[求助] Word and phrase origins[2008版, 高清, 可复制]

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A-Rod.(hw)
People who have little or no knowledge of baseball might have trouble with these initials. They are short for Alex Rodriguez, the famous Yankee baseball star.

around Cape Horn.(hw)
An expression once used in whaling communities to mean “being away on a whaling voyage.” One old poem went:


“I’ll tell your father, boys,” I cried To lads at play upon my lawn.


They chorused back, “You’ll have to go Around Cape Horn.”

around the horn.(hw)
In the days of the tall ships any sailor who had sailed around Cape Horn was entitled to spit to windward; otherwise, it was a serious infraction of nautical rules of conduct. Thus, the permissible practice of spitting to windward was called Cape Horn isn’t so named because it is shaped like a horn. Captain Schouten, the Dutch navigator who first rounded it in 1616, named it after Hoorn, his birthplace in northern Holland.

arrant thief; knight errant.(hw)
was originally just a variation of nomadic or vagabond, the word best known in a knight who roamed the country performing good deeds. But from its persistent use in expressions such as an a thief who roamed the countryside holding up victims, came to mean thorough, downright, or out-
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