Tag archives: misquotations

Die, my dear Doctor, that’s the last thing I shall do!

‘Famous last words’ in the literal sense means someone’s final remarks before they die, but the phrase is often said as an ironic comment on an overconfident assertion that may later be proved wrong. A classic example of the two senses combined is the case of the Union general John Sedgwick, whose last words immediately [...]

Posted on: March 29 2012 | Posted by: | Comments: 1 | Categories: English in use | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Seventy years young

We all find at times that we reach for the words of others to express just what we want to say. Gleaming red berries through the fog of a September morning may remind the more literary of John Keats’s ‘season of mists, and mellow fruitfulness’ [...]

Posted on: October 13 2011 | Comments: 1 | Categories: Dictionaries and lexicography, English in use | Tags: , , , , ,