Words And Phrases

A list of commonly used words and phrases and their origins. Please make a selection below:

• "Time is money"
• 'Hell bent' or 'Hell for leather'
• A-tishoo
• Alarm
• Alphabet
• Ammonia
• Ampersand
• An even break
• As dead as a doornail
• At one fell swoop
• Back to square one
• Bedlam
• Beyond the pale
• Big
• Canary
• Codswallop
• Codswallop
• Colossus
• Cravat
• Crisscross
• Curry favour
• Dollar
• Dressed to the nines
• Earwig
• Electricity
• Fiasco
• Frog in your throat
• From the horse's mouth
• Fuddy-duddy
• God bless you!
• Grog
• Hat trick
• Kangaroo court
• Keep your shirt on!
• Kick the bucket
• Kowtow
• Lazy Susan
• Let the cat out of the bag
• Limerick
• Mad as a hatter
• Mind your P's and Q's
• Money
• OK - Okay
• Orient
• Pagan
• Posh
• Quackery
• Quiz
• Raining cats and dogs
• Red Herring
• Rickshaw
• Rookie
• Scuttlebutt
• Seventh Heaven
• Shampoo
• Show a Leg
• Sideburns
• Soccer
• The Real McCoy
• Ventriloquism
• Zany

Scuttlebutt

Last modified on 2009-10-23 04:45:50 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

This is a wonderful slang word for gossip and we have to thank sailors for it.

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.

Fuddy-duddy

Last modified on 2009-11-02 04:23:30 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

This term meaning stuffy and old-fashioned might well sound like a stuffy old-fashioned expression, but it has only been around for a short time really – well around 100 years, which is recent when you think that so much of our language has its origins in ancient times.

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.

Lazy Susan

Last modified on 2009-11-02 04:32:26 GMT. 2 comments. Top.

What a strange name for this revolving tray in the middle of a table!

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.

As dead as a doornail

Last modified on 2009-08-04 03:22:44 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

English abounds with similes in the form of  ‘as x as a y‘ but where did this one come from?

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.

At one fell swoop

Last modified on 2009-08-04 03:25:22 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

This means all in one go or in one sudden action.

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.