All Souls’ Day. The day of special prayers for the liberation of the suffering souls in Purgatory. The French people make it a point of duty to visit the graves of their deceased relatives on this day.
All the Go. Originally a drapers’ phrase, meaning that a certain line of goods is “going” fast and will soon be gone. A publisher, too, thinks a book should “go” with the reading public.
All There. An Americanism expressive of one who has all his wits about him.
Almack’s. Fashionable assembly-rooms in King Street, St James’s, opened 12th February 1765 by MacCall, a Scotsman, who inverted his name to remove all suspicion of his origin. The next proprietor called them Willis’s Rooms, after himself. In 1890 they were converted into a restaurant.
Almighty Dollar. For this expression we are indebted to Washington Irving, who in his sketch of “The Creole Village” (1837) spoke of it as “the great object of universal devotion throughout our land.”
Alnwick. The wick, or village, on the Alne.
Alpaca. Cloth made from the wool of the Peruvian sheep of the same name, akin to the llama.
Alps. From the Latin albus, white, the mountains eternally capped with snow.
Alsace. Teutonic for “the other seat,” being the abode of their own people west of the Rhine. With the Celtic suffix the name became “Alsatia.”
Alsatia. Anciently the district of Whitefriars, which, being a sanctuary for law-breakers, received the name of the Rhine province notorious as the common refuge of the disaffected.