Language – Interesting Literature

15 of the Best Words That Rhyme (or Almost Rhyme) with ‘People’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

It’s often said there aren’t any rhymes for the word ‘orange’. But in fact, there are barely any full rhymes for the word ‘people’, and let’s face it, the word ‘people’ is far more common and far more useful. Other colours than orange are available (indeed, for many centuries it wasn’t even used as the name for a colour, hence the glaringly inaccurate term ‘robin redbreast’), but how else can we talk about those members of the human race, to which so many of our family members belong?

The Meaning and Origin of ‘Good Fences Make Good Neighbours’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning of a well-known expression

Here’s a question for you: who first wrote the line, ‘good fences make good neighbours’? Although it was the American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) who first used that particular wording, the sentiment, expressed in slightly different (though only very slightly different) words, is considerably older. So where did ‘good fences make good neighbours’ originally come from, and what does it mean in the Robert Frost poem in which it appears?

The Curious Meaning and Origins of ‘One for All and All for One’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the surprising origins of a well-known phrase

Let’s begin this week’s Secret Library column with a quiz question. Which famous writer gave us the phrase ‘one for all, or all for one’? To make it easier, let’s make it multiple-choice. Was it: a) William Shakespeare; b) Alexandre Dumas; or c) Virgil?

Who Said, ‘A Lie Is Halfway Round the World Before the Truth Has Got Its Boots On’?

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the surprising origins of that ‘a lie is halfway round the world …’ quotation

‘A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.’ The line well-known, and has itself made its way round probably more than half the world since it was first uttered. But who first uttered it?

The Meaning and Origin of ‘Patriotism is the Last Refuge of the Scoundrel’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle delves into the misconceptions surrounding one of the most famous pronouncements on patriotism

Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was a curious man. The one thing everyone knows him for, compiling the first English dictionary, is something he didn’t do: dictionaries of the English language were well-established by the time Johnson’s monumental achievement appeared in print in 1755. His Dictionary of the English Language did, however, raise the bar considerably where English lexicography was concerned, even if, as Blackadder observed, he left ‘aardvark’ out.*