Archives for posts with tag: love

Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Samuel Butler wrote this in Way of All Flesh.

Samuel Butler aged 23 in 1858  (Photo Credit Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Butler_1858.jpg

Pressing one’s suit on someone is not using her as an ironing board.  It is an expression about courtship and a proposal of marriage.

Are you courting?
When I was in my early teens a great-uncle by marriage used to ask me this question.  In the North of England it was still a current expression.  In the South, where I lived it was more usual to ask whether someone had a boyfriend or was “going out with anyone”.

Billing and cooing
is a phrase associated with a courting couple.  They might be lovey-dovey.

Something old,
something new,
something borrowed,
something blue.

This rhyme describes items of clothing a bride wears according to tradition.

Have a fling means have a love affair.

A billet doux is a love-letter.

For the love of… is an idiom.

Faint heart never won fair lady
is a proverb put to good use by WS Gilbert in Iolanthe.

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride
is a saying.

Another proverb is
Where there is no trust, there is no love.

Perhaps the most famous verse in the New Testament is John 3:16

Charity begins at home.
Charity is an old-fashioned word for love.  Perhaps the family is where love is first experienced.  People often use this saying as an excuse for not giving to others.

Home sweet home reminds me of a sampler a neighbour had in her home.  As far as I can remember the first two lines were “Wherever I wander, wherever I roam”.  I can’t remember the third line.  There’s no place like home was the final line, I think, although I may have muddled the whole rhyme.    It could have been “I always come home”.  Memory can play strange tricks.

Make yourself at home
is an invitation to a visitor to make themselves comfortable and not to stand on ceremony.  See Friend or foe?

Absent friends
may have a toast drunk to them.

A home from home
is somewhere so much time is spent that although not a real home it is almost one.

Home and dry
means having achieved one’s objective.

In many board games Home is the square where the game ends.  A man (or men) is (are) moved round the board from Start to Home.  The winner is the player whose men arrive Home first.  Ludo, Sorry and PM (Plus and Minus) are examples, although in PM , as far as I remember the home spaces are numbered rather than called home.

As safe as houses is a synonym.  Houses keep us safe from the weather outside.  They were not considered to be safe during bombing raids.  During WW2 people had air-raid shelters and left their houses for safety there.  Property has been a safe investment in the past, but with falling house prices leading to negative equity, this cannot be guaranteed.

Going all round the houses can describe a lengthy explanation or a complicated method of getting something done.

As deaf as a doorpost is a synonym.  Why is alliteration so attractive?

Spick and span means neat and tidy.  Alliteration again.

Raise the roof is a metaphor for making a lot of noise (usually with music).

Hit the roof means lose one’s temper.

Papering over the cracks is a metaphor (for a cover-up ?)  disguising faults, rather than putting them right.

Everything bar the kitchen sink is a description of a large amount of luggage.  It implies that everything has been taken apart from the fixtures.

Moss doesn’t grow on a busy street.
This is a proverb.  Traffic and footsteps keep a busy street clear of moss.

Right up your street
means precisely the sort of thing you would enjoy.

The man in the street is often known as Joe Public.

Halt at major road ahead
used to be the wording on the road sign, which is now an unusual shape (octagonal) and reads “Stop”.  The reason for the shape is so that it can be recognised when the word is obscured by snow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:STOP_sign.jpg
Photo credit Wikimedia Commons Author: Bidgee

A major upheaval might be typical British understatement for a traumatic event.

A moonlight flit(ting) is a house-removal (relocation) undertaken after dark and to a secret location.

No-one can hide from God.  Psalm 139 describes how He made us and knows our thoughts.