Many of us have come across the term country cousin either in a book/magazine article or in conversation. Simply put, country cousin refers to an unsophisticated individual or a rural person new to the ways of the city. The origins of this popular term date back to the late 18th century. Several Indian languages have […]
A phrase used more in the U.S. than elsewhere, skid row refers to a run down part of a large city. We were horrified the first time we saw the skid row in downtown Los Angeles one early morning in the late 1990s – the whole area was in a dilapidated condition and filled with […]
If you are seeing pink elephants, it ain’t good. Ain’t good at all. Because pink elephant is an euphemism for drunken hallucinations. Pink elephant is a phrase that is nearly a century old. One of the earliest references to pink elephant is in Jack London’s autobiographical novel John Barleycom published in 1913.
Like an uxorious husband, we are inordinately fond of Latin. We’ve been dropping Latin phrases into our spoken and written English for as long as we can remember. Besides making us seem smarter than we really are, Latin has a certain cachet that plain vanilla English lacks. SearchIndia.com will bring you some of our favorite Latin expressions. […]