Ramble

As you all know by now, I am an inveterate nosey parker admirer of other people's gardens on my rambles. I share some of the results with you. Today I have another doozy. Peering through the hedge I saw - yet another Phillip Jackson sculpture. This time I wasn't close enough to identify it, taller than life size. May even be a new design not yet recorded online. How exciting.

Where did the phrase 'nosey parker' come from? Origin seems uncertain. Nosey has long meant a person with a large nose, and extrapolation from that to 'sticking your nose into other people's business' seems possible. Who Parker was remains a mystery. Unless - there was an Archbishop of Canterbury called Matthew Parker, 1559 to 1575. He had a rather large nose but there is no evidence that he was nicknamed Nosey Parker. AND the first recorded use of the phrase in print appears to be not until May 1890, in the then popular Belgravia Magazine.

I rather like the antipodean equivalent, 'sticky beak'.

While I'm at it, where does the term 'doozy' come from. Possibly evolved from the word Daisy but why would a simple daisy come to mean something extraordinary? I prefer the explanation that it's a shortened version of the luxury car from the 1920's, the Duesenberg. They are extraordinarily beautiful.