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literally (paid)

  • Dave Wilton

Dave Wilton

05 Jun 2024 • 5 min read
Cartoon of an executive saying, “Confound it, Hawkins, when I said I meant that literally, that was just a figure of speech."

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Newspaper headline reading “The Whole Six Yards of It”
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whole nine yards (paid)

12 Sep 2025 8 min read
B&W photo of a referee intervening between two boxers, one of whom is lying on the ring floor

saved by the bell

Saved by the bell, which the OED defines as “to be rescued from a difficult situation,” comes to us, as should be no surprise, from the world of boxing. It originally and quite literally referred to a boxer who was about to be beaten into submission only to have the
12 Sep 2025 4 min read
B&W drawing of a WWI dogfight with a British Sopwith Camel chasing and firing upon a German Fokker triplane

Red Baron

Freiherr Manfred von Richthofen is the most famous aviator of World War I, if not of all time. Credited with eighty air-to-air victories, he shot down more planes than any other flyer in the war. And he is popularly known as the Red Baron, because as commander of Jagdgeschwader (fighter
10 Sep 2025 3 min read
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