Origin of Name
The phrase 'The End is Nigh' derives from a man who could often be seen walking up and down London's Oxford Street wearing a sandwich board, or carrying a placard on a pole, bearing the phrase. The main meaning was purely religious - he was warning of the 'impending' Christian vision of Apocalypse - but the phrase has since entered the popular consciousness as a slightly derogatory term for someone or something warning of impending doom. However, a smaller board attached to the main one included the cryptic words 'And Sitting'. (Could this relate to the need to remain vigilant against the Day of Judgment?)
Read more about this topic: The End Is Nigh
Famous quotes containing the words origin of and/or origin:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)