Continuing with the origin of phrases, let us now see how many words and phrases, used everyday by us, found their way into the language, though their original meaning/usage was different.

Free-lance: The common belief is that this term dates back to the Middle Ages and refers to a knight who offered his services for hire, as opposed to pledging loyalty to a single lord. The term does come from this metaphor, but it does not date to medieval times. The term first appeared in 1820, in Sir Walter Scott?s Ivanhoe. Figurative use dates to the 1860s.

Hackney: It was a word for a taxi but came to mean overused and worn out. Hackney comes from the Old French haquen?e, meaning an ambling horse, especially one fit for ladies. It was adopted into English in the 14th century, meaning a middle-size horse. Very early on, by 1393 at the latest, the word had also acquired the meaning of a horse for hire. In 1664, Samuel Pepys uses the word in his diary to refer to a hired carriage, and the sense of hackney as taxi was born. Anything that is rented is bound to be worn out before its time, and by 1596, hackney was being used as an adjective meaning tired or worn out.

Hello: This greeting is much newer than most people think. The use of hello as a greeting is only as old as the telephone. The first recorded use is in 1883. It does, however, have earlier origins in other senses. It is a variant of hallo, which dates to 1840 and is a cry of surprise. That in turn is related to halloo, a cry to spur hunting dogs. Hello was not a shoo-in for the telephone greeting either. It competed with several options, including Alexander Graham Bell?s suggestion of Ahoy, but won by the 1880s.

Paparazzi: Paparazzi, plural of Paparazzo, comes from a character in Federico Fellini?s La Dolce Vita. In the movie, Paparazzo was a photographer, who would go to great lengths to take pictures of American movie stars.

Molotov Cocktail: This makeshift incendiary grenade is named after Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (1890-1986), the Soviet minister for foreign affairs from 1939 to 1949. The name was given to bottles filled with gasoline used by Finns during the Winter War of 1939-40. Molotov was reviled in Finland as the engineer of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact that allowed Russians to attack Finland.

Left Wing: The 1789 French National Assembly seated the Third Estate on the left side of the chamber and the First Estate nobles on the right, the place of honour. The revolutionaries, of course, were in the Third Estate, hence the political term.

Pandemonium: The term was coined by Milton in Paradise Lost. Pandemonium was originally hell. Literally, it means the place of all demons. By a century later (c. 1779), the term was in use as a reference to place like hell.

Red Herring: This term for deliberate misdirection comes from hunting. Poachers would interpose themselves between the prey and the hunting party and drag a red herring across the trail to mislead the dogs. This would give them the opportunity to bag the prey themselves. A red herring was chosen because dog trainers often used the pungent fish to create a trail when training hounds. The dogs, upon encountering the herring scent, would follow that trail as it was the one they had been trained with.