HUMBLE PIE AND COLD TURKEY
by Caroline Taggart (Michael O’Mara £9.99, 192 pp)
What number of books have I learn on the English language? It looks like lots of, however there’s at all times room for another on the shelf.
Caroline Taggart labored as a duplicate editor in publishing for a few years, smoothing the wild phrasing of authors, unsplitting infinitives and undangling participles. Now she turns creator herself with this splendid little guide concerning the origins of acquainted English phrases.
Caroline Taggart has penned a guide concerning the origins of acquainted English phrases – together with ‘bigwig’. Pictured: Elton John
Do you know, as an example, that the place beneath the eaves of a constructing, on to which rainwater was more likely to drip, grew to become referred to as the eavesdrip and, later, the eavesdrop? It was additionally a superb place to face when you needed to overhear what was being mentioned inside.
The origins of some phrases make good sense. A ‘bigwig’ was a strong or necessary one who, within the seventeenth and 18th centuries, would have worn a big powdered wig. ‘The boot is on the opposite foot’ dates from the 18th century, when shoemakers nonetheless made the identical boots for each ft. If one was uncomfortable, you could possibly strive it on the opposite foot to see if it fitted higher.
HUMBLE PIE AND COLD TURKEY by Caroline Taggart (Michael O’Mara £9.99, 192 pp)
Some etymologies stay a thriller. To know your onions might or might not derive from an English lexicographer referred to as Charles Onions, or a philanthropist referred to as S. G. Onions. Nobody is aware of. Others are historical — ‘the salt of the earth’ was first used within the Bible, whereas ‘rubbing salt within the wound’, for instance, solely goes again to the Nineteen Forties. Taggart says she doesn’t know the place ‘piggyback’ comes from, however the one factor she is definite of is that it has nothing to do with pigs. Earlier types of the identical expression had been ‘decide pack’ and ‘decide again’.
Phrases tend to mutate past their unique types in spelling, pronunciation and/or that means. In the event that they didn’t, books like this may not exist and my shelf can be fully empty.
It was an nameless Sixteenth-century pamphleteer who got here up with the expression ‘he wouldn’t say boo to a goose’, clearly below the inaccurate impression that geese are shy, retiring birds and never lunatics with wings.
There may be a lot easy goodness right here: tales, info and, sometimes, an admission of ignorance, which looks like a chilly bathe after a sauna. It deserves to fill many a stocking this Christmas.