Dutch’s English Language Oddity Clearing House

Meaning

Something given in return for a item of equivalent value - like tit for tat.

Origin

A Latin term meaning ’something for something’ or ‘this for that’. The idea is more commonly expressed in English as ‘one good turn deserves another’. This has been in the language since at least 1654, as here in H. L’Estrange’s The Reign of King Charles:

“One good turn deserves another.”

‘Quid pro quo’ is in use in colloquial English but is also a legal concept in the area of trade or exchange of goods or services. A contract is said to be binding if it is quid pro quo, i.e. if it involves an exchange of goods or services for something of comparable value, usually money.

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Meaning

Commit suicide or offer your resignation.

Origin

It’s been some time since men routinely carried swords and the use of ‘falling on one’s sword’ is now restricted to the figurative usage when someone takes personal responsibility for a group action. The expression was used widely following the resignation of Lord Peter Carrington, who resigned from his post as Foreign Secretary for the Thatcher government in 1982, following Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands. He was the last high-profile politician in the UK to take personal responsibility in such circumstances.

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Meaning

A means of estimation made according to a rough and ready practical rule, not based on science or exact measurement.

Origin

This has been said to derive from the belief that English law allowed a man to beat his wife with a stick so long as it is was no thicker than his thumb. In 1782 Judge Sir Francis Buller is reported as having made this legal ruling. The following year James Gillray published a satirical cartoon attacking Buller and caricaturing him as ‘Judge Thumb’.

The cartoon shows a man beating a fleeing woman and Buller carrying two bundles of sticks. The caption reads “thumbsticks - for family correction: warranted lawful!”

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Meaning

A form of execution in which victims were forced to walk, often blindfold and with hands tied, off a plank of wood and into the sea.

Origin

‘Walking the plank’ is as much a part of pirate folklore as eye-patches, peg-legs and squawking parrots, and the scene of hapless victims being prodded by cutlass-wielding pirates and ‘walking the plank’ to their certain death has often been used as a dramatic device in stories and films. It isn’t just a fiction; ‘walking the plank’ was really used as a form of impromptu execution in the 18th and 19th centuries.

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