all that rare an occurrence - it happens approximately every three years. Despite it being both inaccurate and coined by mistake, Pruett's No. 2 answer is now widely accepted as a definition of 'blue moon'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-08-30 11:39:54

  Hat trick Meaning A series of three consecutive successes, in sport or some other area of activity. Origin The sports pages of UK newspapers have been full of hat tricks recently, as there has been a spate of them at the start of the 2010 Premiership Football season. Didier Drogba, playing for Chelsea, narrowly missed out on being the first Premiership player to score a hat trick of hat tricks, i.e. three goals in each of three consecutive games. Those reports refer to players 'scoring a hat trick', but the first hat tricks weren't scored, they were 'taken'. So, where does the term 'hat trick' come from? The first sport to be associated with the term was cricket. From the 1870s onward, 'hat tricks' are mentioned in cricketing literature; for example, this piece from James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual 1877: Having on one occasion taken six wickets in seven balls, thus performing the hat-trick successfully. While that doesn't define what a hat trick is exactly, the arithmeticians amongst you will have noticed that, to take six wickets in seven balls, a bowler has to take at least three consecutive wickets. The theory goes - and there aren't sufficient records to be precise about this - that if a bowler dismissed three batsmen in a row, a collection was taken and the proceeds were used to buy him a new hat. Either that, or a hat was passed round and the bowler trousered the proceeds. That explains 'hat', but why 'trick' exactly? The feat is difficult and is quite a rarity in cricket, there having been only 37 hat tricks in Test cricket history, but 'trick' doesn't seem the obvious word for it. What may well have influenced the choice of words was the sudden popularity of stage conjurers' 'Hat Tricks', which immediately preceded the first use of the term on the cricket field. The magician's Hat Trick, where items, typically rabbits, bunches of flowers, streams of flags etc., are pulled out of a top hat, is well-known to us now but was a novelty in the 1860s. It isn't known who invented the trick. The first reference that I can find to it in print is from Punch magazine, 1858: Professor Willjabber Derby's Clever Hat-Trick. Wiljada Freckel was a clever German conjuror, who produced an infinity of objects from a hat. The trick is accomplished by either using a top hat with a false lid or by sleight of hand. It became something of a fad in Victorian England and, while 'hat trick' wasn't seen in print before 1858, the term appears many times in newspapers throughout the rest of the 19th century. When cricketers in the 1870s wanted to give a name to an impressive achievement that involved a hat, what more obvious name than the currently pervading expression 'hat trick'? The term was also appropriated from the variety stage for the political stage, where Victorian MPs were said to have 'done a hat trick' whenever they reserved their seat in the House of Commons by leaving their top hat on it.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-09-27 10:43:26

  Dog in the manger Meaning Spiteful and mean-spirited. Origin The infamous 'dog in a manger', who occupied the manger not because he wanted to eat the hay there but to prevent the other animals from doing so, is generally said to have been the invention of the Greek storyteller Aesop (circa 620-564 BC). Many of the fables that have been credited to Aesop do in fact date from well before the 5th century BC and modern scholarship doesn't give much credence to the idea that Aesop's Fables, as we now know them, were written by him at all. Accounts of Aesop's life are vague and date from long after his death. If he existed at all, it was as an editor of earlier Greek and Sumerian stories rather than as the writer of them. Nothing written by Aesop now exists in any form. Nevertheless, you can go into any bookshop and buy a copy of 'Aesop's Fables' and, for this book more than others, that is largely thanks to the invention of the movable type printing press. Following the production of the Gutenberg Bible in the 1450s, European printers began to look around for other suitable works to print. What better way to educate the common herd than to provide them with the uplifting moral tales of Aesop? The German printer Heinrich Steinhowel set to the task and printed the first German version in 1480. The first English version followed soon after when Caxton adapted the German version into English in 1484. It seems that Steinhowel had decided that Aesop's fables weren't quite uplifting enough and he added the 'Dog in the Manger' in his 1480 version. There's no mention of the story in the Greek descriptions of the fables, some of which date from the 4th century BC. While not being included by Aesop, the story itself is ancient, having been cited in several early Greek texts and in English in John Gower's Confessio Amantis, circa 1390: Though it be not the hound's habit To eat chaff, yet will he warn off An ox that commeth to the barn Thereof to take up any food. The first specific reference to 'a dog in a manger' is quite old, being first cited in William Bullein's A dialogue against the feuer pestilence, 1564: "Like vnto cruell Dogges liyng in a Maunger, neither eatyng the Haye theim selues ne sufferyng the Horse to feed thereof hymself." 'Dog in the manger' is still used allusively to refer to any churlish behaviour of the 'spoilsport' sort. If Google searches are anything to go by, you are just as likely to find it written as 'Dog in the manager', a surreal version that escaped even the inventive Steinhowel.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-09-27 10:44:53

  Pigs might fly Meaning A humourous/sarcastic remark, used to indicate the unlikeliness of some event or to mock the credulity of others. For example, "I might make a start on papering the back bedroom tomorrow". "Yes, and pigs might fly". Origin 'Pigs might fly, or as some would have it 'pigs may fly', is an example of an adynaton, that is, a figure of speech that uses inflated comparison to such an extent as to suggest complete impossibility. Other examples are 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle...' and 'Make a mountain out of a molehill'. A correspondent recently drew my attention to a book by John Winthrop and wondered if it might be the origin of the expression 'pigs might fly'. Winthrop was an English Puritan explorer who settled in Massachusetts in 1630 and recounted his story in The History of New England, 1630-1649, which was transcribed from Winthrop's 17th century notes and published in 1908: In this year one James Everell, a sober, discreet man, and two others, saw a great light in the night at Muddy River. When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square; when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine: it ran as swift as an arrow towards Charlton, and so up and down about two or three hours. Whether Everett and his pals had been at the fermented cranberry juice or whether they were the first to record an attempted alien abduction we don't know, but we can be sure that their visions weren't the source of the popular saying. The original version of the succinct 'pigs might fly' was 'pigs fly with their tails forward', which is first found in a list of proverbs in the 1616 edition of John Withals's English-Latin dictionary - A Shorte Dictionarie for Yonge Begynners: Pigs fly in the ayre with their tayles forward. This form of the expression was in use for two hundred years as a sarcastic rejoinder to any overly optimistic prediction made by the gullible, much as we now use "...and pigs might fly". Why pigs? Other creatures were previously cited in similar phrases - 'snails may fly', 'cows might fly' etc., but it is pigs have stood the test of time as the favoured image of an animal that is particularly unsuited to flight. It is probably the bulkiness of the creatures and their habit of rooting in earth that suggests an intensely ramping nature [...and it's nice to have an opportunity to sneak in the little-used 'ramping', which means no more nor less than 'unable to fly']. Thomas Fuller, in Gnomologia, 1732, was the first to explicitly single out the pig as a ham-fisted aeronaut: That is as likely as to see an Hog fly. The first example that I can find of our currently used 'pigs may fly/pigs might fly' form is from The Autobiography of Jack Ketch By Charles Whitehead, 1835: Yes, pigs may fly, but they're very unlikely birds. Having an autobiography that is written by someone else is commonplace in the celebrity-obsessed 21st century, but wasn't in Ketch's day. Ketch was the executioner employed by Charles II and his days were lived out in the 17th century, so, unless our eponymous hangman really was a ghost writer, we have to assume the words of an 'autobiography' written 150 years after his death were Whitehead's rather than his. Flying pigs appeared in print in the UK quite often throughout the rest of the 19th century. The Illustrated Times referred to them in an issue in August 1855: ...pigs might fly. An elephant, too, might dance on the tight-rope, Lewis Carroll also conjured one up in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865: "I've a right to think," said Alice sharply... "Just about as much right," said the Duchess, "as pigs have to fly." It can't be long before another correspondent adds to the list of unlikely origins of 'the whole nine yards' and suggests that it derives from Winthrop's 'three yards square' combustible aerial pig.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-09-27 10:45:20

  Cash on the nail Meaning Payment made immediately. Origin 'Cash on the nail' (or 'pay on the nail') is an extension of the earlier phrase - 'on the nail', meaning immediate payment; without delay. This expression is first recorded in English in Thomas Nashe's Haue with you to Saffron-Walden, 1596: "Tell me, haue you a minde to anie thing in the Doctors Booke! speake the word, and I will help you to it vpon the naile." Philip Massinger's comic play The City-Madame, 1632, in which a character welcomes the arrival of a ship that has given his master considerable profit, makes the association with timeliness clear: And it comes timely; For, besides a payment on the nail for a manor late purchased by my master, his young daughters are ripe for marriage. The first example that I can find of the longer 'cash on the nail' version is in an anonymous open letter from to the Mayor of Exeter, printed in a sixpenny broadsheet in 1753: The Commanders and Officers of those vessels knew very well that Wool and Worsted were Commodities of a real and intrinsic Value: Articles that would sell at any Time or Place for ready Cash on the Nail. I've managed to get this far without mentioning the story that 'cash on the nail' relates to the bronze pillars called nails. These are to be seen outside the Corn Exchange in Bristol and the Stock Exchanges in Limerick and Liverpool. This derivation is printed in virtually every etymological reference book. Whisper it not in Bristol, Limerick or Liverpool, but this story has to be treated with some caution. It is said that the oldest of the four pillars in Bristol is mid-16th century and so would just pre-date the earliest printed reference to 'on the nail'. It is also true that business deals were sealed on these pillars. The late dates of the appearance of either or the terms cash on the nail and pay on the nail, make the attribution doubtful. None of the early printed references makes any reference to any of the cities with nails. The first time the suggested link between the bronze nails and the phrase was made was in 1870, by Dr Cobham Brewer in the first edition of the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. That suggestion was made over a century after the phrase was already in common use. There's not quite enough evidence to say that Brewer made the story up, but it does seem to be a strong possibility. It is more likely that the nails were named to match the expression rather than the other way around and that the origin of the expression lies in France rather than on the west coast of either England or Ireland. Versions of the expression were used in several European languages: 14th century Anglo-Norman, as payer sur le ungle - to pay immediately. 17th century French, as sur l'ongle - exactly. Dutch, as op den nagel - on the nail German, as auf den Nagel - entirely, to the last detail. The Anglo-Norman 'payer sur le ungle' means just the same as the English 'pay on the nail'. 'Ungle' derives from the Latin 'ungula', which means claw or nail. The sense of the earliest version of the phrase is clearly 'payment with the hand' - nothing to do with bronze obelisks. By around 1900 the US also began to use 'cash on the barrel' and 'cash on the barrelhead', with the same meaning as 'cash on the nail'. Those phrases have a much stronger claim to have a literal derivation, as barrels were used as impromptu counters in US stores and yard sales.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-09-27 10:46:10

  Vis-à-vis Meaning In a position facing another. Literally 'face to face'. Often now used in the sense of 'in relation to'. Origin The term is French and began to be used in English in the mid 18th century. The French spelling is vis-à-vis, i.e. with the grave accent, although that is often omitted when written in English. It is now frequently printed, no doubt to French shrugs and mutterings, as 'vis-a-vis' or even 'viz-a-viz'. When 'vis-à-vis' was introduced into England it was provided with two distinct meanings, both of which were in use from the 1750s onward. Oddly, it seems that these were both introduced by the author and politician Horace Walpole. The first meaning was the literal translation from the French, i.e. 'face-to-face'. Walpole was an incurable letter writer and, fortunately for us, many of his letters have been published in a collection of books, which provides the first citation we have of the term in English, in Letter to George Montague, July 1753: "He was walking slowly in the beau milieu of Brentford town, without any company, but with a brown lap-dog with long ears, two pointers, two pages, three footmen, and a vis-a-vis following him." What he meant by a 'vis-a-vis' in that letter was 'a small two-seater carriage, in which the passengers sat face-to-face'. These carriages were similar to the four-seater version that Queen Elizabeth uses each year to tour the course at the Royal Ascot race meeting. The meaning was extended to apply to any person or thing that was facing another, for example, one's dance partner, someone sitting across the table at mealtime, couples meeting in the street, etc. Mary Berry included a citation of the first of these in Social life in England and France from 1780 to 1830, 1831: It seems perfectly indifferent to them [the peasant men and women dancing] who is their vis-à-vis. Secondly, it meant 'with regard to'/'in relation to'. Horace Walpole again, in Letter to R. Bentley, November 1755: "What a figure would they make vis-à-vis his manly vivacity and dashing eloquence." It is this second meaning that we have held on to. We can now safety substitute 'with regard to' for 'vis-a-vis' with little fear of misinterpretation.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-10-04 11:29:44

  Carpe diem Meaning If Google's search records are anything to go by, more people visit my website (http://www.phrases.org.uk/) looking for the little-used phrase 'carpe diem' than they do for any other phrase, so let's have a look at it... 'Carpe diem' is usually translated from the Latin as 'seize the day'. However, the more pedantic of Latin scholars may very well seize you by the throat if you suggest that translation. 'Carpe' translates literally as 'pluck', with particular reference to the picking of fruit, so a more accurate rendition is 'enjoy the day, pluck the day when it is ripe'. The extended version of the phrase 'carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero' translates as 'Pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the future'. The meaning is similar to that of many proverbs that we continue to use in English and is a warning to make the most of the time we have, with the implication that our time on Earth is short. Other such proverbs are 'Strike while the iron is hot', 'The early bird catches the worm', 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may', and so on. Origin The original source for the Latin phrase is the lyric poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC – 8 BC), more widely known as Horace. The term is first found in Odes Book I: Dum loquimur, fugerit invida Aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero which translates as: While we're talking, envious time is fleeing: pluck the day, put no trust in the future Many authors have quoted the Latin original, but it was Lord Byron's use of the phrase that first began to integrate it into English. He included it in his 1817 work 'Letters', which was published in 1830 by Thomas Moore: "I never anticipate, - carpe diem - the past at least is one's own, which is one reason for making sure of the present." The noble George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron, is better known as a womaniser than as a Latin scholar, but he was well versed in the language and was a Horace aficionado. He was taught Latin as a child by the son of his bootmaker and went on to write his version of Horace's Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry), as 'Hints from Horace', in 1811. See also - Latin Phrases in English.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-10-11 17:27:00

  A little knowledge is a dangerous thing Meaning A small amount of knowledge can mislead people into thinking that they are more expert than they really are. Origin 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing' and 'a little learning is a dangerous thing' have been used synonymously since the 18th century. The 'a little learning' version is widely attributed to Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744). It is found in An Essay on Criticism, 1709, and I can find no earlier example of the expression in print: A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again. The similarity of the two phrases is demonstrated by what appears to be an impromptu coining of 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' in a piece in The monthly miscellany; or Gentleman and Lady's Complete Magazine, Vol II, 1774, in which the writer misquoted Pope: Mr. Pope says, very truly, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." Both Pope's original verse and the misquotation of it were predated by an anonymous author, signing himself 'A B', in the collection of letters published in 1698 as The mystery of phanaticism: "Twas well observed by my Lord Bacon, That a little knowledge is apt to puff up, and make men giddy, but a greater share of it will set them right, and bring them to low and humble thoughts of themselves. Again, there is a degree of misquotation here, as what 'my Lord Bacon', the English politician and philosopher Francis Bacon, Viscount St Alban, actually said, in The Essays: Of Atheism, 1601, was: "A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion." So, who coined the phrase? It appears to have been a group effort. Bacon can be credited with the idea, Pope with the 'learning' version and the mysterious 'A B' with the 'knowledge' version.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-10-15 10:56:06

  Mind your Ps and Qs Meaning Be on your best behaviour; be careful of your language. Ps and Qs are just the plurals of the letters P and Q. There is some disagreement amongst grammarians about how to spell Ps and Qs - either upper-case or lower-case and either with or without an apostrophe. You may see the phrase as 'mind your p's and q's' or 'mind your Ps and Qs' or 'mind your P's and Q's' or (less often) as 'mind your ps and qs'. I've opted for Ps and Qs. Doubts also exist as to the original meaning. Francis Grose, in his 1785 edition of The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, defines it like this: "To mind one's P's and Q's; to be attentive to the main chance." Origin The date of the coinage of 'mind your Ps and Qs' is uncertain. There is a citation from Thomas Dekker's play, The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet, 1602, which appears to be the earliest use of the expression: Afinius: ...here's your cloak; I think it rains too. Horace: Hide my shoulders in't. Afinius: 'Troth, so thou'dst need; for now thou art in thy Pee and Kue: thou hast such a villanous broad back... 'Pee and Kue' in that citation seem to be referring to a form of clothing, but that is somewhat ambiguous. It is also not clear that the 'Pee and Kue' in Dekker's work are the same as those in 'mind one's Ps and Qs'. Dekker later used the term in West-ward Hoe, a joint work with John Webster, 1607: At her p. and q. neither Marchantes Daughter, Aldermans Wife, young countrey Gentlewoman, nor Courtiers Mistris, can match her. In that piece it is less apparent that 'p. and q.' refer to a form of clothing. So, both the spelling and meaning of the phrase are debatable. Now we come to what is really uncertain - the derivation. Nevertheless, it is one of those phrases that many people are sure they know the origin of. When such folk are pressed, what they usually mean is that the person they first heard explain the origin had made a random choice from the list of proposed derivations below. As no one knows the origin I'll just list the suggestions - 'mind your Ps and Qs' probably derives from one of these: 1. Mind your pints and quarts. This is suggested as deriving from the practice of chalking up a tally of drinks in English pubs (on the slate). Publicans had to make sure to mark up the quart drinks as distinct from the pint drinks. This explanation is widely repeated but there's little to support it, apart from the fact that pint and quart begin with P and Q. 2. Advice to printers' apprentices to avoid confusing the backward-facing metal type lowercase Ps and Qs, or the same advice to children who were learning to write. I've never heard any suggestion that anyone should 'mind their Ds and Bs' though, even though that makes just as much sense and has the added benefit of rhyming, which would have made it a more attractive slogan. 3. Mind your pea (jacket) and queue (wig). Pea jackets were short rough woollen overcoats, commonly worn by sailors in the 18th century. Perruques were full wigs worn by fashionable gentlemen. It is difficult to imagine the need for an expression to warn people to avoid confusing them. 'Pee', as a name for a man's coarse coat, is recorded as early as 1485, so it is possible that that is what Dekker was referring to in his 1602 citation. If so, that usage long predates all others and we have the definitive origin of 'pee and kue'. 'Kue' or 'cue' as the name of a man's wig isn't known until well after 1602 though, so it still isn't certain what Dekker meant by it. 4. Mind your pieds (feet) and queues (wigs). This is suggested to have been an instruction given by French dancing masters to their charges. This has the benefit of placing the perruque in the right context - as long as we accept the phrase as being originally French. However, there's no reason to suppose it is from France and no version of the phrase exists in French. 5. Another version of the 'advice to children' origin has it that 'Ps and Qs' derives from 'mind your pleases and thank-yous''. That is widely touted as an origin but seems to me to be a back-formation, i.e. an explanation fitted to explain the phrase after it was coined in some other context. 'Pleases and thank-yous' doesn't appear to lead to 'Ps and Qs'. So, pay nothing and take your choice. For what it's worth, my virtual two-pennyworth goes to 2b, i.e. the advice to children who were learning to write.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-10-25 09:17:03

  Vice versa Meaning The reverse of the previous statement, with the main items transposed. Vice versa originates as Latin, with the literal translation being 'the other way round' or 'the position being reversed', but is now fully absorbed into English. The phrase is usually used to imply the complement of a statement without expressing as much in words. For example: "Fish can't live where we are most comfortable, and vice versa". It is often misspelt as visa versa. Origin The English language has many expressions that refer to things being the wrong way around - 'inside out', 'upside down', 'topsy-turvy', 'the cart before the horse', 'arsy versy' etc. Even the commonplace word 'preposterous' literally means 'back-to-front'. This extravagance may be accounted for by an age-old English preoccupation with the supernatural and things that are not as they should be - the struggle between good and evil in other words. 'Arsy versy' is the oldest of these expressions, but this has now gone out of regular use and has been replaced by its modern compatriot 'arse about face'. It is first found in Richard Taverner's Prouerbes or adagies with newe addicions, gathered out of the Chiliades of Erasmus, 1539: "Ye set the cart before the horse - cleane contrarily and arsy versy as they say." 'Vice versa' is also found in print quite early, as in Anthony Copley's An answere to a letter of a Jesuited gentleman by his cousin, 1601: "They are like to bee put to such a penance and the Arch-Priests vice-versa to be suspended and attained as Schismaticall." In 1915, the psychologist Edgar Rubin created a 'face/vase' cognitive illusion that is a visual equivalent of the phrase. Sadly, being Danish, Rubin described the conundrum as a 'synsoplevede figurer' (visual figure) and missed the linguistic open goal of calling the illusion 'Vase versa'

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-11-01 09:49:28

  Houston, we have a problem Meaning Originally a genuine report of a life-threatening fault. Now used humorously to report any kind of problem. Origin 'Houston, we have a problem' is right up there with 'Beam me up Scotty' at the top of the spaceflight-related quotations tree. In fact, both are slight misquotations. John Swigert, Jr. and James Lovell who, with Fred Haise Jr., made up the crew of the US's Apollo 13 moon flight, reported a problem back to their base in Houston on 14th April, 1970. 'Houston, we have a problem' is often credited to the project's leader Lovell. Actually, not only did Lovell not say the phrase, he wasn't even the first not to say it, if you see what I mean. Swigert and then Lovell (almost) used the phrase to report a major technical fault in the electrical system of one of the Service Module's oxygen tanks: Swigert: 'Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here.' Duke: 'This is Houston. Say again please.' Lovell: 'Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a main B bus undervolt.' 'Houston, we have a problem' was used later as the tagline for the 1995 film - Apollo 13. It is the dialogue of the film. edited for dramatic effect, that is now best remembered: Uh, this is Houston. Uh, say again, please? Houston, we have a problem. We have a main bus B undervolt. The issue of the film brought about a renewal in the use of the line and, from then onwards, it began being used in non-spaceflight contexts. The first example of such that I can find is as the title of a none too favourable review in the Los Angles Times, July 1995, of a restaurant called Houstons: Houston('s), we have a problem - Houston's is yet another slick corporate package, the antithesis of a mom-and-pop restaurant. The phrase was used again, in 2001, to report the health and addiction problems of the singer Whitney Houston. More recently still, it has been called out of retirement, as "Wii have a problem", for use in stories about injuries caused by over-enthusiastic use of the Nintendo game console.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-11-08 08:55:43

  Montezuma's revenge Meaning The diarrhoea (spelled in America as diarrhea) that is often suffered by tourists when travelling to foreign parts. Origin Montezuma II (also spelled Moctezuma II) was Emperor of Mexico from 1502 to 1520 and was in power when the Spanish began their conquest of the Aztec Empire. The sickness, colloquially known as the 'squits/runs/trots' and more formally as 'Traveller's Diarrhoea', is usually caused by drinking the local water or eating spicy food that visitors aren't accustomed to. It is a bacteriological illness, always uncomfortable, and occasionally serious. Most cases are caused by the E. coli bacterium. The revenge element of the phrase alludes to the supposed hostile attitude of countries that were previously colonized by stronger countries, which are now, in this small but effective way, getting their own back. There are many countries that were previously colonised that are now tourist destinations, and names for the condition reflect the part of the world concerned. These euphemisms are usually comic, reflecting the embarrassment felt by the sufferer and the amusement of the lucky non-sufferers. Of course, although Montezuma clearly had no reason to love the Conquistadors, his revenge isn't reserved for Spaniards - other names for it are: The Gringo Gallop The Aztec Two-step Those unlucky enough to suffer from the condition in Asia might hear it called: Gandhi's Revenge, Delhi Belly, The Rangoon Runs, Bombay Belly (India) Gyppy Tummy, The Cairo Two-step, Pharaoh's Revenge, Mummy's Tummy (Egypt) Bali Belly (Indonesia) Travellers from Asia to the west are just as likely to suffer the illness, as it isn't caused primarily by insanitary conditions but by ingesting a strain of the E. Coli bacterium that one's body is unaccustomed to - an event just as likely in London and Los Angeles as it is in Cairo and Kuala Lumpur. Delhi Belly and Gyppy Tummy were the first of these terms to gain wide usage and they appeared during WWII, when many British and US servicemen were fighting in North Africa and Asia. The earliest citations in print are from the Indiana Evening Gazette, October 1942: Americans on duty overseas are learning also to guard against "Teheran tummy" and "Delhi belly" and in Alan Moorehead's A Year of Battle, 1943, which pretty much sums things up: "Few set foot in Egypt without contracting 'Gyppy Tummy'... It recurs at irregular intervals and it makes you feel terrible." As a phrase, Montezuma's revenge isn't particularly old. The earliest citation of it in print that I can find is from the US newspaper The Modesto Bee, February 1959: In Mexico it sometimes is called the Aztec curse, Montezuma's revenge... and other colorful names. It can be either a mild or explosive illness.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-11-16 08:48:08

  Good riddance Meaning An expression of pleasure on being rid of some annoyance - usually an individual. Origin 'Riddance' is now so completely associated with this little phrase that it is rarely, if ever, seen out alone. The only sort of riddance on offer these days is a good one. It wasn't always thus. In the 16th century a riddance was a general-purpose noun and meant 'deliverance from' or 'getting rid of'. The first adjectives to be linked with the word were fayre/happy/gladsome and, in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1600, Portia wishes the Prince of Morocco 'a gentle riddance'. A very early use of riddance comes in John Rastell's poem, Away Mourning, circa 1525: I haue her lost, For all my cost, Yet for all that I trowe I haue perchaunce, A fayre ryddaunce, And am quyt of a shrew. Shakespeare appears to be the coiner of 'good riddance', in Troilus and Cressida, 1606: Thersites: I will see you hanged, like clotpoles, ere I come any more to your tents: I will keep where there is wit stirring and leave the faction of fools. [Exits] Patroclus: A good riddance. The phrase is often extended and emphasized as 'good riddance to bad rubbish' or, as that extended form was first coined, 'good riddance of bad rubbish'. Tobias Smollett used the phrase in a none too friendly comment, inThe Critical Review, 1805: But we are sorry ... to consider Mr. Pratt's writings as 'purely evil' ... we should really look upon this author's departure from the world of literature as a good riddance of bad rubbish. The American journalist and member of President Andrew Jackson's 'Kitchen Cabinet', Francis Preston Blair, wrote an editorial in The Extra Globe, 1841. In this he appears to have been the first to use the precise version of the phrase that is most commonly used now: [Following the withdrawal of members of a rival advisory group] From the bottom of our hearts we are disposed to exclaim "Good riddance to bad rubbish."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-11-24 14:57:10

  Knock into a cocked hat Meaning To beat severely. Origin Of course, 'knocked into a cocked hat' only makes any sense if you know what cocked hats are. These were hats, popular at the end of the 18th century, that had turned up (i.e. cocked) brims. They were usually tricorn (i.e. three-cornered) hats and were often worn as part of some form of official regalia. They were first mentioned in print in William Wycherley's play The Gentleman Dancing-master, 1673: Instead of laced coats, belts, and pantaloons, Your velvet jumps, gold chains, and grave fur gowns Instead of periwigs, and broad cocked hats, Your satin caps, small cuffs, and vast cravats. The 'Toby jugs' that are still commonplace household ornaments in the UK were usually modelled wearing cocked hats. Toby was Toby Phillpot, not a real person but a stylized version of the brown earthenware 'fill pot' jugs that were used in English pubs to refill tankards before beer pumps were invented. The figures are usually shown holding a fill pot. Some etymologists have speculated that 'knocked into a cocked hat' derived from the game of Ninepins. The theory was that when the pins were struck so that just three were left, in a triangular cocked hat shape, they were too badly out of shape for the game to be won on one throw. Theory appears to be the right word for this explanation, as there is no supporting evidence to back it up. A more likely derivation is that 'to knock someone into a cocked hat' was simply to pummel them so badly as to alter their normal appearance. Cocked hats were also worn in America in the 19th century and 'knocked into a cocked hat', despite the hat's link with Olde Englande's town criers, beadles and taverns, is actually an American phrase. It is first found in the 1830s, as in this example from the New York State newspaper, The Rural Repository, 1837: 'Blood and vengeance!' exclaimed Boniface, 'get out of my house, you varmints, or I will knock you into a cocked hat, and gormandize you!' This was probably more of a concern to Boniface's erstwhile opponents than it is to us, but 'gormandize' means 'eat voraciously'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-11-26 10:59:00

  Five o'clock shadow Meaning Beard regrowth that darkens a man's features late in the day, following a morning shave. Origin In the 1980s, designer stubble became fashionable, based largely on the popularity and 'coolness' of stars like George Michael and, before him, Clint Eastwood's 'Man with no name' character. This was quite an achievement as, prior to then, a swarthy and unshaven appearance was considered to be reserved for ruffians and ne'er do wells. Respectable men were expected to be either clean-shaven or to have a full moustache or beard. If a man planned to grow a beard, he usually waited until he was away on a holiday and not seen in public for a few days, until the 'five o'clock shadow', as it was then universally called, phase was passed. Why 'five of the clock'? Why not four or six? The 'five o'clock shadow' coinage was based on the 19th century upper-crust English habit of taking tea at five o'clock. Not that the notably upper-crust 7th Earl of Shaftesbury had much time for it. He is reported in Edwin Hodder's biography, 1886, as saying: Five o'clock tea, that pernicious, unprincipled and stomach-ruining habit. Nevertheless, the teas became popular with the middle-classes and became known as 'five o'clocks' and, when the habit travelled the Atlantic to the USA, light late-afternoon meals were renamed 'five o'clock dinners'. Step forward to the 1930s and into the marketing department of theGem Safety Razor Company. While dreaming up a new advertising campaign, they decided to try and convince previously unsuspecting men that they suffered from 'ugly, afternoon beard growth' and that this could only be countered by the purchase and use of 'Gem Micromatic Blades'. Needing a snappy name for this late-afternoon ailment, which would of course bar sufferers from any genteel 'five o'clock dinner', they chose to call it 'five o'clock shadow'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-12-14 09:57:11

  Fell off the back of a truck Meaning A euphemism for 'acquired illegally'. Origin When anyone accounts for their possession of an article by saying it 'fell off the back of a truck' or 'fell off the back of a lorry', they may be assumed not to be its legal owner - i.e. it is stolen. 'Lorry' is the British version; in the USA and Australia things fall from trucks. This coy language, which feigns innocence but actually emphasizes illegality by using a phrase that is reserved for illegal dealing, is similar to The Godfather's 'an offer he can't refuse'. Others that relate specifically to stolen goods are the 'five finger discount' and 'I got it from a man in a pub'. Had 'air quotes' been in use at the time they might well have been called on when this phrase was first spoken. The earliest printed versions of 'fell off the back of a lorry' come surprisingly late - like this early example from The Times, 1968: "The suggestion of the finder, a casual motorist, that the records 'must have fallen off the back of a lorry'." There are many anecdotal reports of the phrase in the UK from much earlier than that, and it is likely to date back to at least WWII. It's just the sort of language that the 'wide-boys' or 'flash Harrys' who peddled illegal goods during and after WWII would have used. These were exemplified in plays and films by the actors George Cole, Sid James, etc. I'm sure a thorough scan of the scripts of the post-war Ealing comedies would throw up a pre-1968 example. Having been brought up in the truck-free UK with the 'fell off the back of a lorry' version, I have to now concede supremacy to 'fell off the back of a truck'. Versions of that from both Australia and the USA predate the English examples by many years. The earliest that I can find is from the official record of debates in the Australian House of Representatives - Hansard, 1928: "We heard, through something that had fallen of the back of a truck onto a reporter's table." In the USA the expression is found just a few years later - as in this example from The Tuscaloosa News, February 1937: Many transients in Manhattan are constantly being trimmed by suave 'chauffers' in light delivery trucks who whisper confidentially that there are some bolts of cloth in the rear seat which fell of the back of a truck. The meaning seems to have changed slightly since the phrase was coined. Almost all of the early references cite it as being used as patter in a scam to sell the unwary shoddy goods. The current usage is as a reference to a straightforward 'nudge, nudge/I won't tell if you won't' sale of stolen or smuggled goods. A nostalgic word about lorries. Trucks are now travelling the world and, in the same way that the voracious American Grey Squirrel has overwhelmed the retiring European Red Squirrel, they are, on the road and in the dictionary, becoming dominant. The older generation in the UK is holding out and will have no truck with 'truck' but, as time goes by, lorries will turn into trucks, just a charabancs turned into coaches.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-12-22 09:23:29

  Have no truck with Meaning To reject or to have nothing to do with. Origin We are all familiar with trucks as carts and road vehicles, but that's not what's being referred to in 'have no truck with'. This 'truck' is the early French word 'troque', which meant 'an exchange; a barter' and came into Middle English as 'truke'. The first known record of truke is the Vintner's Company Charter in the Anglo-Norman text of the Patent Roll of Edward III, 1364. This relates to a transaction for some wine which was to be done 'by truke, or by exchange'. So, to 'have truck with' was to barter or do business' with. In the 17th century and onward, the meaning of 'truck' was extended to include 'association'/'communication' and 'to have truck with' then came to mean 'commune with'. 'Truck' is now usually only heard in the negative and this usage began in the 19th century. To 'have no truck with' came to be a general term for 'have nothing to do with'. An example of that is cited in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1834: Theoretically an officer should have no truck with thieves. 'Trucking' was also country slang for 'courting'/'dallying with' (and no, in case you are wondering, it has nothing to do with any similar word beginning with 'f'). To 'have no more truck' meant that a courtship had ceased. An example of that usage in print is found in Notes and Queries, 1866: [In Suffolk] A man who has left off courting a girl, says that he has 'no more truck along o'har'. 'No truck with' may seem rather antiquated language now, although it is still used. Even older is a version that hasn't often been heard since Grandma's day - 'brook no truck with'. 'Brook' in this context means 'make use of/enjoy' and adds emphasis to the standard 'have no truck'. The image I have of someone who would 'brook no truck' is Queen Victoria, in her later and more 'unamused' years. A truculent woman at that stage by many accounts, although 'truculent' and 'truck' aren't related. Going back to the original 'barter' meaning of truck, this also became extended to include the sundry items that were bartered and also small odd jobs or errands. The stores that were set up to service the needs of itinerant navvies while they were building the UK's canals and railways were known as 'truck stores' or 'tommy shops'. The great rural campaigner William Cobbett referred to these in his classic, Rural Rides, 1825: In the iron country [the Black Country]... the truck or tommy system generally prevails. The navvies' sites were often far from towns and were the only places that the workmen could shop. The shops were generally ruinously expensive and provided poor quality goods. The workers were often paid in vouchers that could only be 'trucked' at the workplace shop. In the USA such shops were known as company stores and are the subject of the well-known American song Sixteen Tons: You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go; I owe my soul to the company store. Note: 'Truck shops' and 'truck stops' are only distantly related. The American term 'truck stop' arose independently as the name of the places that truck drivers and their trucks get refreshment. The alternative name of 'tommy shop' derives from the widely used term 'tommy' which appears in several terms that were coined around the late 19th century: Tommy Atkins - the generic name of a British soldier of the line. Tommy rot - referring to the basic rations available in tommy/truck shops. Brown tommy - rough brown bread available in tommy/truck shops. Tommy bar - a small spade. I can find no definition of 'tommy' from the time that these terms were coined, but the meaning of any of them wouldn't be altered much by exchanging it for 'humble'/'unexceptional'. Truck shops may be a thing of the past in the developed world but, with the advent of e-commerce, trucks now bring the shopping to us.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2010-12-29 10:45:59

  My cup of tea Meaning Something or someone that one finds pleasing. Origin An English website about the English language can't of course be complete without some consideration of tea. Tea has been around for a long time, and so has the British slang term for it - 'char'. In fact, it was known in the west by that version of the Mandarin ch'a before the name migrated through several languages to 'chay', 'tay' and was finally Anglicised as 'tea'. The Dutch adventurer Jan Huygen van Linschoten was one of the first to recount its use as a drink, in Discours of voyages into ye Easte & West Indies, 1598: The aforesaid warme water is made with the powder of a certaine hearbe called Chaa. 'My cup of tea' is just one of the many tea-related phrases that are still in common use in the UK, such as 'Not for all the tea in China', 'I could murder a cup of tea', 'More tea vicar?', 'Tea and sympathy', 'Rosie Lee', 'Storm in a teacup' and so on. In the early 20th century, a 'cup of tea' was such a synonym for acceptability that it became the name given to a favoured friend, especially one with a boisterous, life-enhancing nature. William de Morgan, the Edwardian artist and novelist, used the phrase in the novel Somehow Good, 1908, and went on to explain its meaning: "He may be a bit hot-tempered and impulsive... otherwise, it's simply impossible to help liking him." To which Sally replied, borrowing an expression from Ann the housemaid, that Fenwick was a cup of tea. It was metaphorical and descriptive of invigoration. People or things with which one felt an affinity began to be called 'my cup of tea' in the 1930s. Nancy Mitford appears to be the first to record that term in print, in the comic novel Christmas Pudding, 1932: I'm not at all sure I wouldn't rather marry Aunt Loudie. She's even more my cup of tea in many ways. In keeping with the high regard for tea, most of the early references to 'a cup of tea' as a description of an acquaintance are positive ones, i.e. 'nice', 'good', 'strong' etc. The expression is more often used in the 'not my cup of tea' form these days. This negative usage began in WWII. An early example of it is found in Hal Boyle's Leaves From a War Correspondent's Notebook column, which described English life and manners for an American audience. The column provided the American counterpart to Alister Cooke's Letter from America and was syndicated in various US papers. In 1944, he wrote: [In England] You don't say someone gives you a pain in the neck. You just remark "He's not my cup of tea." The change from the earlier positive 'my cup of tea' phrase, to the dismissive 'not my cup of tea' doesn't reflect the national taste for the drink itself. Tea remains our cup of tea here in the UK. According to the United Kingdom Tea Council (of course, there had to be one) 60 million of us down 160 million cups of the stuff each day.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-01-13 15:22:14

  Doff your hat Meaning Raise your hat in acknowledgement of or deference to another. Origin Doffing seems to be an activity that is limited to hats or caps; it isn't often that we hear the verb used in any other connection. That needn't be the case though, as becomes apparent when one realises the connection between 'doffing' and 'donning'. We can don hats and caps, but we can also also don clothes, shoes, even a persona or a set of ideas and, as doffing is the opposite of donning, anything that can be donned can later be doffed. The origins of these strange little words are simply 'do on' and 'do off'. When the terms 'doff' and 'don' were first used there was no especial connection with headgear. The first usage of it that I can find in print is from Sir Thomas Malory's Le morte Darthur, circa 1470: Doffe of thy clothes, And knele in thy kyrtylle. [A tunic or petticoat] Shakespeare was fond of the word 'doff' and used it frequently, often in a figurative manner, which alludes both to the removal of clothes and of opinions. In King John, 1595, he has Constance say "Thou weare a Lyons hide! doff it for shame." and in The Taming of the Shrew, 1596 "Fie, doff this habit, shame to your estate". He also frequently used the alternative 'daff' and its past tense 'daft', as in the 1597 sonnet A Lover's Complaint: "There my white stole of chastity I daft." The falling out of daily use of 'doff' isn't just because men no longer routinely wear hats - the usage appears to be geographically biased. Here in the North of England, caps are still doffed, whereas in Scotland the term was considered archaic even by the 18th century. Samuel Johnson defined 'doff' in A dictionary of the English language, 1755, as "to put off dress; to strip" but later dismissed it as "in all its senses obsolete, and scarcely used except by rustics". In America, gentlemen have always preferred to 'tip' their hats, that is, signal a salutation by a slight tug at the hat's rim, rather than to doff them, which involves a brief removal. In the 16th to the 18th centuries in England, the donning and doffing of hats was governed by a code of etiquette and custom that it is hard for us now to appreciate. Every man of standing wore a hat, and the form of hat and the rules governing when it could be removed or for whom it should be raised in acknowledgement were bewilderingly complex. Hat doffing was an accompaniment to bowing and the depth of the bow determined how far the hat was lifted. In 1896, James Boyle, in an attempt to remove the drudgery of continually lifting his hat, registered a patent for a form of self-doffing device. When the wearer bowed to an acquaintance, the hat lifted itself, rotated once and lowered again. The hats didn't catch on. As Shakespeare might have put it - it was a daft idea.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-01-13 15:22:55

  Let there be light Origin This week's phrase is prompted by the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Bible (or Authorised Version). The KJV is a strong contender for the accolade of 'the book that has had more influence on the development of English than any other'. Many phrases that are now common currency in the language appeared first in the King James Bible. Likewise, a varied collection of everyday words also first saw the printer's ink in the work; for example, 'accurately', 'battering-ram', 'expansion', 'gopher', 'ingenuously', 'needleworker', 'phrasing', and so on... The text of the KJV has been used in numerous important works; from the libretto of the best known of all choral oratorios, Handel's Messiah, 1741, which is taken almost verbatim from the Authorised Version, to Martin Luther King'sI have a dream speech, which he delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963 and in which he quoted directly from the KJV, Isaiah 40:4: "[I have a dream that one day] every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." However, the influential power of the book isn't based on the number of phrases and words that were coined for it; earlier versions of the Bible and luminaries like Shakespeare can claim many more. Its impact came because it brought clearly expressed, accessible and poetically beautiful English to the populace for the first time. The KJV was written to be spoken and, as James I's authorisation states, it was 'appointed to be read in Churches'. Church services in England at that date consisted largely of readings from the Bible. By providing short verses in the plain colloquial English that the illiterate congregation could understand and remember, the verses became cemented into the spoken language. No verse exemplifies this power and simplicity better than one from the very beginning of the book "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light". This is one of the best-known phrases in English. It is a translation of the Latin 'dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux' (which hardly trips off the tongue) and appears in the opening lines of the Bible, in Genesis I. The English translation was first printed in Miles Coverdale's Bible, 1535, but the version of it that was known by every English speaker from the 17th century onward was that of the King James Version, 1611: In the beginning God created the Heauen, and the Earth. And the earth was without forme, and voyd, and darkenesse was vpon the face of the deepe: and the Spirit of God mooued vpon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. The tendency of US politicians towards over-wordiness was compared unfavourably to the beauty and clarity of the original text by the journalist and broadcaster Alistair Cooke. In his acceptance speech for the 'Best Speaker of English' award in 1998, he gave an imagined US Government representative's version of Genesis 1:3: "The Supreme Being mandated the illumination of the Universe and this directive was enforced forthwith."

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-01-17 09:33:15

  Spruce-up Meaning To make smart and trim. Origin Spruce-up is just a little phrase, but it has taken quite a journey to get to us in its present state. The state it started from was Prussia. The 14th century word spruce is a variant of Pruce, which was itself a shortened version of Prussia. Originally, things that were spruce were those items brought from Prussia. For example, spruce fir trees and, more to the point for this phrase, spruce leather. From the end of the 16th century, spruce was used as a verb meaning 'to make trim and neat'. In The terrors of the night, or, a discourse of apparitions, 1594, Thomas Nashe equates 'sprucing' with 'cleaning': [You shall] spend a whole twelue month in spunging & sprucing. A jerkin made from the expensive imported spruce leather was the fashion accessory of choice for Tudor and Stuart noblemen. Robert Greene, in A Quip for an Upstart Courtier - a quaint dispute between Cloth-breeches and Velvet-breeches, 1592, paints a picture of the dandy of the day: "A fellow briskly apparelled, in a blacke taffata doublet, and a spruce leather jerkin with christall buttons." 'Spruce' moved from being an adjective, describing leather and other goods from Prussia, to a verb, meaning 'make smart and neat'. The first mention of 'sprucing-up' comes in Sir George Etherege's Restoration drama The Man of Mode, 1676: "I took particular notice of one that is alwaies spruc'd up with a deal of dirty Sky-colur'd Ribband." In 20th century America, the term 'spruce-up' took on a new lease of life, with a slightly modified meaning. It began to be used there to mean 'tidy-up; refurbish' - a counterpart to the English 'Spring-clean'. Up until then 'sprucing-up' had been reserved for people and their clothes. Many of the early references to sprucing up refer to adding ribbons to clothing but it seems that, to really spruce yourself up, you need a (preferably German) leather jacket.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-02-21 15:53:47

  As cute as a bug's ear Meaning Very cute. Origin Imagine for a moment a bug's ear... Cute picture? Hardly. You are more likely to be imagining something that might be at home in The Day of the Triffids. Do bugs (that's insects if you are reading in the UK) even have ears? Again, hardly. Many of them can detect sound, but they use a variety of strange means of doing it and none of them come equipped with anything resembling a human ear. Similes of the type 'as white as snow', 'as busy as a bee' almost always refer to a property that is archetypally appropriate for the item in question. So why would anyone have imagined a bug's ear to be especially cute? The phrase originated in the southern states of America in the latter part of the 19th century and is still more common there than elsewhere. I've never heard it in conversation here in Yorkshire for instance. No-one, even in Texas, where the phrase is often said to have originated, thought that bugs' ears were cute. What they did think, and they had a point here as insects can detect very miniscule and high-pitched sounds, is that they were 'acute'. 'Cute' was a synonym for 'acute' in the 1700s in England. Nathan Bailey defined it in The Universal Etymological English Dictionary, 1731, as: Cute: sharp, quick-witted, shrewd. The term crossed the Atlantic and in 1848 the US romantic poet James Russell Lowell used the term with the 'sharp; shrewd' meaning in The Biglow Papers: Aint it cute to see a Yankee Take sech everlastin' pains? An early example of 'cute as a bug's ear' is found in a story in the South Carolina newspaper the Charleston Sunday News, June 1891: Imogene McGinty is as cute as a bug's ear. From around that time onwards, in the USA, the 'pretty; charming' meaning of cute began to supersede the previous 'acute' meaning, although the earlier meaning persisted for much longer in the UK, where it is still used. Other 'as cute as' phrases came later and all of them rely on the present-day 'pretty; adorable' meaning. Examples are, 'as cute as a kitten/button/cupcake'. The expression 'as cute as a bug in a rug' is also quite commonplace. Bugs in rugs can't be said to be either especially sharp-witted or cuddly and that odd simile is just a merging of 'as cute as a bug's ear' and 'as snug as a bug in a rug'. So, if you want 'cute', try a baby panda - bug's ears are 'acute'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-02-21 15:59:38

  It's not rocket science Meaning It (the subject under discussion) isn't difficult to understand. Origin It is probably no surprise to hear that this phrase is American in origin. Of the English-speaking countries, America was the first to adopt a sustained programme for the development of rocket science. The first people who were widely known as rocket scientists were a group of German military technologists, who were transported to the USA in 1945 following their capture by allied troops in WWII. Other similar groups were transported to the UK and the USSR. Led by Werner Von Braun, the US group had previous expertise in the field, having developed the V-2 rocket that had been used to attack London and other targets earlier in the war. Their success during the 1940s and 50s in developing the sophisticated technology required for military and space rockets, was the reason for rocket science being equated in the US public's mind with outstanding expertise. The perceived equation of 'rocket scientist = German = clever' can only have been enhanced by the persona of another German scientist of acknowledged genius, who was also working in the USA at the time - Albert Einstein. The pre-eminence of German scientists in the space race was highlighted by a quotation from 1957, following the Soviet launch of Sputnik-1, the first orbiting satellite. The supposed reply to President Eisenhower's question "How did the Russians get there first?" was "Their Germans are better than our Germans". Many people have been attributed with the coining of that quip, which is a sure sign that no-one is now sure who said it first. It seems rather unlikely that the presidential conversation actually happened, but the line did reflect the national sentiment in the USA at the time and that feeling was the spur for even more German scientific manpower to be deployed, leading to the successful moon exploration programme, in which Von Braun was a central player. If, by 1950, rocket science was generally accepted as being intellectually difficult and outside the capabilities of the average Joe, where and when did relatively undemanding tasks start being said to be 'not rocket science'? The answer to that is - the American Football field in the 1980s. Most of the early citations of 'not rocket science' relate to football; for example, this piece from a sports report in the Pennsylvania newspaper The Daily Intelligencer, December 1985: "Coaching football is not rocket science and it's not brain surgery. It's a game, nothing more." Prior to the 1980s, 'brain surgery' had been the occupation that simple tasks were said not to be. 'It's not brain surgery' dates from the 1960s. Before that, straightforward tasks were simply said to be 'as easy as pie' or 'as easy as falling off a log'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-03-01 11:01:58

  Let bygones be bygones Meaning Allow the unpleasant things that have happened in the past to be forgotten. Origin 'Let bygones be bygones' is one of the small group of phrases the meaning of which people enquire about more than they do the origin. On the face of it, the meaning is obvious and seems to require no explanation - after all, bygones can hardly be anything other than bygones. We don't have sayings like 'let greengrocers be greengrocers', so is there more to it? As it turns out, there is. In the 15th century, a bygone was was simply 'a thing that has gone by', i.e. a thing of the past. Shakespeare used it with that meaning in The Winters Tale, 1611: This satisfaction, The by-gone-day proclaym'd, say this to him. As time progressed, 'bygones' came to refer specifically to past events that had an unpleasant tinge to them; for example, quarrels or debts. The Scottish churchman Samuel Rutherford recorded that usage of the phrase in a letter during his detention in Aberdeen in 1636. In the letter he regrets the follies of his youth and acknowledges his debt to God in showing him the error of his ways: "Pray that byegones betwixt me and my Lord may be byegones." So, there is a little more to the phrase 'let bygones be bygones' than to the more literal 'let sleeping dogs lie' or the old proverb 'let all things past, pass' that was recorded by John Heywood in his 1562 edition of Proverbs. 'Let bygones be bygones' uses both meanings of the word 'bygones' and means, in extended form, 'let the unpleasantness between us become a thing of the past'.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-03-28 13:29:18

  Which is which Meaning 'Which is which?' - often expressed as a question, asking for help in distinguishing two similar things or people. Origin 'Which' is an extremely ancient English word, the modern spelling deriving from the Old English 'hwilc', which dates from the 8th century. There was a myriad of other spellings for 'which' - the OED lists no less than 64 of them - for example 'wheche', 'quhilche', 'wych' and so on. Likewise, 'which is which' is one of the oldest English phrases still in daily use. The earliest form of 'which is which' in print is found in the 14th century Northumbrian poem Cursor Mundi, which uses a 'quilk' spelling: Wel sal he cun knau quilk es quilk. The first person to record 'which is which' in modern English was William Shakespeare, who used the expression in several of his plays, including Macbeth, 1605: What is the night? Almost at oddes with morning, which is which. Almost immediately after that line, Shakespeare gave the stage direction 'Enter three Witches'. He didn't however go on to make the play on words 'which witch is which?' - that had to wait until the 20th century. The first example I can find occurred, appropriately, on Halloween 1931, in the Wisconsin newspaper The Appleton Post-Crescent: There's nothing like a Halloween moon to make people wonder which witch is witch.

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  花音妙 (紫微圣人花音妙) 组长 楼主 2011-03-28 13:30:37

  Say cheese Meaning A photographer's instruction just before taking a picture, in order to make people smile. Origin 'Say cheese!' must have been said to people posing for photographs as often as 'watch the birdie!'. Articulating a long 'e' sound requires us to draw back our lips and bare our teeth in a grimace, which is the obvious reason for photographers using it. The question is though - why cheese and not some other word? (and, come to that, why birdie? - but more on that later). Despite exhaustive etymological delving, no one has found any literal link between 'say cheese' and meaning of the word cheese. Some have suggested that it relates to the now rather archaic term 'cheese it', meaning 'run away'. That's pure speculation and in any case; why would a photographer just about to take someone's picture encourage them to run away? However, looking up this phrase did uncover a nice punning definition of 'cheese it' in the Indiana Weekly Messenger, October 1910: "What do boys mean when they say 'cheese it?'" "It means that something mischievous has a curd and they want to get a whey." Nor is 'say cheese' anything to do with the American expression 'cutting the cheese' about which, if you haven't come across it before, I'll happily leave you in ignorance. We may not know why 'cheese' was chosen over alternatives like 'breeze' or 'please', but I can give a pointer to who first used the word when having a photograph taken. The earliest printed records of the expression are from the 1940s, in particular, this piece from the Texas newspaper The Big Spring Daily Herald, October 1943, titled Need To Put On A Smile? Here's How: Say 'Cheese': Now here's something worth knowing. It's a formula for smiling when you have your picture taken. It comes from former Ambassador Joseph E. Davies and is guaranteed to make you look pleasant no matter what you're thinking. Mr. Davies disclosed the formula while having his own picture taken on the set of his "Mission to Moscow." It's simple. Just say "Cheese," It's an automatic smile. "I learned that from a politician," Mr. Davies chuckled. "An astute politician, a very great politician. But, of course, I cannot tell you who he was..." Ambassador Davies looked every inch the politician who took his own advice. His coy 'I cannot tell you who it was' was no doubt delivered with a wink, as Davies served under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who fits his description perfectly well, as listeners in 1940s America would have been well aware. The fact that the newspaper report presented Davies' recipe as a novelty that its readers would previously be unfamiliar with does suggest that the phrase can't be much earlier than 1943 in origin. It's also reasonable to speculate that Roosevelt was the original source. Photographers these days often prefer to use 'Say, one, two, three', as it produces the same grins and makes sure that all the sitters smile at the same time. While it appears that virtually any 'long e' word could have been chosen instead, 'cheese' has stood the test of time and has resulted in a new adjective - 'cheesy'. People began to speak of 'cheesy grins' or 'cheesy smiles', as demonstrated by Ambassador Davies, in the 1960s. The word 'cheesy', meaning 'vulgar'/'tasteless', derives from the perceived insincerity of cheesy grins. As for 'watch the birdie', this now outdated instruction, usually given to children to get them to face in the right direction for a photographic portrait, unlike 'say cheese', did refer to an actual object. The 'birdies' were animated props that could be made to squawk or warble and so attract a child's attention.

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