buck up 29 April 2026 Today, buck up usually means to cheer up, to be encouraged. But in the past it was used in a wider range of meanings with the base sense of to become confident and assertive. The metaphor underlying the phrase is the behavior and attitude of a male
college widow 27 April 2026 College widow is a term you don’t hear anymore, except in historical usage. It harkens back to a time when only men attended university and short-lived love affairs between the male students and female residents of college towns were common. A college widow was often, but
moonbat 24 April 2026 Moonbat is a slang term for a crazy person that suddenly rose to prominence in 2003. Like most slang terms, its origin cannot be determined with certainty, but it likely formed through a mixing of two other metaphorical terms, barking/howling at the moon and bats in
incumbent 22 April 2026 Today we usually find the word incumbent in the context of politics, referring to the current holder of a political office. But English use of the word was originally in the sense of the holder of an ecclesiastical office. Incumbent comes from the medieval Latin incumbere, meaning
wild and woolly 20 April 2026 The phrase wild and woolly is an Americanism referring to something, or someone, who is without order or control, untamed by law or social convention. Wild is clear enough, but why woolly? This is a case of a phrase that may seem baffling at first glance, but
breakfast / Continental breakfast / English breakfast / second breakfast 17 April 2026 Breakfast has a very straightforward etymology. It is a compound of break + fast, that is a meal eaten after period of abstention from food, usually while sleeping overnight. The word dates to at least the mid fifteenth century, but exactly what food a breakfast consists of has
anachronym 15 April 2026 No, that’s not a typo for acronym. An anachronym is a term whose original meaning has become anachronistic but which continues to be used for a more current application. Examples of anachronyms include dialing a phone, footage (originally referring to the length of movie film), cc
French toast 13 April 2026 French toast is a dish, typically served at breakfast or brunch, of slices of bread soaked in beaten eggs and then fried. It is usually served with syrup. Why it is French is a bit of mystery. The earliest use of the present-day form of the dish
intifada 10 April 2026 The word intifada enters English from the Arabic انتفاضة, meaning uprising or revolt. In Arabic, it has widespread use referring to any number of insurrections or civil resistance movements across the Arab world. In English, however, it is usually found in the context of Palestinian insurrections against
many happy returns 8 April 2026 My practice when Facebook (yes, I’m still on Facebook; I’m old) reminds me of someone’s birthday is to send the message Many Happy Returns. I don’t remember when I first started doing it or why, but it was probably because I thought a
