get off my back

Stop nagging or pestering me. This slangy expression has been popular since the late 1930s, and its precise origin has been lost. It may have come from the older saying, to have a monkey on one’s back, which once meant to be angry or annoyed but since about 1930 has meant to be addicted to drugs. More likely “get off my back” alludes simply to a burden. As governor of California (1966–74), Ronald Reagan frequently used the term, saying we need to “get government off our backs.”

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fat cat

A wealthy individual. This rhyming term, originating in America about 1920, once had a more specific meaning, that is, a rich individual who made large contributions to a political party or campaign. Later it was extended to any wealthy person, as well as an individual who has become lazy or smug as the result of material assets. Thus, an article in the Saturday Review of Literature in 1949, “Hollywood celebrities, literary fat cats.” See also DEEP POCKETS.

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get lost

Go away, leave me alone. This rude, slangy imperative dates from the first half of the 1900s. It seems to be replacing the somewhat earlier scram, with the same meaning, heard less often today. P. G. Wodehouse had it in Company for Henry (1967), “Can I have a word with you? In private ... Get lost, young Jane.”

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fatal attraction

An affinity for something or someone inherently harm- ful. This twentieth-century term appears in such locutions as, “Even after the deaths of hundreds of climbers, Mt. Everest continues to exert a fatal attrac- tion for many mountaineers.” It was used as the title of a 1987 motion pic- ture about a happily married man who has a weekend affair with a beautiful woman; she turns out to be psychotic and tries to destroy his and his family’s life.

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esprit de corps

A sense of unity, pride, or common purpose among the members of a group. The term came directly from French into English in the late eighteenth century and often was misspelled, as by Jane Austen in Mansfield Park (“I honour your esprit du [sic] corps”). It continued to be used because, as Sir Frank Adcock put it, it describes “that typically English char- acteristic for which there is no English name” (1930). An American equiva- lent from the sports world is team spirit.

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dirty mind, a

Prurient, describing someone who thinks of or sees the obscene or indecent aspects of something. The adjective “dirty” has been used in this sense since the 1500s, but the phrase dates only from the 1900s. Stephen Price played on it in Just for the Record (1961): “He had a real porny [pornographic] article ... not just dirty, mind you, but Art.”

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enter the lists, to

To engage in combat, rivalry, or competition. The term comes from medieval jousting tournaments, in which the list or lists was the barrier around the arena for such a contest. It was used figuratively already by Shakespeare (“Now is she in the very lists of love,” Venus and Adonis, 1592). In 1647 Nathaniel Bacon used the full expression, “The King, loth to enter the List with the Clergy about too many matters” (Historical Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England). The term is similar to the slightly newer eager for the fray or enter the fray, “fray” being a battle, skirmish, or other fight, usually of a noisy nature. The first originated as a direct quotation from Colley Cibber’s version of Shakespeare’s Richard III (5.3): “My soul’s in arms, and eager for the fray.” However, all these expres- sions appear to be dying out.

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