As JD has mentioned, I hide behind a beard and as a young shaver was inordinately proud of some rather impressive sideburns. Inspired by his use of a sesquipedalian word for bearded I looked into the etymology of sideburns and discovered they're named after the hirsute American Civil War General Burnside.
Our colonial cousins seem to have a penchant for flipping phrases in this way.
For example, the phrase "lock and load" so beloved of Hollywood scripwriters dates back to instructions issued for users of the US Army's Garand rifle in World War 2 – but the original instruction was to "load and lock".
Trust me, I’m a journalist
3 days ago
