Karen Hill

The word “Starboard” has no reference to stars at all, but probably few sailors, even, know why this designates the right side of a vessel. Its origin takes us back to the early ships of the Norse and other Teutonic people. Though, with favoring winds, those vessels were driven by sails, they were steered, not … Read more

The Latin word for starling, and still the scientific name for the genus of which starlings are members, was Sturnus. This word, with the usual changes in spelling and pronunciation, became adopted into one after another of most of the European languages, finally reaching the Anglo-Saxon as star, from which it became, in Middle English, … Read more

Thanks to the fact that the citizens of ancient Rome liked to see gory contests, gladiators fighting one another to the death, starved wild animals turned loose upon human victims, the ground of the amphitheaters was always liberally covered with sand to soak up spilled blood. And the Latin word for sand is arena. Nowadays … Read more

The Romans listened to them coo, then named them in imitation of the sound they made, turtur. And this is the name that was taken directly into Anglo-Saxon before the time of the Norman Conquest. But in Old High German, the final r-sound was converted to an l-sound, giving turtulo for the male, turtula for … Read more

Used, today, as a collective noun to designate the aggregation of kettledrums in an orchestra, the word “tympany” is actually the Anglicized form of the Latin tympanum, “a drum,” from the Greek tympanon, “a drum,” from typtein, “to strike, beat.” The Latin word has also been taken directly into English with the original spelling preserved, … Read more

The prince himself was English, eldest son of Queen Victoria, ultimately reigning as King Edward VII. As prince, he traveled extensively, first visiting the United States in 1860. Social leaders were then greatly impressed by the long double-breasted frock coat worn by the prince at afternoon occasions and promptly adopted it, calling it a Prince … Read more

Paintings discovered on the walls of the Baths of Titus, excavated by archaeologists in the sixteenth century, gave us our word “antic” through the Italian antica, “antique.” But, though the learned world thus attributed the paintings to the ancients, the general public was more impressed by the finding of them in the excavated chambers, or … Read more

The Anglo-Saxon word which has become stirrup was stigrap, and if this were to be literally translated into modern English, it would become “sty-rope” or “climbing-rope.” The Anglo-Saxon word is composed of the root word stig-, from stigan, “to climb” (see under steward for sty, “to climb”), plus rap, “rope.” This leads us to the … Read more

“Proud flesh” is proud only by virtue of being swollen, as if by pride. In the same sense, we speak of grain which, by luxurious growth, is unseasonably proud, swollen beyond the normal stage of advancement.

We changed the spelling of the word “hoosegow” most decidedly, but that was done only to preserve the American idea of a phonetic pronunciation, spelled as sounded to an American ear. That is, the Mexican term is juzgao, derived from Spanish juzgado, a tribunal. But to the ordinary Mexican the term means a jail, and … Read more

The Dragonfly is so called because if a Walt Disney were to magnify this insect to airplane size it would be as fearsome a creature as any dragon slain by St. George: huge eyes; long, slender, glittering body of variegated hues; two pairs of large wings; and extremely strong jaws. And there’s little doubt but … Read more

Nowadays one rarely hears the phrase “hoity toity” except as an expression of surprise coupled with annoyance or indignation, usually uttered by a precise elderly person in condemnation of the behavior of a niece or granddaughter. And that reflects its source, for holly at one time, some three centuries ago, described a person who indulged … Read more

The term “cucking stool” is often confused with the later and much less immodest ducking stool. The earlier device dates back, in England, at least to the eleventh century and was sometimes disguised under the Latin cathedra stercoris of the same meaning. When used, as it generally was, for the punishment of viragoes, and perhaps … Read more

Authorities are in general agreement that steward is a descendant of the Anglo-Saxon stigweard, a combination of stig, “sty,” and weard, “ward, keeper.” However, they are quick to point out that it should not be inferred that this proves that the exalted position of steward, as major-domo, arose from such humble beginnings as the keeper … Read more

The word mushroom is another beautiful example of what will happen to an Englishman’s attempt to pronounce a foreign word. Nothing whatsoever of mush in it, nor of room. It was, in the fifteenth century, a poor English rendition of the Old French moisseron, modern mousseron. Some then spelled it, and probably pronounced it, muscheron, … Read more

The expression “to crack the whip” means: To be in control; to have absolute dominance; to have under one’s thumb; to rule the roost. The Florida “cracker,” nowadays, tries to persuade himself and others that this nickname originated, not, as was actually the case, because his antecedents were notorious braggarts, i.e., cracked tall tales, but, … Read more

Though I have been regretfully obliged to abridge, we’ll let Arthur R. (“Pop”) Momand, the creator of this expression, now adopted into the American language, tell in his own words, from a personal letter to me, how it originated: Here is how it happened: At the age of 23 I was making $125 a week … Read more

This is something I’d like to see, or hear. Just how one can accomplish such a gymnastic lingual feat of lodging the tip or other portion of the tongue against the cheek and then uttering any distinguishable word is beyond my imagination. I can’t do it. The English humorist, Richard Barham, seems to have dreamed … Read more

The expression “to win one’s spurs” means: To prove one’s ability; to perform some deed by which one first gains honor among one’s fellows. And there are a thousand ways by which it may be accomplished, a salesman by making his first sale, or his first important sale; a clergyman in delivering his first sermon; … Read more

As used in American slang the respected and well-established phrase “on the rocks” has taken on a variety of interpretations. They all relate to some form or another of dilapidation or ruin, however. Thus a person “on the rocks” may be ruined financially or “busted”; or he may be suffering a physical or mental collapse … Read more

The phrase “not worth a rap” means: Having no intrinsic value; not worth a straw, nor a tinker’s dam, nor beans. We don’t know just how rap got its name, but it was a very small coin which, though not legal tender, was passed for a halfpence in Ireland during the early eighteenth century. It … Read more

The newspaper press as a distinct power in the state, from the license it exercises, the liberties it enjoys, or the power it wields. The first three estates, as ultimately represented in the British Parliament, are the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal, and the Commons. Thomas Carlyle, in Heroes and Hero Worship (1841), credited the … Read more

“Board,” in nautical language, is the side of a ship. Thus “overboard,” for example, means over the side of a ship; hence, out of the ship, into the sea, and “by the board” has the same meaning, i.e., down the ship’s side, overboard. Accordingly, “to go by the board,” in its literal sense, is to … Read more

The expression “to leave no stone unturned” means: To use every expedient at one’s command. Some say that this was the reply given by the Delphic oracle when Polycrates, the Theban general, asked for aid in discovering the treasures said to have been buried by the slain leader of the defeated Persian army, Mardonius, before … Read more

We have previously expressed the opinion that the concept of a severe reprimand from an uncle of Dutch ancestry appeared to be American. Though we have nothing to offer to contradict that opinion, we have run across literary instances which indicate that the original of such an uncle was Roman. The poet Horace, that is, … Read more

A “baby kisser” is an aspirant for public office who attempts to win the favor of parents by a show of affection toward their children. Probably the Greeks and Romans had a word for this also, for the politicians of ancient days certainly practiced all the other arts known to modern office-seekers. Especially in Rome … Read more

An “eager beaver” is a person who is always “rarin’ to go,” eager to start at whatever is to be done. Undoubtedly the term developed naturally from one who “works like a beaver,” one who works rapidly and assiduously. It bears no relation to the “beaver” or full beard worn by some men. This latter … Read more

Sometimes things are thrown to the dogs or sent to the dogs, but nowadays, at least, it is usually the country or the younger generation that is going to the dogs. In any case, “to the dogs” means utter ruin, straight to hell, the demnition bow-wows. The dog, you see, was not always the house … Read more

The expression “to lock the barn door after the horse is stolen” means: To take out automobile insurance after your car has been stolen, or after you’ve had an accident; to take belated precautions, especially on one’s property. Apperson reports that the Romans had the same idea: as quoted from Plautus’s Asinaria, he gives: Ne … Read more

The phrase “not to know if one is afoot or on horseback” means: To be so completely confused, thoroughly upset, or beside oneself as to be unable to determine whether one is walking or riding; to be utterly befuddled. This degree of pixilation, or this way of expressing it, is apparently known only in America; … Read more

The expression “talking through one’s hat” means: To talk nonsense; to indulge in fanciful dreams. Just how this expression came into everyday American speech is now a mystery. From the printed evidence it’s not very old, as expressions go; probably no more than seventy years. But what event or circumstance brought it into the language? … Read more

Literally, the phrase “to back water” was said of a ship, boat, canoe, or the like, to which the paddle wheel was reversed, or the oars or paddles were moved backward. Hence, figuratively, one is said to back water when obliged to retract a statement or reverse a position or withdraw from a situation. The … Read more

The expression “fifth columnist” was wrongly attributed to the Spanish general, Emilio Mola. It should have been credited to Lieutenant General Queipo de Llano, famous as the “broadcasting general” during the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, in the early days of the war, broadcasting to the Loyalist forces in Madrid he threatened, “We have four … Read more

African dominoes and African golf are popular names for the game of craps, a gambling game played with a pair of dice. The game is especially favored among African Americans, hence, “African”; the term “dominoes” alludes to the combined number of pips on the two dice, identical with those on the face of dominoes. “Golf” … Read more

The expression “all quiet on the Potomac” means: Peaceful; undisturbed; a time of ease or quiet enjoyment: from the frequent repetition of the phrase in bulletins issued during the War between the States, 1861-1865. The original expression has been ascribed to General George B. McClellan (1826-85 ), who was in command of the Army of … Read more

The phrase “flat on one’s back” means: Helpless; without further recourse; at the end of one’s rope. Although usually employed in a figurative sense, the original meaning was literal. One who is actually flat on his back is so completely disabled through sickness or injury as to be helpless, unable to fend for himself. Figuratively, … Read more

The expression “like a bat out of hell” means: Moving or speaking, etc., with extreme speed; like greased lightning; hell-bent for election. Though this might have become a part of British aviation slang in the First World War, as Partridge says in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1953 edition), it was certainly in … Read more

This Ivy label, in words of Leo Riordan in The Saturday Evening Post, November 7, 1953, “was an apt designation coined by a sports-writer to characterize old-line institutions.” The term “Ivy League” refers specifically to the football teams of the colleges, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Columbia, and University of Pennsylvania. The sportswriter to … Read more

The phrase “all wool and a yard wide” means: Of top quality, character, or the like; absolutely genuine; the real McCoy; fine in every respect; as, Knute Rockne was regarded by all who knew him as all wool and a yard wide. Fraudulence and deceit in the manufacture and sale of woolen cloth were practiced … Read more

We, in America, use the expression “to be ahead of the game” in two differing ways. Thus when we say, “Jeff is getting ahead in the store he has recently opened,” we mean that Jeff is prospering, is on the way toward a successful venture. But when we say, “Maggie Jones has thought up a … Read more

The expression “to give the air to a person” means: To tie the can to; to fire; to dismiss; to discharge from employment; literally, to put out of doors. A British counterpart of this modern American slang is “to give one the sack”. The expression also has a negative meaning in the language of love. … Read more

Back Bay is a fashionable residential district of Boston, Massachusetts. Formerly this was a basin of the Charles River, an inner harbor of Boston. From 1856 it was gradually drained and filled in and laid out in fine wide streets, including Commonwealth Avenue, one of the finest boulevards in America. Hence, used attributively, representative of … Read more

The expression “the devil to pay” means: Serious difficulty; great trouble or misfortune; perplexity; confusion; mishap. “There’ll be the devil to pay if I don’t get home in time for dinner.” There are two schools of thought about the original meaning of this. One is that it related to witchcraft, to the selling of one’s … Read more

The phrase “tooth and nail” means exactly what cute little Mary Ann means when she goes after her pestiferous older small brother who is torturing her dolly. She bites and digs in with her nails. And she and her ancestors before her, both sides of the family, have been using those natural weapons of offense … Read more

The phrase “to the bitter end” means: To the last extremity; to death or utter defeat. This expression has a double meaning, but it is hardly likely that the poetic resemblance between the two meanings is anything more than chance. That is, in the words of the famous Captain John Smith in his A Sea … Read more

In the United States the expression “absent treatment” is used with two differing meanings. Originally, and properly, it is a term in Christian Science for a treatment by a healer given at the request of and for the benefit of an absent person. But the term has also acquired a slang sense: treatment such as … Read more

Though the Romans of old said calceus urit, they meant it physically, the shoe or sandal frets or pinches. However, the figurative sense of the expression “to know where the shoe pinches”, where hardship occurs or difficulty lies or trouble may be experienced, has been in English usage for at least six centuries. Chaucer had … Read more

The term “Philadelphia lawyer” means: An astute person; sometimes one whose cleverness leads him into shady practices. According to historian John Fiske, the expression stems from the noted trial of John Peter Zenger in 1735. Zenger, a New York printer, began to publish a newspaper, the New York Weekly Journal in 1733, which became the … Read more

The phrase “a Donnybrook fair” means: Strife and contention; a melee; Bedlam broke loose; hell’s a-popping. Why? Because Donnybrook, now a part of Dublin, was a place where, every year for six centuries beginning in 1204, a riotous fair was held each August. Originally the fair lasted for two weeks, but eventually that became too … Read more

The expression “loaded for bear” means: To be fully prepared for any contingency; to be well prepared; hence, ready to fly into a rage. Originally this had a hunting significance; the bear, being the largest of dangerous American wild animals and likely to be encountered in any region of wild game, a hunter did not … Read more

Possibly the “top” in the expression “blowing one’s top” alluded originally to the top of a volcano, which would be shot into a thousand pieces with a tremendous noise during a violent explosion and scattered over the neighborhood with a devastating effect. “Blow,” at least, has been used in the sense of “to erupt; to … Read more

The expression “to get the drop on a person” means: To have a marked advantage; literally, to have a person covered with a gun before that person is able to draw his own weapon. According to Mary A. Jackson’s Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson (1895 ), this phrase originated during the War between the States. At … Read more

The term “alley cat” refers to any homeless or stray cat, especially one frequenting alleys in search of food in garbage cans, etc. By extension, a prostitute or a street-walker furtively seeking customers.

The phrase “to hold the wrong end of the stick” means: To have the wrong slant; to have another guess coming; to be misinformed, or to misinterpret a story. The stick was originally a staff, and he who had “the worse end of the staff,” as was the saying in the sixteenth century, was on … Read more

Literally, “to bleed one white” is to cause one to lose so much blood that he becomes pale, but for the past three hundred years men have been said to “bleed” when they have unwillingly or through fraud parted with an undue sum of money, as through blackmail or the like. When the victim has … Read more

Peculiarly adapted to one’s ability or talent, or particularly attractive to one: “By virtue of his knowledge of Greek and Latin, work on a dictionary was right down Phil’s alley”; “That ad for a young man to drive a car to Mexico was right up my alley.” It has been suggested, learnedly, that the expression … Read more

The expression “asleep at the switch” means: Unprepared; lacking alertness; inattentive. Undoubtedly this American expression was originally railway terminology and was almost literal in meaning. It dates from the time when railroad switches or turnouts were thrown or turned by levers operated by hand, either by switch-tenders or brakemen. In a freight yard especially, where … Read more

The term “brain trust” means: A group of experts; especially, a group organized to aid in the shaping of policies, etc.; hence, derisively, any group of advisers. The term was first coined by James M. Kieran, a reporter for The New York Times. It had been announced at Hyde Park that Franklin D. Roosevelt, the … Read more

Back in our college days a “bull session” was a gathering of young men, always men and always young, congregated informally in some dormitory room over late coffee or beer or other refreshments, with conversation ranging over any topic or topics that might be argued or discussed. The topics might be religion, giving rise to … Read more

The phrase “to eat one’s hat” means: To eat crow; to eat humble pie; to assert one’s readiness to consume such an unsavory mess if a certain event should not turn out as one predicts. The present form of the saying is first found in Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers (1837): “‘If I knew as little … Read more

The expression “as dead as the dodo” means: Utterly extinct; obsolete; completely washed up. The reference is to a peculiar flightless bird of which only two species were known, those found respectively on the islands of Mauritius and Reunion, lying east of Madagascar. The birds, as described by voyagers to the islands in the sixteenth … Read more

The phrase “to take a back seat” means: To take a seat or occupy a position among those of little importance; to practice humility or become humble; to go ‘way back and sit down. There’s little doubt that this expression was an outcome of the natural characteristics of Americans. The aggressive, those determined to be … Read more

The expression “to cut the mustard” means: To accomplish, be able to, or succeed with; to meet expectations; to play, as music, expertly. To get at the origin of this altogether American expression we have to go back to the beginning of the century when “to be the proper mustard” was a slang phrase meaning … Read more

The phrase “to bury the hatchet” means: To settle differences and take up friendly relations. Although we are accustomed to connect this expression with practices of the American Indian, we had not been able to find that there was any such ritual or saying among the tribes of North America. Accordingly we considered it a … Read more

Dean Jonathan Swift has been given credit for originating this extravagant way of indicating excessive or torrential rain, but we doubt that he did. To be sure the first literary appearance of the expression “raining cats and dogs” is in his Polite Conversation (1783), but it must not be forgotten that these so-called “dialogues” are … Read more

The great collector of Americanisms, Schele De Vere, calls “Anthony Over” an American game and defines it (1872): “A game of ball played by two parties of boys, on opposite sides of a schoolhouse, over which the ball is thrown.” He localizes it in Pennsylvania, but it was also played in southern Ohio in our … Read more

The phrase “to pay the fiddler (or piper)” means: To bear the consequences; suffer the penalties; defray the costs. The first is the American version and “to pay the piper” is the English. Fiddles furnished the music for stately English ballrooms, but flutes or pipes were the conventional music for English rustic dances, whereas the … Read more

The expression “six of one and half a dozen of the other” means: No choice; one and the same; even steven. There seems to have been no specific allusion involved in this expression, nothing beyond the fact that half a dozen is six. It first appeared in Marryat’s The Pirate and the Three Cutters (1836). … Read more

The phrase “to get one’s goat” means: To bewilder, confuse, or baffle; to irritate, annoy, or vex; to fuss one; to make one nervous; to get under one’s skin (as said of the chigger); to give one a pain in the neck. Efforts have been made to trace this American expression back to a Greek … Read more

The phrase “to row someone up Salt river” means: To defeat, overcome, vanquish an adversary; especially, politically, to defeat an opposing candidate in an election. For many years the expression was used only in the latter sense, based on an alleged incident. The story, gravely cited by the recent Dictionary of American History on the … Read more

The expression “to cry over spilt milk” means: To grieve over that which is irretrievably lost or beyond recovery; to regret that which has been said or done. Though the actual occurrence, with high milk prices, is something over which housewives probably have wept, or over a torn fig leaf, since the time of Eve, … Read more

The phrase “sailing under false colors” means: Assuming to be what one is not; being a pretender or hypocrite. This arose from the days of piracy on the high seas, when a pirate vessel, sighting a possible prey, hoisted the flag of a friendly nation to its halyards to allay suspicion while it drew within … Read more

The expression “hammer and tongs” means: With all the vigor at one’s command; forcefully; with might and main. Usually one goes after another hammer and tongs; that is, with no holds barred; with every intent to take him apart literally or figuratively. But on the domestic scene, a wife may go after the spouse, or … Read more

The expression “alpha and omega” means: The first and the last; the beginning and the end. Both the expression itself, the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet, and its definition are from the Bible, The Revelation of St. John the Divine. The phrase is repeated four times, in the eighth and eleventh … Read more

The expression “to draw the line” means: To reach one’s limit; especially, to fix a definite limit of procedure beyond which one refuses to go. Although now figurative, the line that was drawn was originally actual. It was the cut of a plowshare across the field to indicate the limit of one’s holding, back in … Read more

The Latin phrase “deus ex machina” really refers to a stage effect in Greek plays. That is to say, Greek tragic playwrights frequently introduced one or another of the gods for the purpose of explaining some situation or solving some difficulty. Representing gods, the characters who played the parts could not walk out upon the … Read more

The phrase “big butter and egg man” is a derisive term for one of the nouveau riche, for one ostentatiously displaying new wealth. The expression came into popularity about 1925, during the Coolidge regime of almost hectic national prosperity, when office workers and mill hands alike were sporting silk shirts. Everyone was playing the stock … Read more

The expression “to kill the fatted calf” means: To prepare for a season of rejoicing; to prepare a warm welcome. The allusion is to the parable of the prodigal son, Luke xv, verses 11 to 32, the younger son who took his portion of his patrimony and journeyed “into a far country, and there wasted … Read more

A “Cadmean victory” is a victory in which the victor has suffered such great loss as hardly to be distinguished from the vanquished. The term derives from the mythological founding of Thebes. Cadmus, prince of Phenicia, searching for his lost sister, was advised by an oracle to abandon the search and to follow a cow … Read more

The phrase “to take the bark off” means: To tan; give one a hiding; to lambaste, or, in simpler speech, to flog, chastise. Possibly the original idea, likening the bark of a tree to the skin of a man, was to castigate, to flog as with a cat-o’-nine-tails, or, that is, to whip so severely … Read more

One who numbers golfers or fishermen among his acquaintances should quickly recognize the nature of the expression “drawing a longbow”. Any tale which in the telling makes use of unusual distance or unusual size that cannot be subjected to verification is very likely to be stretched in the telling. Thus it was even in the … Read more

The phrase “busman’s holiday” means: Spare time spent in doing the same thing one does in one’s regular occupation. The story is that the regular driver of a London bus actually did that, spent one of his days off riding as a passenger alongside the driver who was taking his place. But if that episode … Read more

The expression “to put the bite on one” means: To mooch, cadge, shake down, or, more plainly, to beg. This American slang seems to have developed from the entirely innocent token of fondness, “to bite one’s ear.” In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio makes reply to a quip from Romeo, his dearest friend, “I will bite … Read more

Apparently this whole idea of domination by one’s mother, more rarely, wife nowadays, arose from a law going back at least three hundred years under which a man might have a tenure of property only by virtue of his wife, sometimes only through her lifetime. That tenure was known as an “apron-string hold.” The wife, … Read more

The expression “in cahoots with” means: In close cooperation with; in league with; in partnership with. It is highly probable that the American term “cahoots” came from the French cahute, a small but or cabin, or the related Dutch kajuit of the same meaning. The connecting link has not yet been found, the use, that … Read more

Delve into the intriguing origins of the phrase “to bite the thumb at,” unraveling its historical context and understanding the expressive meaning behind this unique gesture. Key Takeaways: Explore the historical roots of the phrase “to bite the thumb at” and its cultural significance. Understand the symbolic nature of this expressive gesture and its implications. … Read more

The expression “iron curtain”, in its allusion to the line across Europe beyond which are the countries under Soviet influence or control, was credited to Winston Churchill, to its use in a speech delivered by him on March 5, 1946, at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. But the same metaphor may have been in other minds … Read more

The phrase “not to know B from a battledore means: To know not one letter from another; not to know beans; to be wholly illiterate, or extremely ignorant. This accusation of complete illiteracy dates at least to the late Middle English period, according to The Rolls Series (the chronicles and memorials of Great Britain during … Read more

The expression “poor as a church mouse” means: Mighty poor; about as deprived of the necessities of life as the “fly on the wall” of which mothers used to recite lugubriously to the children: Poor little fly on the wall, Ain’t got no shimmy-shirt, Ain’t got no pettiskirt, Ain’t got no nothing at all! Poor … Read more