DYK: Did you know? In olden days people didn’t bathe often because they thought if you did, you’d go into decline and die. Consequently, they became quite smelly. They usually only bathed completely in May or October, when the weather was warm. Young ladies started carrying “nosegays” of flowers under their noses the day of […]
DYK: Did you know? “True Blue” or “Coventry Blue” comes from the blue cloth that was made at Coventry, England in the late middle ages. The town’s dyers had a reputation for producing material that didn’t fade with washing. The town’s standing was recorded in 1670 by John Ray in the first edition of A Compleat Collection […]
DYK: Did you know? Swashbuckler is a term that emerged in the 16th century and was used as a term for pirates and swordsmen. A buckle was a kind of small shield. When men wanted to impress people they would stride around town with a sword and buckler on their belts. The buckler would ‘swash’ […]
DYK: Did you know? The fashion for wigs began with the Bourbon kings of France. Louis XIII (1601 – 1643) went prematurely bald and took to wearing a wig. By the middle of the century, and especially during the reign of Louis XIV, The Sun King, wigs were virtually obligatory for all European nobility and […]
DYK: Did you know? The old saying to ‘Win Hands Down’ comes from horse racing. If a jockey was a long way ahead of his competitors and sure to win the race he could relax and put his hands down at his sides. Three complete historical novels in one book Tapestry of Love Historical Series […]
DYK: Did you know? Knuckle under means to give way or submit. The word knuckle in the 18th century, was used used to mean ‘acknowledge oneself beaten; submit to another’s authority’ Dyche and Pardon, in their A dictionary of all the words commonly us’d in the English tongue, 1740, defined ‘knuckle’ like this: “Knuckle or knuckle down: […]
Pig in a poke means an offering or deal that is foolishly accepted without being examined first. A poke is a sack or bag. It has a French origin as ‘poque’ and, like several other French words, its diminutive is formed by adding ‘ette’ or ‘et’ – hence ‘pocket’ began life with the meaning ‘small […]
In olden days, bread was put, as a raw lump of dough, straight into the bread oven by the fireplace. There was no bread tin as today. It just sat on the floor of the oven. When the oven was heated by the fire, it became very hot at the bottom. After the bread finished […]
Today ‘A Bigger Bang for your Buck’ means that you get more for your money. However, most sources credit US Defense Secretary Charles Wilson as the source of the expression ‘a bigger bang for your buck’ in reference to a new policy of using nuclear weapons in any conflict bigger than what they called ‘a brush-fire […]
Have a screw loose – means something is wrong with the person or mechanism. The phrase comes from the cotton industry and dates back as far as the 1780s, when the industrial revolution made mass production of textiles possible for the first time. Huge mills sprang up to take advantage of the new technology (and the […]
