What is the origin of the phrase To Go Scot Free?
In Old English, scot meant a payment, or one’s share of a payment.
To go scot free meant escaping that charge.
In Old English, scot meant a payment, or one’s share of a payment.
To go scot free meant escaping that charge.
It was coined by New York’s Finest along Twenty-third Street in the years before World War I. At the corner of Twenty-third Street and Broadway, traditionally the windiest corner of the city, men used to stand outside the famous Flatiron Building for free looks at ladies’ well-turned ankles. The police dutifully moved the audience along,…
The word bedlam, now used to describe a scene of uproar and confusion, was originally a contraction of Bethlehem. It referred to Saint Mary of Bethlehem, a religious house in London that was converted into a hospital for the insane in 1402. The term came to mean a lunatic asylum, one of its inmates, or…
Not surprisingly, the name refers to a part of the lion. In England, before the sixteenth century, the weed was called lion’s tooth because of its serrated leaf’s resemblance to the lion’s incisor. Later, the French translation, dent de lion, was adopted into English and eventually became anglicized to “dandelion.”
The practice, also called anthropophagy, is derived from the Spanish word for the Caribs. The Caribs were a West Indian tribe known for cannibalism.
Rather than measuring the time that passes during a meeting, the word minutes refers to the Latin minutus, or “small.” This is because the occurrences of the meeting are meant to be noted shortly and quickly, not that the events themselves are unimportant.
In order of frequency of use, they are: e, t, o, a, and n. Which letters are least frequently used? They are: k, j, x, z, and q.