“Tepid”. My husband said it this morning - “shall I get some tepid water to clear the icy windscreen?” My immediate thought was “call it warm water”. Tepid just seems so pathetic a word.
The disparaging use of “brigade” for whenever someone is trying to belittle a viewpoint different to their own, e.g. “according to the baby-weaning brigade ...” as if there is an organised troupe of people all wearing matching outfits and slicing fruit in unison.
Pork wasn’t available to everyone in the 1500s, so when a person could obtain the meat, it made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man “could bring home the bacon”. There are a lot of stories about the origins of the phrase bring home the bacon, and none of them is the one above. Some writers trace the expression to catching the greased pig at a fair and bringing it home as a prize. Others claim the origin is in a centuries-old English custom of awarding pork products to married men who could swear to not having regretted their marriage for a year and a day. The phrase did not appear in print until 1906, when a New York newspaper quoted a telegram from the mother of a prizefighter telling him: “You bring home the bacon.” Soon, many sportswriters covering boxing picked up the expression.
