張愛玲的信大半寫在洋蔥紙（onion paper）上，隔了多少年，潔白如舊，折縫的地方也不會破裂。有些信則寫在以紙漿（pulp）為主要成份的劣紙上，色澤早已轉黃，折縫處黃色更深，且容 易破裂。有大志的讀者，最好從小養成用洋蔥紙或其他高級紙張寫信的習慣。說不定自己真會成了大名，連早年寫的信件也有可能流傳後世的。---夏志清先生 《金盞花大酒店》The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel http://www.youtube.com/watch? marigold, (măr'ĭ-gōld', mâr'-)  n.
[Middle English : Mari, Mary, ultimately from Greek Maria. See marionette + golde, marigold (from Old English golde, probably akin to GOLD).]
French's Wants You to Know Your Onions |
| By STUART ELLIOTT 31 minutes ago |
A campaign for French's French Fried Onions tries to invigorate a longtime brand by offering more recipes as a way to stimulate sales.
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In the typewriter era, onion skin often had a deeply-textured cockle finish which allowed for easier erasure of typing mistakes, but other glazed and unglazed finishes were also available then and may be more common today.
Onionskin paper is relatively durable and lightweight due to its high content of cotton fibers. Because of these attributes and its crispness when folding, onionskin paper is one of the best papers to use for advanced paper airplanes. Paper airplanes made from onionskin paper tend to fly very well due to its low weight and high integrity once folded.
[名][U]((米))オニオンスキン紙：半透明のつやのある筆記用紙.
つや【×艶】 I 〔光沢〕luster，((英)) lustre; gloss (▼lusterは反射光のような輝きのあるつや，glossはエナメルを塗った表面のように硬い感じのつや)
onion skin paper images
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Know your onions,
Meaning
To be experienced in or knowledgeable about a subject.
Origin
The English grammarian and lexicographer C. T. (Charles Talbut) Onions was an editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1895 and continued to write reference works throughout a long and distinguished career. His last work was The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 1966, which was published a year after his death. If I knew as much etymology as he did I could certainly claim to 'know my onions', and it is tempting to assume that this is where the phrase originated.
If the 'onions' referred to in the phrase is indeed human rather than vegetable, there is another Mr. Onions that could be our man. S. G. Onions (they were strong on initials in those days) created sets of coins which were issued to English schools from 1843 onwards. These were teaching aids intended to help children learn £.s.d. (pounds, shillings and pence). They looked similar to real coins and had inscriptions like '4 Farthings make 1 Penny' or, as in the example pictured, '12 Pence make 1 shilling'. We can imagine that 'knowing your Onions' might be coined, so to speak, in those circumstances.
The first known use of 'know your onions' in print, in the 1920s, tends to argue against either of the above men being involved. While it is true that the phrase originated at a time when C. T. Onions had established a reputation, the match between the phrase and his name is just a coincidence. Know your onions is in fact an American phrase. There are many references to it in print there from the 1920s onward, but none in the UK or elsewhere until the middle of the century. For example, this from Harper's Magazine, March 1922:
"Mr. Roberts knows his onions, all right."
Another example comes soon afterwards, in The Lima News, May 1923:
"The Columbus statement declares that the league is ready to give the Donahey boom every aid and comfort. Of course! Why not? Governor Donahey knows his onions..."
Other phrases that refer to knowing - 'know the ropes', 'doesn't know shit from Shinola' etc. allude to specific items as the focus of the knowledge. Other 1920s variants of 'know your onions' are 'know your oil/oats/apples' etc. The only one that caught on and is still in common use is 'know your onions'. So, why onions? Well, as the citation above asks - why not? Explanations that relate the phrase to knowledgeable vegetable gardeners, or even to C. T. or S. G. Onions, are just trying too hard. 1920s America was a breeding ground for wacky phrases (see the bee's knees for some examples) and this is just another of those.
19th century marionette head
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