do as I say, not as I do

Follow my advice but not my example. Although the idea is undoubtedly older, this specific phrase first appeared in print in 1654: “Preachers say, do as I say, not as I do” (John Selden, Table-Talk: Preach- ing). Parents have been saying it to children ever since.

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do a power of good, to

To effect a great improvement. This somewhat unsophisticated turn of phrase uses “power” in the sense of “much” or “a great deal.” For example, “Those vitamins will do her a power of good.”

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do a number on, to

To ruin, cheat, or trick someone. This slangy phrase dates from the late 1960s and originated in black English. For example, “That boss of yours really did a number on you; you’ll never get promoted.”

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DOA Acronym for “dead on arrival,” also written D.O.A

The term, dating from the mid-1900s, originally denoted a victim arriving at a hospital or clinic already deceased. Thus T. Flint put it in Emergency Treatment (1958), “Cases in which a spark of life is detected should not be classified as ‘D.O.A.”’ Although still used in this sense, more recently the phrase has been extended to other situations. On February 7, 2005, on the PBS news program Lehrer Report, one of the commentators described a provision in President Bush’s new budget as “dead on arrival,” suggesting that it would never be passed by Congress.

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divide and conquer/rule/govern, to

To win by getting one’s oppo- nents to fight among themselves. This strategy not only was discovered to be effective in wartime by the most ancient of adversaries, but was also applied to less concrete affairs by Jesus: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand” (Matthew 12:25). The exact term is a translation of a Roman maxim, divide et impera (divide and rule).

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dismal science, the Economics.

The term is Thomas Carlyle’s, and he first used it in On the Nigger Question (1849), writing: “The social science— not a ‘gay science’ but a rueful—which finds the secret of this Universe in ‘supply and demand’ . . . what we might call, by way of eminence, the dis- mal science.” He repeated it the following year in a pamphlet, and it gradu- ally caught on, becoming particularly popular among students struggling with the subject’s complexities.

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dirty tricks

Covert, deceitful, and damaging policies and actions. The term dates from the later 1600s and was long used simply to describe a nasty action, as in “When no one was looking Jim grabbed the last decent sleeping bag; that was a dirty trick.” However, it acquired a new meaning during the 1960s when it was applied to the activities of the Central Intelli- gence Agency (CIA), which was even called “Department of Dirty Tricks” for some of its propaganda and secret interventions in other countries’ affairs. In the 1970s it began to be applied to the unethical and even illegal tactics of political campaigns, such as smearing an opponent with false accu- sations, illicitly using campaign funds, and the like.

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