University dress includes an academic cap, or mortarboard, with a black tassel. At Oxford and Cambridge from around the 1600s the titled young undergraduates began to wear gold tassels, known as tufts, as a mark of their superior status.

As often happens with language, the word’s usage was extended to the young men themselves. It gradually shifted to tofts and by the mid-1800s was toffs. It became a slang word used by the working class for the upper class, or for someone who dressed smartly, as an aristocrat might.

The nowadays rarely-heard tuft hunter, for a sycophant or toady, has its origins here too. A tuft hunter was someone who followed, flattered and fawned before these young noblemen.

This relatively recent expression comes from American advertising posters of the 1930s. It became popular with ice cream companies who saw a flavour-of-the-month as a great marketing idea. Often the featured flavour would be offered at a reduced price to encouraged customers to part with their money.

This expression is used often now in a derogatory way for a celebrity considered overrated. The phrase suggests that a meteoric rise to fame is most likely to be quickly followed by a meteoric fall.

Why Coventry?

During the English Civil Wars of the 1640s, Cromwell sent Royalist soldiers to be imprisoned in this cathedral city in Warwickshire, England. They were shunned by the locals who didn’t want them there. This is suggested as the origin of the expression.
Another theory is that it was troops who were billeted in the town that were unwelcome and ostracised.

The phrase appears in Enid Blyton’s school stories where sending a girl to Coventry is the ultimate punishment.

Another example is Charles Dodgson, who was ‘sent to Coventry’ by the Liddell family for unknown reasons, thought people speculated that it had something to do with his relationship with young Alice.

Clues we might use for this word include ‘Night-time outings restriction’ or ‘After-hours travel ban’ but it started as a law aimed at preventing villages burning down.

The word’s origin is in the Old French couvre-feu meaning ‘cover-fire’. In medieval times fires were precious for lighting, heating and cooking. Crude wooden houses with thatched roofs and fires burning in the hearth meant disaster was never far away. Every evening at around 8 or 9 a bell would sound as an signal that it was time to cover fires and settle in for the night, thus assuring no one went to sleep leaving their fire unguarded.

Curfew quickly came to refer to the signal itself and the benefit of restricting the population to their houses was soon seen to extend beyond avoiding destructive fire, to minimising crime and stopping schemers meeting under cover of darkness.

Curfews are now mostly put in place in times of unrest, though in some places they are imposed in order to deter juvenile delinquency.

Water for drinking on a ship was kept in a butt, or a large cask. The cask was scuttled, that is, a hole was cut in it usually with a hatch as a lid, which was lifted so the water could easily be scooped out of it.

Scuttle also has the meaning to sink a ship, originally this was by cutting holes in it.

In the same way that office gossip is supposed to take place around the water cooler, on board ship the sailors could take a few moments to exchange stories while having a refreshing drink at the scuttlebutt.

Scuttlebutt came to be used by sailors as slang for the gossip itself – it’s hard to imagine water cooler ever taking on the same meaning.

Like many phrases, its history is not clear. While it sounds very English, its first appearance was in America around 1890, but its origins could well go back to Scots dialect.

Duddy meant ‘ragged’ perhaps from duds meaning ordinary clothes. Fuddiel is a form of ‘fellow’ – hence we have a ragged fellow.

There were a couple of characters who appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript in the 1890s called Fuddy and Duddy but whether they were named because of an already-known phrase we do not know.

How the two words ended up together and with the meaning of an old stick-in-the mud is also unclear, but as we like to play with our language, it was probably the sound of it that was most appealing.

Bugs Bunny’s foe, Elmer Fudd was probably named with the expression in mind. He was a rather cranky and conservative character.

Wessex was the Kingdom of the West Saxons, founded around AD 500 by Cerdic. The kingdom grew slowly over the next 350+ years and in 871 when Alfred became king it was one of the island’s strongest kingdoms and were better able to face the marauding Danes than many others. After Alfred (who became known as ‘the Great’) defeated the Vikings at Edington, the lands were divided and Alfred was now king of the English (though there is debate about who was truly the first king of all England).

Alfred’s defeat of the Vikings led the way to the unification of England under Alfred’s grandson Athelstan and Wessex became an earldom and no longer a kingdom. After William the Conqueror’s arrival the earldom was split up.

Wessex covered most of Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, and the former county of Berkshire. The capital of Wessex was Winchester. Author Thomas Hardy, who came from Dorset, used Wessex as the fictional name for the county where his now well-known stories were set.

When Prince Edward was made Earl of Wessex the title had not been used for over 900 years. The last earl was killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

If your name is Susan I am sure you are not lazy, but you are probably interested in the origin of the name of this handy serving aid. Well, like many other English expressions, it is not clear.

The Lazy Susan is a fairly new term, replacing dumbwaiter for the turntable in the middle of a larger table. Perhaps the naming was to distinguish it from the small food elevator which saved the legs of waiters carrying food between floors, also called a dumbwaiter.

There are two theories as to who ‘Susan’ was. Firstly, it was a common name for a servant girl, who was made lazy by the device’s invention. Secondly it could have been a reference to a ‘lazy’ hostess who no longer had to offer around the selections to her guests, merely to spin the revolving tray.

The answer is not clear, but the expression has been around since before Shakespeare (and the good Bard used it in Henry IV).

Quite possibly ‘as dead as a doornail’ has survived down the centuries because it sounds so good - as dead as a nail is not quite as pleasing to say!

It is thought that the doornail in question could have been the large one under the knocker of a medieval door. This nail was hit on the head so many times it was definitely dead. Also, in the world of carpentry, a nail that is hammered all the way through and then has the protruding part hammered back up for strength (a process called clinching) is no longer useable. It is dead.

Now as dead as a dodo is easier to understand. Before this poor creature became extinct the phrase ‘as rare as a dodo’ was around for a while.

We all know of the famous Earl Grey tea but how did the tea get its name? Well this is not a simple matter.

According to Twinings, Prime Minister Earl Grey was given a case of this black tea flavoured with bergamot oil by a Chinese Mandarin and loved it so much that he asked Twinings to make a similar tea for him.

Jackson’s Of Piccadilly disagree and say the original Earl Grey is theirs, the recipe having been given to Robert Jackson by Lord Grey.

Tea was still quite a  ‘new thing’ and what is clear is that the Earl was a big fan. Jane Austen was another early fan of the beverage but she didn’t have the honour of a tea in her name.

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, was born in Northumberland in 1764 attended Eton then Trinity College, travelled Europe and then entered politics. He was prime minister from 1830-34, under the reign of William IV. His term of office saw the passing of the Reform Act 1832, which aimed to correct anomalies in the electoral system. Charles and his wife, Mary had 16 children - so a big pot was needed at tea time in their house!

Bergamot is a pear-shaped citrus fruit and the aromatic oil comes from the rind. As well as being used in tea it is used in perfumes. Because of its strong aroma Earl Grey is sometimes known as ‘Old Stinky’. Lady Grey tea also has the bergamot oil but with the addition of orange and lemon.

With such tea flavours as cherry & cinnamon, honeybush & lavender and pineapple now available, Earl Grey’s bergamot doesn’t seem quite so unusual as it once did.

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macduff on hearing of the death of his family says;
All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?

This is often wrongly quoted as ‘one foul swoop’ or even ‘one fowl swoop’.

The swoop is the rapid descent of the kite but what of the fell? Fell has a few meanings including, as a noun a stretch of moorland, and as a verb to cut down. It also has a meaning as an adjective  ‘of terrible evil or ferocity’ (Oxford Dictionary of English) and this is the ‘fell’ of the quote.

In this image of the ferocious swoop of the hunting bird to snatch its prey, Shakespeare creates a powerful metaphor for the sudden and brutal killing of Macduff’s kin.

The phrase now doesn’t usually have the meaning of savagery, just suddenness.

There is another meaning of fell not heard anymore, ‘an animal’s hide or skin with its hair’. A fellmonger was a dealer in the skins.

Lady Godiva is renowned for riding through the streets of Coventry — naked! What is less known however, is why such a pious woman would do such a thing

Lady Godgifu, her real name, was married to Leofric, the Earl of Mercia. She was a beautiful woman who cared greatly for the people of Coventry who were ruled over by her tyrannical husband. He imposed heavy taxes on the people and he and Godgifu quarrelled about it frequently. She begged him to be more merciful.

One day Leofric made the extravagant promise that if she were to ride naked through the streets of Coventry on market day, he would cancel the tax altogether. Her passion for the people and their well being spurred her on to take the challenge and in 1040, Lady Godgifu rode through the streets, clothed only by her long, beautiful blonde hair.

Surprisingly, Leofric kept his promise and the people of Coventry were exempt from paying taxes. Eventually, he changed his ways and instead of persecuting the church, mended his relationship with Godgifu and founded a Benedictine monastery with her.

One version of the tale says that she requested everyone stay indoors during her ride, with their windows and doors shut. The story goes that only one man peeped and that was Tom, the tailor, who is said to have been struck blind for his moment of weakness. You’ve heard of Peeping Tom haven’t you?

From 1914-1923 the Old Vic produced all of Shakespeare’s plays and from then on the theatre’s fame grew.
The building was severely damaged during WWII, but was rebuilt and reopened in 1950.

Old Vic not only referred to the building but to the theatre school and also to he repertory company who have toured around the world and spread the Old Vic’s reputation for fine theatre.

In 1946 the Bristol Old Vic was established and in 1973 the Young Vic was created. In 1998 when the theatre was for sale it was suggested it could be converted to a pub or club but was rescued by the Old Vic Theatre Trust charity in 2000.

Many great names are associated with the Old Vic, including Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir Alec Guinness and Sir John Gielgud, Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith. In 2003 Kevin Spacey became the artistic director.

This saying has been has been popular since the early 19th century and describes someone who is prepared to go “to the gates of hell” to achieve their purpose.

Going hell for leather, comes from the idea of riding very hard, the leather referring to either the horse’s saddle or the rider’s crop.

The first recorded use of “hell for leather,” was in a story written in 1889 by Rudyard Kipling, who probably either invented the phrase or picked it up from British Army troops in India.

The phrase is thought to refer to the wear and tear inflicted on the saddle by the strenuous riding, or to the reckless nature of the ride.

A kangaroo court is not a legal proceeding in the Australian outback, nor does it involve hopping marsupials.

It refers to a criminal proceeding that is conducted for show, where the defendant is undoubtedly going to be found guilty.

The earliest use of the term was recorded not in Australia as you might expect, but in Mississippi, around 1850. The term ‘mustang court’ is also found from that time, so it seems likely to have something to do with the wildness of the animals concerned.

The term kangaroo court was unknown in Australia until it was introduced there from America.

It is sometimes assumed that the phrase describes how the defendant will be bounced from the court to the gallows.

The term may have also have arisen from the way a kangaroo court defies the law, just as the kangaroo’s appearance and the way it bounds along seem to defy the laws of nature.

Utzon’s  submission was selected from amongst 230 others competing in a worldwide competition run by the NSW State Government to design an opera house.

Construction began in 1959 but it soon became apparent that Utzon’s original design was structurally impossible. After a few more years of research, Utzon was able to solve the complex geometry of the Sydney Opera House ‘sails’, although production was put back several years.

All went well until February 1966 when a dispute with the government caused Utzon to resign and leave Australia, never to return. Three Sydney architects were then hired to complete the building, which was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 20 October 1973.

In June 2007 Sydney’s Opera house was listed in the World Heritage sites. In 2008 Joern Utzon died, aged 90. In march 2009 a memorial concert was held at the Opera House he designed for Sydney.

Although it is hard to believe now, at one time, medieval physicians believed that the secretions of a frog could cure a cough if they were coated on the throat of the patient.

That in itself sounds repulsive, but what makes the idea even worse is the application of the secretions.

Instead of painting the treatment on, something which may almost have seemed rational, a live frog was placed into the mouth of the sufferer where it remained until the physician decided that the treatment was complete.

Apparently, Shakespeare’s son-in-law, Dr Hall, was familiar with this remedy.

It’s no wonder that today, a froggy or croaky attempt at speech is said to be a ‘frog in your throat’!

There are several explanations for this saying which has become second-nature to so many.

Some say that during the sixth century it was a congratulatory statement as a sneeze was thought to expel evil spirits.

Some cultures believed that a sneeze was caused by demons leaving the body or that a sneeze left one vulnerable for demons to enter the body.

It is thought that “God Bless You” may have been a blessing to protect the sneezer from harm. Others suggest that the blessing began when the great plague took hold of Europe and people began sneezing violently.

Sneezing was a signal that the person was likely to die of plague and so others blessed the fated sneezer.