Who Really Coined the Phrase ‘Lost Generation’?

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

Who coined the phrase ‘Lost Generation’? The term has become synonymous with the generation of American expatriates living in France after the First World War: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other men in their early twenties during the early twenties. Most people credit the origins of the phrase ‘Lost Generation’ to Gertrude Stein, another American expatriate living in France at the time (albeit one who was a whole generation older than the Lost Generation). But did Stein actually coin it? And if she didn’t, who did?

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The Curious Meaning of the Phrase ‘Hoist with One’s Own Petard’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning and origins of a famous Shakespeare phrase

‘Hoist with one’s own petard’. The expression is well-known, and its meaning is fairly clear to most people: it describes someone who has been scuppered by their own schemes, someone who has come a-cropper because of some mischief they intended against others. But what is a ‘petard’, and where does it come from?

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