The Reign of Terror in Revolutionary France, also known as Le Terreur, refers to the violent period in Revolutionary France in which revolutionaries performed mass executions. These executions were performed by guillotine and claimed the lives of many members of the French nobility and monarchy, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, as well as those who rebelled against revolutionaries. One cause of the Reign of Terror may have been public anger at the failures of the revolution, which failed to provide the levels of socioeconomic quality some revolutionaries and peasants had hoped for. Another reason for the violence in this era may have been social control in an unstable era of potential international and civil wars. The guillotine was deployed not only against the French bourgoisie but also those labeled as counter-revolutionaries and those who rebelled against the militant Jacobin Committee of Public Safety. These interpretations vary based on whether the French proletariat or the Jacobin delegates were held responsible for the level of violence.
Does anybody know the etymology of the phrase "sweet dreams"? I tried googling but did not find anything satisfying. Is this a relatively new phrase of the modern world or has this been in use for some time? I think it's the latter one. Answer The OED has the interjection as "a farewell to someone going to bed" from the 20th century: 1908 Sears Roebuck Catal. 198/1 Tenor Solos..Good Bye, Sweet Dreams, Good Bye. But it goes back until at least the 19th and possibly 18th centuries. John Wolcot, writing under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, used it in his poem "Orson and Ellen; A Legendary Tale" published in 1801: Also from 1801 in The infernal Quixote (Page 287) by Charles Lucas: In the March 1776 of The Universal Magazine was published "The Serenade. A Pastoral Tale. From the German of Gesner" , where the shepherd Daphnis watches over his beloved as she sleeps and sings: The same tale appears in 1776's as Idyl XI, " Daphnis ...
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