NEWS FLASH!! —> I have a double dose of wonderful news to share from Silver Rush country... The Secret in the Wall is a finalist/nominee for two more awards: The Macavity Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Mystery (that's one! See all nominees for all Macavity categories here) and the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Mystery (that's two! See all finalists for all Silver Falchion categories here).
I'll admit, looking over the lists of nominees, I felt a bit of a dark horse to named and honored among them.
Which brings us to the Slang-o-rama phrase of the week...
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Merriam-Webster provides this definition of dark horse: "a usually little known contender (such as a racehorse) that makes an unexpectedly good showing."
The Phrase Finder—always a good source for dates of first use and origins—notes that dark horse originated in horseracing, and was used to describe a horse that was pretty much unknown and thus difficult to place odds on. The phrase used in the figurative sense seems to have first appeared in the 1860s in the academic world. The Phrase Finder offers this example from Sketches of Cambridge, published in 1865: "Every now and then a dark horse is heard of, who is supposed to have done wonders at some obscure small college."
The phrase has quite the air of mystery, yes?
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| Image by Bénédicte ARROU-VIGNOD from Pixabay |
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