Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: futhark, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 1 of 1
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: futhark in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
By: Stephanie,
on 11/28/2007
Blog:
OUPblog
(
Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
blog,
Oxford,
A-Featured,
Lexicography,
Oxford Etymologist,
Anatoly,
Liberman,
etymologist,
OUP,
on,
a,
snuck,
bigot,
futhark,
dig,
stole,
march,
Add a tag
By Anatoly Liberman
A correspondent found the sentence (I am quoting only part of it) …stole a march on the old folks and made a flying trip to the home of… in a newspaper published in north Texas in 1913 and wonders what the phrase given above in boldface means. She notes that it occurs with some regularity in the clippings at her disposal. This idiom is well-known, and I have more than once seen it in older British and American books, so I was not surprised to find it in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). To steal (gain, get) a march on means “get ahead of to the extent of a march; gain a march by stealth,” hence figuratively “outsmart, outwit, bypass; avoid.” The earliest citation in the OED is dated to 1707. As far as I can judge, only the variant with steal has continued into the present, mainly or even only in its figurative meaning. (more…)
Share This
