8
votes
Meaning and origin of the word "muist"
According to John Jameson, An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808), there is (or was) a word spelled muist in Scottish:
MUIST, MUST, s. Musk, Border. [Cited examples:] Thy smell ...
- 151k
7
votes
How old is the expression "walking distance"?
The earliest usage of the phrase walking distance is from 1781 according to OED:
The soil is so sandy and poor, that..there is scarce a shrub or a tree to be seen within any walking distance from the ...
- 51.1k
5
votes
Meaning and origin of the word "muist"
The Scottish trail for “muist” appears to be the more interesting one: from “Dictionaries of the Scots Language”:
†MUIST, n., v. Also must; moust, moost.
I - n. 1. Musk (s.Sc. 1808 Jam.), in comb. ...
- 59.4k
2
votes
Meaning and origin of the word "muist"
The OED has no entry for "muist" but has mu, noun3 and interjection.
Etymology: < Japanese mu nothingness (13th cent.; 1603 in Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam), use as noun of mu nothing (...
- 28.1k
2
votes
Accepted
Use of “fat” and “fatty”
The suffix "-y", applied to a noun, means "like" or "full of". So "grassy" means either "grass-like" or "covered with grass".
The word "...
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2
votes
Accepted
When was the word co-ord first used?
The word is an abbreviation of co-ordinates, which itself likely comes from coordinated outfit. The Oxford English Dictionary traces a specific usage for women's clothes to the late 1950s ("co-...
- 32.7k
2
votes
Origin of the phrase "free, white, and twenty-one"?
The expression "free, white, and twenty-one" goes back at least a bit farther then 1854, when the first through third editions of Alone (Richmond, Virginia: 1854), by Marion Harland (pen ...
- 151k
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