Phrase histories, myth files & notes

The macabre story ties the phrase to bells rigged above Victorian graves. The dated record ties it to the boxing ring, and the dates are not…

The claim that "rule of thumb" recalls a wife-beating law is the most repeated false etymology in English. Followed link by link, its paper trail runs…

The most honest phrase in our archive is also the least satisfying: origin unknown. Here is why we treat it as a finding rather than a…

War compresses language the way it compresses everything else, minting words fast and scattering them wide. Some of the twentieth century's most ordinary phrases were forged…

The 1611 Bible shaped English idiom more than any other book, yet most of its famous phrases are older than 1611. Untangling that paradox means giving…

Centuries of seafaring left deep watermarks on everyday English, from 'by and large' to 'the bitter end'. But the sea also attracts more origin stories than…

Shakespeare gets credit for half the English language, but a good deal of it was already in circulation. Sorting the minting from the borrowing tells us…