Where words and phrases come from is a fascinating subject, full of folklore and historical lessons (continuing phrases beginning with D)

(To) dance attendance - to remain at the beck and call of another, with a view to please or gain favour.

Origin - There may be some connection with the old custom of requiring a bride to dance with everyone who attended her wedding, however tired she might be.

Dark horse - person who reveals little about himself, especially one with potential as a competitor

Origin - To ‘keep dark’, meaning to keep secret, is an expression going back at least 400 years, so it is possible that the related dark horse (a racehorse of unknown form but thought to have a good chance) existed in racing long before it was first recorded in print in Disraeli’s novel The Young Duke (1831).

Dead as a dodo - extinct, obsolete

Origin - The dodo was a peculiar bird with a large, hooked bill, and short, curly tail-feathers. Heavy and clumsy, the dodo was flightless, its small wings being totally out of proportion to its bulky body. Its name comes from the Portuguese doudo, meaning ‘silly’. Sadly, the increase in global trade in the 16th and 17th Centuries had brought about the extinction of the dodo. Seamen and colonists found the creatures both tasty and easy to catch. By the close of the 17th Century, the luckless bird was extinct.

Dead ringer - having a strong resemblance for someone or something

Origin - A ringer was originally a counterfeit coin. The fact that a coin was false could often be determined by dropping it on a hard surface, if it made a ringing sound, it was a fake. Later, in horse racing, a ringer was a fast horse substituted by an unscrupulous owner for a similar-looking nag with a bad racing record. This horse could then be heavily bet on in the hope of gaining a dishonest profit. Dead is merely a way of emphasizing the similarity, as in ‘dead centre’ (exactly central) or ‘dead on’ (exactly correct).

Devil to pay - trouble as the consequence of an act

Origin - The earliest appearance of this expression has to do with paying the Devil as part of a bargain. The medieval legend of the man who sold his soul to the Devil is best known from the dramatized version by Marlowe (1594): his Dr Faustus enjoys 24 years during which Mephistopheles provides whatever he asks for, but he has to pay his soul to the Devil at the end of them.

Between the devil and the deep (blue) sea - between two equally difficult alternatives

Origin - Here devil is nautical term for a seam between planks that was difficult to caulk, ie: make watertight by hammering fibres of rope into the gap and then adding tar.

The word was particularly used for the long seam of the first plank on the outer hull next to the keel where only the thickness of the hull was between this devil and the sea.