“An average Joe” is an ordinary person without anything exceptional about them. Origin is from the novel “Johnny Got His Gun” written by Dalton Trumbo in 1971. Joe, a young American soldier, is hit by a mortar shell on the last day of World War I. Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written ...
Walter Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", first published in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939, and in book form in My World and Welcome to It in 1942. Thurber loosely based the character on his friend, Walter Mithoff. It was made into a ...
Uncle Tom and Cobbleigh and all (from the ballad Widdicombre Fair) is becoming old-fashioned but is used humorously to mean “and the rest”. "Widecombe Fair", also called Tom Pearce (sometimes spelt "Tam Pierce"), is a well-known Devon folk song about a man called Tom Pearce, whose horse dies ...
The expression "Barkis is willing" first appeared in Charles Dickens' well-known classic "David Copperfield". Barkis is the name of one the characters in the novel. He keeps sending a message through David to Clara Peggotty, the maid of David's mother. The message that David is to give Clara is ...
The phrase “Modern day Robin Hood” is used to describe a person, who robs rich people to help poor ones. The anthroponymic phrase derives from the worldwide famous “The merry adventures of Robin Hood” by Howard Pyle written in 1883. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in ...
It is difficult to find a young person, who has not heard about the fantastic tale about Peter Pan. Written by the Scottish novelist and playwright James Matthew Barrie, the tale is about a mysterious boy named Peter Pan, who flies in the Darling family’s nursery window and entices Wendy, John and ...
It is difficult to find a young person, who has not heard about the fantastic tale about Peter Pan. Written by the Scottish novelist and playwright James Matthew Barrie, the tale is about a mysterious boy named Peter Pan, who flies in the Darling family’s nursery window and entices Wendy, John and ...
The phrase “Modern day Robin Hood” is used to describe a person, who robs rich people to help poor ones. The anthroponymic phrase derives from the worldwide famous “The merry adventures of Robin Hood” by Howard Pyle written in 1883. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in ...
