NEW FROM THE NEWSLETTER THIS WEEK
Chickens coming home to roost As a proverbial expression it’s half a millennium old. The older full form was curses are like chickens; they always come home to roost, meaning that your offensive words or actions are ...
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Hairy at the heel One example appears in a story about Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot: “The Colonel delivered himself of the opinion that Godfrey Burrows was slightly hairy at the heel, a ...
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Pilcrow The word is delightful, not least because it gives no clue at all to what it means or where it might come from. The recently revised entry for it in the Oxford English Dictionary says that it is “now chiefly historic” ...
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RANDOMLY CHOSEN
Holy smoke The expression, as a exclamation, dates from the latter part of the nineteenth century. The first reference to it in the Oxford English Dictionary is in a book by Rudyard Kipling and his American agent ...
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Moniker; The Secret Life of Words; Wiseacre; Panic button; Black Hole; Stillicide; Lieutenant; Femtocell; Darg; Shoot oneself in the foot; Nanofood; Mosey; Hearth-money; Quocker-wodger; Drunkorexia; Between versus among; Denigrate; Steam radio; Wigg; Grog; Pinguescence; Ivy League; Fardel; Unclarity; Rum do; Treasure-House of the Language; Fall guy; Co-respondent; Fidimplicitary; Metemptosis; Yaoi; Verecund; Hard graft.
THE NEXT WEB SITE UPDATE
The next update is due on 17 May 2008, when you are likely to read about the curious and rare word Struthonian, the puzzling expression Cock and bull story, and the uncertain origins of the Irish curse Bad cess to you.
TRY MY BOOKS ...
SIC!
• Priscilla Jensen was surprised to see a handwritten sign in the doorway of a newstand cum bookshop in a mall in northern Virginia: “No Unintended Children, Please!” The sentiment is fine, of course, but why put it there?
• Also from Virginia, Walter Sheppard wrote in about an advertisement he had come across addressed to government employees. It concerned a book with the title Understanding the Federal Government’s Survivor Benefits. The ad says the first thing a reader will learn is “What the requirements are for both the deceased employee and the surviving spouse”. Government employees can’t escape job demands even by dying, it seems.
• John McNeil e-mails with news that on 30 April The Press of Christchurch, New Zealand, put a figure on the weight of public opinion: “Squid experts yesterday had a taste of one of the colossal squid found in Antarctic waters. It is the smaller of the two beasts; the other has drawn global attention weighing nearly half a tonne.”
• David Ashton spotted a sign on a take-away food shop in Melbourne that was advertising “home-maid soup”. He feels it would certainly be nice to have a maid at home to make some soup — not to mention doing other chores around the house.
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