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 […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle delves into the origins of a famous Shakespeare quotation ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much’ is a phrase people sometimes use in jest, especially the sort of folk who are fond of talking of heading to the nearest […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the origins of the phrase ‘dark horse’ in a forgotten nineteenth-century novel The novel The Young Duke may have been forgotten, but its author hasn’t been – even if his reputation as an author is not now as […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle delves into the literary origins of a well-known phrase The phrase ‘cloud cuckoo land’ is well known, but what are its origins? Here’s what the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says, for the term’s etymology:
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the interesting theatrical origins of a famous phrase What does it mean to ‘steal one’s thunder’? The phrase is well-known, but its origins are less so. And to delve into the history of this now common phrase, we […]