Skip to main content

Lady in red


The label 'lady in red' originated with a woman named Anna Sage who assisted the FBI in the capture of gangster John Dillinger in 1934. The oldest profession is prostitution and typically those women are called 'ladies of the night' but Anna became the 'lady in red' due to her outfit she was wearing the night Dillinger was caught, she was also a Madam of a brothel. Her outfit was actually an orange skirt and white top but the nickname was given nonetheless based off of her promise to wear red - even though she changed her mind about that. You can read all about it here. 

How it came to be a saying today and what it actually means is a mystery but there is a song about it, sung by Chris De Burgh. 




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Call it a Day

The literal use of this phrase hails from 1838 when the phrase originally was "call it half a day" to mean leaving work early. (source) The modern use of the phrase is to indicate ending something due to false sense of accomplishment. 
Post a Comment
Read more

More bang for your buck

This phrase was used a lot in 1953 but an earlier citation puts it at 1940 in a Metals and Plastics Publications advertisement. Read about it here . The phrase means you get more for your money.
Post a Comment
Read more