The grandmother of a woman in Council Bluffs, Iowa, says tousled hair looks like a hoorah’s nest. Also spelled hurrah’s nest or hooraw’s nest, this means “an untidy mess” or “a commotion.” Its origin is...
Someone who “looks like the wreck of Hesperus” isn’t exactly looking their best. The idiom comes from a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, inspired by an 1839 blizzard off the coast of Massachusetts that destroyed 20 ships. This is...
“You look like the wreck of the Hesperus!” It means you look “disheveled, ragged, dirty, hung over, or otherwise less than your best.” It may sound like an odd phrase, but it made perfect sense to generations of...