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A busman’s holiday
What is a busman’s holiday? A holiday spent on Majorca? A holiday spent at home? A holiday spent on a campsite? None of these. It is a holiday spent doing the same thing one would be doing at work. The origin of the idiom goes back to the time when buses were horse-drawn. It was not uncommon for a driver to spend his day off riding on his own bus to check that the relief driver was treating his horses properly. (Flavell & Flavell 32000: 45)

Actor
Where would you expect the word actor to have first occurred in English? In a diary by a traveller visiting England and watching a play in the Globe? In a legal writ fixing an actor’s status? In the balance sheet of a travelling theatre company? All wrong, of course. The word is first documented in Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible (XIV)! And so are absent, adoption, adulteress and allegory (cf. Crystal 2005: 240-1).

AD
Perhaps the example of clipping, of part of a word serving as the whole (advertisement). Other examples include demo, flu, pram, fridge, phone and pub (Crystal 2005: 457). It is remarkable, I think, that many speakers are not aware that these are clipped forms, and if told they are, would not necessarily be able to provide the full form. It is also remarkable that advertisement has a second clipped form, advert, which, in terms of formality, is probably somewhere between the other two.

Adam´s Ale

Adam’s Ale is no ale at all. It is water. This is all Adam had to drink in Eden. (Flavell & Flavell 32000: 2)

Adder

A modern translation of Genesis 3.1. speaks of the serpent, saying that it was more crafty than any other creature God made. The word serpent already appears in Middle English, but in Old English it does not. Instead, we get the word næddre. This word corresponds to the modern English word adder, but, while adder today refers to a specific kind of snake, the Old English word was used for any kind of snake. Besides, adder in the course of its history, lost its initial /n/, the result of misanalysis of a nadder as an adder. (Seargeant, Philip: “English in the world today”, in: Seargeant 2012: 14-6)

A dime a dozen

A dime is the American ten-cent coin. It was declared official by the Constitutional Congress in 1786. The word is derived from French dime, ‘tithe’. The phrase a dime a dozen is used to refer to something very cheap. Curiously, inflation has played a role in slightly changing its meaning. It now sounds even cheaper than it did when the phrase came up in the early twentieth century. At the time, a dime could buy a paperback book (a dime novel), a doughnut or a cup of coffee.  (Ammer 2006: 103)

Adventure

The word adventure came into English from French in the 13th century, as auenture. There were various way of spelling the word, not of which, however, included a . Then why is it spelt with a today? The answer is that in the 16th century it was felt necessary to refashion the word and make the Latin connection visible, the language it originally derived from. So a letter was included that had never been there, and that had no reason to be there. Other words which were remodelled in this way were conferm to confirm, aorn to adorn or dette to debt (Crystal 2005: 156).

Advocate
In English, many words belong to more than one word class at the same time and can, for example, be verb and noun at the same time: walk, love, smile, matter, play, use – one could go on endlessly. One of the most important innovations in the language is not so much the invention of new words but the use of a known word in a new function (a process technically known as conversion). Whenever this happens, someone has objections. In the case of advocate, the objector was not just anyone, but no lesser man than Benjamin Franklin. He was against advocate as a verb and wrote a letter to Webster complaining about this new-fangled use. Webster ignored his plea and included the verb in his famous dictionary. Actually, this use was not new-fangled at all. The verb is first attested in 1599.

A flash in the pan

This seemingly incomprehensible idiom, meaning ‘something brilliant which comes to nothing’, has its origin in a malfunction of the old gun. Sometimes, for one reason or another, the gunpowder, which held in the pan, did not explode and did not cause the ball to fly. Thus, although there was some of type of ignition, a flash, in the gunpowder compartment, the pan, no shot was fired. (Flavell & Flavell 32000: 87)

Aglet

Most people do not know the word aglet, and it is not a word which is sorely needed in order to communicate. It actually denotes the bit at the end of a shoe lace. There are words for things which we usually refer to without using the precise word. There is also a word for the hairless space between your eyebrows. It is glabella.

Alarm
A word which comes from Old French. We are now hardly aware that it contains the element arm (in the sense of ‘weapon’), but that’s what it originally meant, ‘a call to the arms’! Then it was extended to warning of imminent dangers in general. (cf. Jucker 2000: 118)

Aloneness
A perfectly plausible word, which, however, does not ‘exist’, at least not in present-day English. It was used in Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible (XIV), but, for some reason, never caught on. Neither did againcoming, aftercoming and acception (cf. Crystal 2005: 241).

Alphabet
The alphabet has its name from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, which are alpha and beta. The Greeks took the names of the letters over from the Phoenicians, who are sometimes credited with having invented the first alphabetic writing system. However, in Greek alpha and beta did not mean anything, in Phoenician they did, alpha being the word for a ‘yoke’ and beta being the word for a ‘house’. With some imagination, we can still see these ‘pictures’ in the form of the capital letters A and B. These pictures later came to be used to represent, not the idea but the sound, just as we might use the drawing of a watering can to represent the word can in ‘You can go now’. This was a great breakthrough, because the number of symbols needed was drastically reduced and you could represent things more easily for which it was difficult to find a pictorial sign. The Phoenicians in their writing system only represented consonants, and when the Greeks took over their symbols, they, rather cleverly, used the symbols they did not need (because they did not have these consonants) to represent the Greek vowels, alpha being one of them. This is incidentally the reason why the vowels are distributed so oddly across our alphabet instead of coming all at the beginning or all at the end. The reason is that originally they were not used for vowels but were consonants like all the rest. (Erickson & Gymnich 2006: 60)

Ampersand

Though everyone knows the sign, not everyone knows its name: ampersand. The sign itself, &, stands for ‘and’ and is historically a ligature of the Latin letters et, ‘and’. In older versions of the sign this origin is still visible. The word ampersand derives from and per se.  When reciting the English alphabet, any letter which could stand as a word in itself was accompanied by the phrase per se. At the end of the alphabet, after <z>, the ampersand was added, with the wording and per se and. This was gradually slurred to ampersand, and the word eventually entered the English language.

An aim
Can the phrase an aim (1) be distinguished from a name (2) in pronunciation? Probably yes. Nevertheless, if you write down the phonemes you get the same phonemes in the same order, the same phoneme sequence. Still, the two phrases are distinguished. They are distinguished by what exactly the /n/ is like. We have what is called waning [n] in (1), where the [n] decreases, so to speak, but waxing [n] in (2), where the [n] increases, so to speak. (cf. Davis 2004: 81-2). This difference shows us where the word boundary is, i.e. where one word ends and the next one begins. This example can help to show the difference between phonology and phonetics. The sequence is phonologically the same, but phonetically different.

Analyse
What is the right spelling, analyse or analyze? The answer is clearly: it depends. Both forms are found on both sides of the Atlantic, with analyze being more popular in America and also beginning to oust analyse in Britain. The spelling with seems to reflect pronunciation better. On the other hand, it is at odds with analysis, which is always spelt with . And this is normally an important principle, especially in American English. This is why offense is spelt with an , so that it tallies with offensive, and pretense so that it tallies with pretension, but practice with a so that it tallies with practical. This principle is called derivational uniformity: if the forms belong to the same word, spell them in the same way. (cf. Gramley/Pätzold 1992: 32)

And
If you point to the word on a page and ask native speakers how it is pronounced, you will get one pronunciation of the word. If you listen to a native speaker telling you there is Fish and Chips Shop round the corner you will get quite a different version. They will almost certainly drop the /d/, will probably reduce the vowel to schwa or might even drop it altogether, leaving no more than /n/. (Davis 2004: 143)

And Bob´s your uncle
This is an idiom you use after having told someone how to do something in order to emphasize that it is no big deal, that it is easily done: ‘Just press the button, copy the disk, and Bob’s your uncle.’ This idiom goes back to a political scandal in 19th century Britain. The Prime Minister, Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, appointed his nephew, Arthur Balfour, Chief Secretary for Ireland, although his abilities were considered inappropriate. Public opinion suspected that he was only appointed because Bob was his uncle. (Flavell & Flavell 32000: 159)

And she’s like …

Compare: a) So she says ‘Why not’, b) So she goes ‘Why not’, c) So she’s all ‘Why not’, d) So she’s like ‘Why not’. These are different colloquial forms to introduce reported speech, with c) and d) being newer than the other forms. They were first noted in the speech of young Americans, and it seems that American television series have contributed to their spread. There is some evidence that, although they appear in the speech of both sexes, they are more frequently used by girls – who lead the way to language change. (Holmes 3/2008: 230)

Anglo-Welsh

The word Anglo-Welsh, as in Anglo-Welsh literature, i.e. literature written in English, is used to avoid ambiguity with Welsh proper as in Welsh literature, i.e. literature written in Welsh. This makes it a useful label. But what counts as Anglo-Welsh literature? Is George Herbert, who was of Welsh ancestry but lived in England most of his life and probably did not speak Welsh, an Anglo-Welsh author? Or do you have to be born and bred in Wales and lived in Wales most of your life, know Welsh and have published in Welsh alongside English to be considered an Anglo-Welsh author? The question was asked in a controversial essay published in 1939, “Is there an Anglo-Welsh literature?” Today most critics are inclined to apply the term rather broadly. (Crystal 1995: 335)

Another
A funny word, which clearly consists of an + other, but is pronounced as if it consisted of a + nother. In technical terms, the boundary between the morphemes does not correspond to the boundary between the syllables (Davis 2004: 82-3)

A parting short
This idiom is a wonderful example of folk etymology. A parting shot is a final, wounding remark to which the listener has no chance to reply. Originally, this was not a parting shot but a Parthian shot. In antiquity, the Parthians were held famous for this clever tactics: they feigned retreat, then turned around and fired back, with deadly accuracy. This was the Parthian shot. Gradually, in the 19th century, Parthian shot gave away to parting shot, and that makes perfect sense: they are similar in both form and meaning. (Flavell & Flavell 32000: 143-4)

A red herring
Why is something which diverts your attention called a red herring? Herrings which had been dried and salted and, in consequence, turned red, were used for training hounds in hunting and later used by people opposed to hunting for getting the dogs away from their quarry. That’s why. Here’s an example: “The plot is full of red herrings to distract the reader.” For writers of detective fiction the red herring is, of course, one of the tricks of the trade. (Flavell & Flavell 32000: 151)

Army

If a newspaper article speaks of an army of refugees, proponents of Critical Discourse Analysis are likely to discover some hidden ideological significance, traces of ideological bias, in the choice of army, suggesting that army entails not only large number but also danger. But things are not as simple as that. An army may be dangerous but it is also armed, organised, disciplined, controlled by some central command. How do we know which features of the metaphor are activated here? And why is the feature of being dangerous activated in this case? There are instances where army does not entail danger at all, as is evidenced by these samples from the British National Corpus: an army of earwigs, an army of weeds, an army of chickens, an army of fans, an army of helpers, an army of supporters, and army of shoppers, and army of little boys. (Widdowson 2007: 74)

Arrive

The word was adopted from Old French and originally meant ‘come to a river’. Then it was extended to coming to other kinds of destination. This is an example of a word whose meaning has broadened. (Jucker 2000: 118)

Arsenic
Is arsenic a French loanword? Yes, it is. Is arsenic a Greek loanword? Yes, it is. Is arsenic a Persian loanword? Yes, it is. It was borrowed into English from French in the 14th century. It derived from Latin arsenicum, which is a borrowing of Greek arsenikon. The Greek took it from the Persians, where az zarnikh is the word for ‘gold-pigment’, based on the word zar, ‘gold’. Arsenic was used as a dye, and was believed to have strong medical properties, in particular beneficial effects on virility. (Crystal 2007: 61)

ASK
In 1200, people cold only ask; by 1500 they could question (from French) and interrogate (from Latin) as well. In other words, the foreign influence gave them a much greater linguistic choice. (Crystal 2005: 162)

Assasin
The word came into English through Italian, but is ultimately derived from Arabic hashshashin, which means ‘hashish-eater’. (Crystal 2005: 301)

As sure as eggs is eggs
This idiom is generally and more appropriately quoted in the ‘wrong’ form, using is and not are. This is due to the fact that the original form was probably as sure as x is x. The meaning, ‘absolutely certain’, is too obvious to need an explanation. (Flavell & Flavell 32000: 81)

At the crossroads

The idea of a figurative crossroads, a point of having to decide which road to take, is quite old. Erasmus quotes from the Greek poet Theognis’ Elegies, in which the phrase “I stand at the crossroads” turns up. Crossroads, the place where two roads intersect, has had special significance from ancient times. Some tribes used crossroads as a place for religious sacrifice, and hence they came to be associated with execution. In Christian times, criminals and people who had killed themselves were often buried at crossroads (since they could not be buried in consecrated ground). Crossroads were also a favourite place for ambushes, highway robbery and other nefarious deeds. (Ammer 2006: 14)

Avon
The name of the river is well known through Shakespeare’s birthplace Stratford-on-Avon (Although I once book a trip to Stratford in a German travel agency, where they had never heard of it). It is less known that there other rivers in England which are also called Avon. Bristol stands on the River Avon, and so does Bournemouth. And there are many other smaller rivers of the same name. The name derives from an old Celtic word, abona, which means – ‘river’! (Whynne-Hammond 2005: 59) Thus, when we speak of the River Avon, we are really saying the River River.

Aye
This word is generally known from archaic sources, from songs or nautical language, but not in Scotland. Here, it is informal but entirely natural. (Trudgill/Hannah 42002: 96)