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Bookmark or Share- Where does the phrase "on the lam" come from?In The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, J.E. Lighter defines the term as prison lingo for ''an act of running or flight, esp. a dash to escape from custody.'' In his 1886 ''30 Years a Detective,'' Allan Pinkerton, the first ''private eye,'' explains an operation of pickpockets: ''After he secures the wallet, he will utter ...
- What happened to the “‑est” and “‑eth” verb suffixes in English?Dost thou thinkest thou can escape thy sins? and. Bringeth me mine armor and favorite sword. I’d like to use these suffixes intelligently, so my questions are: how are ‑est and ‑eth properly appellated in conjugations, and when and why did they disappear?
- What do you call a person who keeps on going despite setbacks? (in one ...The word 'strever'(the equivalent of 'striver' in dutch) has a distinct negative connotation. It's a person who tries really hard in terms of having good grades as a compensation for lack of social skills.
- Term to describe when one event cannot occur without the othera dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions. "a catch-22 situation" (Paraphrased very slightly) from Wikipedia's Catch-22 (logic): A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules. An example would be:
- Is there an idiom beginning “when a dog is cornered”?Yes, I've seen the metaphor used. Someone will say: Corner a dog (or an animal, or a snake), and that is when he's most dangerous (or most likely to bite, or most likely to strike) – and the speaker really isn't talking about animal behavior, they are instead describing how people (or nations) can be most dangerous when they feel threatened and cornered.
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