Meaning
A gesture which usually is insulting or abusive.
Origin
Wynne’s Diary used this phrase in 1791:
“They cock snooks at one on every occasion.”
Meaning
When someone creates a new phrase, we say he has coined a phrase.
Origin
It is believed that the first use was in in George Puttenham’s The arte of English poesie, 1589:
“Young schollers not halfe well studied… will seeme to coigne fine wordes out of the Latin.”
In print media it was used by the Wisconsin newspaper The Southport American in July 1848:
“Had we to find… a name which should at once convey the enthusiasm of our feelings towards her, we would coin a phrase combining the extreme of admiration and horror and term her the Angel of Assassination.”
Francis Brett Young’s novel Mr. Lucton’s Freedom used this phrase in 1940:
“It takes all sorts to make a world, to coin a phrase.”
Meaning
When someone tries to console or give encouragement we use this phrase.
Origin
In 14th century. E. E. Allit. used this phrase:
“Lorde! colde watz his cumfort.”
Chaucer and Shakespeare also used this phrase in their writings.
Meaning
When we are dead sure of something we use this phrase.
Origin
Robert Whittinton used it in 1520 in his grammatical tract Vulgaria:
“I haue knowen a man or nowe that thought him selfe cocke sure of his intent.”
Meaning
It actually means a utensil used for cutting shaped pieces out of dough but recently it is used for things which lack originality.
Origin
The first use in print was in The Chicago Sunday Tribune in 1922:
“There are always ‘cookie cutter’ tendencies among us. One of these this year is the caracul trimmed coat which every other woman in New York wears.”
Meaning
This phrase is mostly used by tax lawyers when they want to convey a message that the account books are tempered so as to avoid tax payment.
Origin
The first use though in a different format was in 1636 by Earl of Strafford in his Letters:
“The Proof was once clear, however they have cook’d it since.”
Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle in 1751 used this phrase in its real sense:
“Some falsified printed accounts, artfully cooked up, on purpose to mislead and deceive.”
Meaning
This phrase is used when we have to tell how response of public toward charity is decreasing due to frequent requests.
Origin
Albert W. Farmer, in 1967 used this the Indiana newspaper The Vidette-Messenger:
“More people are hungry today than ever before. Many Americans have compassion fatigue – tired out with all the repeated calls to do good.”
Meaning
It means comparing things can cause disliking.
Origin
John Lydgate in his Debate between the horse, goose, and sheep, circa used this in 1440 as:
“Odyous of olde been comparisonis, And of comparisonis engendyrd is haterede.”
John Donne, Cervantes, Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare are other noted personalities who had used this phrase.
Meaning
This is actually a slang in which writers replace the words with any phrase which rhymes.
Origin
This phrase was used by Hugh Bigot, Earl of Norfolk:
Was I in my castle at Bungay,
Fast by the river Waveney,
I would not care for the king of Cockney;
The first rhyming slang that could be traced was by Edward Jerringham Wakefield’s in Adventures in New Zealand, 1845:
“The profound contempt which the whaler expresses for the ‘lubber of a jimmy-grant’, as he calls the emigrant.”
The systematic record was in ‘The Vulgar Tongue by Ducange Anglicus. Anglicus includes these example in 1857:
Apple and Pears, stairs.
Barnet-Fair, hair.
Bird-lime, time.
Lath-and-plaster, master.
Oats and chaff, footpath.